De Blasio concedes NYC’s ‘shooting problem’
Mayor Bill de Blasio is conceding that New York City has a “shooting problem,” but insists that stop-and-frisk policing isn’t the answer.
The mayor took credit for crime reductions before acknowledging there’s been a bloody spike in homicides this year.
“We brought down crime across the board,” de Blasio said on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” Tuesday night. “We do have a shooting problem. A shooting problem last year, we have a shooting problem this year.”
Shootings are on the rise, with 439 recorded in the first five months of 2015 compared to 403 in the same time of 2014, a spike of 7.7 percent.
Between Jan. 1 and May 30, there were also 133 murders in New York — up 17.7 percent from the same time last year, police statistics show.
But the mayor insisted that the recent deadly crime wave still pales in comparison to the bad old days of New York. He blamed gangs for the city’s ongoing bloodshed.
“Nothing like New York City had 15, 20 years ago. But something’s persistent, particularly around gangs. And we have new strategies to go in there both with aggressive policing but also gang intervention,” he said.
De Blasio said stop-and-frisk policing isn’t the answer and forecast better days ahead for the city’s crime rate.
“Those strategies need to be applied. Going back to an unconstitutional, alienating approach is not only inappropriate and unfair to the populace, it doesn’t work,” he said.
“I think we’re broadly on the right track. But look what we are doing: We’re re-training our police force on how to work more closely with the community. We’re doing body cameras, which is going to instill, I think, a lot more confidence between police and community.”
De Blasio added: “I think these pieces are going to add up because people [police] are not wasting time on unnecessary and unconstitutional stops and they’re not wasting time on low-level marijuana arrests, either.”
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