NYC shootings continue to surge — and cops warn it may be the new normal
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People at the scene of a double shooting at the corner of Bristow Street and Boston Road in the Bronx.Robert Mecea
Bullets are whizzing around New York this month at a rate not seen in nearly a quarter-century,according to the NYPD — and police sources warned that the recent rate of gunplay may be the new normal.
Through the first three weeks of June, which came to a close Sunday, city streets echoed with 125 shooting incidents, Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael LiPetri told The Post on Monday.
“We have to go back to June of 1996 to get a worse start for June,” said LiPetri. “That is a telling stat.”
Twenty-four years ago, Rudy Giuliani was mayor and, while the city had made strides in tamping down crime, Gotham still saw 2,938 people shot and 984 killed.
Although overall crime citywide remains down 2.5 percent for the year, shootings, already trending up this year, exploded in June.
From Monday, June 15, through Sunday, there were 53 shooting incidents across the city, the highest mark for a single week since Mayor Bill de Blasio took office.
The last time the city recorded that many shootings in a week was around July 4, 2012, according to police sources.
But to find a nonholiday week — which tends to be quieter — with that many shootings, the department had to look all the way back to 2005, according to LiPetri.
“This weekend we also saw real challenges out in our streets in terms of gun violence,” said de Blasio in a press briefing, remarking on the blood-soaked stretch that included 24 people shot citywide Saturday.
“We are not going to allow gun violence to continue to grow in this city,” vowed Hizzoner.
NYPD insiders contended, however, that after years of de Blasio proclaiming New York the safest big city in America while embracing a soft-on-crime approach, the chickens could be coming home to roost at City Hall.
“This is the bloodiest week in de Blasio’s reign, and it will only get worse,” said one Brooklyn cop. “He can’t brag how safe the city is anymore.”
Added a Queens cop, “By the time he leaves, his legacy will not be dropping crime. It’ll be increasing crime.”
NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea conceded that a titanic challenge could be on the horizon, but that there’s time to fix it.
“It takes a long time to turn a ship. It sees the iceberg that’s directly in front of us, and that’s exactly what’s happening right now,” the top cop told NY1 on Monday. “We’ve been trending this way for a while and the shootings are just the latest symptom.”
Shea announced last week that the plainclothes anti-crime unit tasked with rounding up illegal guns was being disbanded due to the volume of complaints against its members.
Calling the spate of shootings a “troubling trend,” de Blasio said the city would not surrender the ground it has gained and head back to the crime-plagued days of the 1990s.
“We’re not going back to the bad old days when there was so much violence in this city,” he said.
Additional reporting by Julia Marsh and Amanda Woods
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