The recent ruling against stop-and-frisk has emboldened the city’s pistol-packing perps.
In the month after federal judge Shira Scheindlin’s decision that the police procedure is unconstitutional, shootings spiked nearly 13 percent — and gun seizures plummeted more than 17 percent, The Post has learned.
During the 28 days ending Sept. 8, there were 140 shootings across the Big Apple, compared with 124 during the same period last year, the figures show.
And the number of gunshot victims was up more than 9 percent, with 164 people struck by bullets this year, compared with 150 shot over that month last year.
The victims include two tragic tots: 16-month-old Antiq Hennis, who was slain in his stroller as his parents pushed him across a Brownsville, Brooklyn, street, and Tharell Edward, 3, who was struck and wounded by a bullet in the head as he slept in his crib in the same borough.
Antiq’s alleged shooter, Daquan Breland, and his accomplice fled to Pennsylvania, where they were later arrested at a housing complex in Wilkes-Barre.
Breland was charged with murder and his accomplice was slapped with a gun-possession charge for stashing the murder weapon, authorities said.
After Scheindlin’s ruling on Aug. 12, another, less serious shooting involving a child occurred.
On Aug. 24, a 3-year-old boy was shot in the arm when Alex Tatis, 27, allegedly fired three shots at another person and hit the youngster in Vidalia Park in The Bronx.
Tatis was arrested on charges of attempted murder, assault and weapons possession.
Meanwhile, cops seized only 239 firearms between Aug. 10 and Sept. 8, compared with 289 weapons taken off the streets during the same period last year.
Gun charges are also down, by more than 15 percent, with monthly arrests dropping to 417 this year from 492 last year, according to NYPD statistics.
Sources blamed the disturbing trends on Scheindlin’s ruling, which was handed down two days after the start of this year’s monthly reporting period.
“Shootings are going through the roof now because perps are not afraid to carry a gun,” a source said.
Scheindlin wrote in her 195-page decision that stop-and-frisk violated the rights of minorities.
Another NYPD source said that cops are no longer being “proactive” with stop-and-frisk because “they’re scared of being sued. They feel as if the city is not going to indemnify them in lawsuits,” the source said.
Ever since Scheindlin’s ruling, cops have jokingly referred to the anti-crime procedure — which is officially called “stop, question and frisk” — as “stop, watch and wait,” another source said.
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Shootings spiked nearly 13 percent in the month after a federal judge ruled the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk unconstitutional.Warzer Jaff
It could have been worse, another police source said. The city was “lucky” that Scheindlin’s ruling came at the end of summer.
“The summer months always produce more crime because of the heat,” the source said.
“If the ruling happened at the beginning of the summer, all hell would have broken loose.”
Police complained that Scheindlin’s ruling removed the risk of arrest that gun-toters faced if they were stopped.
“Before the ruling, when police were proactively stopping people, guys would not carry a gun unless they knew they were going to do a shooting,” a police source said.
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