NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea: City on pace to hit 14-year high in shootings

New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea predicted Tuesday that shootings in the city were on track to hit levels not seen in 14 years.

"We are looking to close out the year with a 14-year high," said Shea, a pace that he said "should make New Yorkers stop and pause."

The commissioner said that while the coronavirus pandemic may be responsible for some of the violence, Shea said too many gun suspects are getting released from jail too soon after their arrests.

"When you are making arrests and taking guns off the street day after day after day, and there are no consequences for that ... every metric we see are disturbing," Shea said during a round of early morning TV news shows. "You can't identify and take guns out of the hands of violent people, who want to use those guns and not have consequences and that is by far the largest problem we are facing," the commissioner said.

Shea urged officials to rethink whether the correct balance has been struck in striving to keep people out of jail. "We had mastered how to drive incarceration down and how to drive violence down and that has been upended this year," Shea said on NY1.

The latest police statistics show the city has recorded 1,433 shootings in which 1,756 people were injured as of Dec. 6. By comparison, the city recorded 776 shootings with 922 victims in 2019.

Shea acknowledged that no agency, including his own, can ever say it has done enough. But even with hundreds of gun arrests in recent weeks, the city is on track to see the number of shootings hit levels not seen since 2006, when shootings totaled 1,565 with 1,880 victims, he said.

NYC Shooting Totals: 2006 to current

New York City is on track to have the highest number of shootings in 14 years.

"COVID is not going to be the end-all and be-all in my professional opinion here, and we are still going to have to grapple with these problems we are seeing," said Shea, referring to the way people arrested for gun possession can be released three or four days later.

Shea seemed to be taking different view than Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has attributed the increase in violence to the disruption during the pandemic.

Reacting to Shea's comments during his daily news briefing, de Blasio said that he believed COVID was the game changer for crime.

"There was nothing like it in the history of the New York City," de Blasio said of the pandemic. "In that atmosphere, we saw an uptick in violence."

Chief Michael LiPetri, head of the office of crime control strategies for the NYPD, said statistics showed that the closing of the courts during the pandemic led to an increase in the numbers of convicted felons and juveniles caught with firearms that were released from jail.

"Twenty-three percent of our gun arrests this year are of convicted felons, highest levels we have seen since 2013 when the level was 15 percent," LiPetri said.

The problem, he said, is that many gun possession defendants are being released without bail or with the least of restrictive bail conditions.

In addition, an alarming number of juveniles are being caught with firearms and being released without enough supervision by the family courts, LiPetri said.

By Anthony M. DeStefano

tony.destefano@newsday.comtonynewsday

Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.