DAILY NEWS
New York City turned into the Wild West as a series of shootings claiming at least 9 lives and wounding 41 others — including a Bronx teenager — erupted amid Fourth of July celebrations.
The shocking wave of violence came as the city was reeling from ongoing anti-police brutality protests, weeks of lockdown orders prompted by the coronavirus outbreak and soaring summer temperatures. Adding to the chaotic atmosphere, illegal fireworks exploded throughout the five boroughs all night long.
This year’s spike in mayhem continued a worrisome surge in crime since coronavirus prompted authorities to shut down the city in mid-March.
June was especially violent, with 250 people shot in the first 28 days of the month, according to NYPD stats. That’s a massive spike compared to the 97 people shot in the same time period last year, and is the city’s most violent June on record since 1996, NYPD stats show.
So far, murders are up by 23% this year citywide, with 176 slayings as of June 28 compared to 143 during the same period last year. Even so, the city’s homicide rate remains far lower than the mid 1990s and even the mid-2000s. In 2006, the city saw 255 murders between Jan. 1 and June 28.
Sunday’s shooters took advantage of an ongoing atmosphere of crisis, said Councilman Donovan Richards, who chairs the Council’s Public Safety Committee.
“The people exploiting this moment are sensing the division on the ground and they’re totally taking advantage of the streets, without a doubt,” the Queens Dem told The News.
“They sense division and therefore they understand they can take out their retribution on each other in ways they weren’t doing years ago because there was much more unity between the department and what was going on on the ground.”
"Most Of Our Powers Were Taken Away": NYPD Blames Reforms For Increase In Violent Crime
GOTHAMISTNYPD officials are largely blaming criminal justice reforms, coronavirus mitigation measures, and "anti-police rhetoric" for an increase in shootings, and a July 4th weekend that was marred by gun violence and 11 murders across the city.
"There is a multitude of reasons why shootings have increased in New York City," Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael LiPetri told reporters at a press conference on Monday afternoon. "We have the knowledge to stop shootings; it’s unfortunate that most of our powers were taken away to stop the shootings. Knowledge is power? Well, we have the knowledge, we don’t have the power."
Yet the NYPD did not elaborate on what crime-fighting powers they have lost, nor did they say if record high unemployment, lost wages, or school cancellation due to the pandemic that has killed more than 24,000 New Yorkers and sickened countless more factored into their crime analysis.
According to the NYPD, there were 205 shootings in June of 2020, up from 89 in 2019, a 130 percent increase. Murders have also increased in New York by 23 percent for the first six months of 2020, from 147 to 181.
LiPetri said that because of the state bail reforms, 3,000 people have accounted for approximately 9,000 arrests since the pandemic began, but it's unclear if those arrests are for violent crimes or misdemeanors, or how many of those people might have been released on bail and arrested again under the old 2019 bail laws. (The "new" bail reform laws are now old: the state legislature's rollback of those reforms took effect on Friday.)
Of the 2,500 people released from Rikers due to COVID-19 concerns since the pandemic began, nine have been "tied to violent acts around the city," including two murders, though LiPetri conceded that one of those individuals would have served out their sentence before the murder was committed.
And 136 people released because of new bail reform laws this year were "involved in a shooting or a murder," the NYPD said. But did that mean they were a witness, a person of interest, a victim, or a suspect? The police department couldn't say.
Other metrics the police cited as affecting crime were even less quantifiable, like the protests that "crushed the morale of our cops," as Chief Monahan put it.
"If you walk across the street at City Hall Park over there and take a look on the street, you see the communist hammer and sickle that they painted out on the street," Monahan said. "Are these the loud voices that we should be following?"
There is also legislation that prohibits the police from using chokeholds in New York City that was passed last month by the City Council, that is awaiting Mayor Bill de Blasio's signature. The law prevents officers from "restrain[ing] an individual in a manner that restricts the flow of air or blood by compressing the windpipe or the carotid arteries on each side of the neck, or sitting, kneeling, or standing on the chest or back in a manner that compresses the diaphragm."
Chief Monahan claimed that this law would lead to prosecutions of the police because officers frequently need to kneel on unruly arrestees, and that one of the city's five DA's told him privately that it was "unconstitutional."
"There is a fear going through the police officers now from the diaphragm law—I call it the diaphragm law not the chokehold law," Monahan said, name-checking the bill's main sponsor, Queens Councilmember Rory Lancman.
"Rory Lancman, who is in one of the safest and affluent neighborhoods in the city, has signed a bill that is going to affect people in economically deprived areas of the city and have violence, because police officers may be hesitant to step forward and grab someone for a quality-of-life offense, if during the course of that the person resists and their knee should accidentally end up on a person's back," Monahan charged.
Reached by telephone on Monday, Lancman told Gothamist, "My district is nearly three quarters people of color, and if Chief Monahan wants to come and talk to my constituents about their urgent desire for police reform, I'd be happy to make that connection."
Lancman pointed out that the NYPD's own patrol guide contains a prohibition on any move that "may prevent or hinder breathing or reduce intake of air."
"So unless Chief Monahan is confessing to the NYPD never taking its own patrol guide seriously, there is nothing for a well-trained, well-disciplined, and well-intentioned officer to fear from this bill," Lancman said.
After a violent weekend, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea says this is "the storm" he said was coming. Blames bail reform and even the recent choke hold bill for "crippled police"
Top Cop Points to Low Prisoner Numbers at Rikers Amid Spike in Shootings
The council member, who sits on the council's public safety committee, is also calling for the removal of NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea for what he described as "an utter failure on the part of the police commissioner to follow the law, accept civilian authority over the police department."
Lancman said, "He's basically thrown up his hands and said all these new reforms are baloney, I can't run the police department with all of these new reforms, I give up."
A recent Vera Institute study surveyed the policing budgets of cities across the country. Cities with more police officers did not necessarily have lower rates of crime.
"Baltimore has had extremely high crime rates compared to New York, but the difference isn't the number of cops, the difference is that New York City has funded violence interruption and violence prevention programs for decades while Baltimore has done far less of that," Rahman explained.
"The investment should not be more police flooding these high crime neighborhoods, but actually more resources that help with food stability and housing stability and keeping people fundamentally safe and healthy during this crisis."