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The bullets keep flying over Broadway — and everywhere else in the Big Apple.
A year after the city suffered its worst crime surge in more than a decade, the number of shootings — and victims — continues to climb.
So far 1,828 people have been shot in the five boroughs — 0.4 % more than last year’s astronomical tally of 1,821, according to NYPD data through Dec. 19. The number of shootings — 1,526 — is up 2.4%.
Brooklyn, where Mayor-elect Adams has been borough president since 2014, was the bloodiest borough, and the 73rd Precinct in Brownsville — the neighborhood of Adams’ birth — was the most violent precinct, data show.
“(The mayor-elect) finds the Brownsville stats completely, totally unacceptable,” Adams spokesman Evan Thies told The Post. “Stopping violent crime will be (Adams’s) priority when he’s mayor. And that will include a comprehensive plan to reduce shootings.”
The blueprint will include a new NYPD antigun unit, investments in violence interruption programs and inter-agency task forces, Thies said.
King County accounted for nearly a third of New York City’s 2021 gunplay victims, 609, followed by The Bronx (588), Manhattan (303), Queens (288) and Staten Island (40).
“Crime is off the charts,” fumed state Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-Staten Island), a former Manhattan prosecutor who said the sobering statistics are a product of Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the left-leaning City Council creating a “climate for crime” through bail reform laws, pandering to BLM rioters and anti-cop rhetoric.
“Government’s most basic responsibility is public safety. The misguided policies from the left have failed miserably in that regard and as a result New York is less safe and less livable than it has been in generations,” he said.
In the 73rd Precinct, 90 people have been shot so far, down from 115 shootings in 2020, but a 77% spike from two years ago.
Most recently the 73rd saw a 31-year-old man gunned down outside his apartment building on Dec. 12. Tyrece Carroll was one of seven people shot across the city that Sunday morning. The 31-year-old man entered the courtyard at 8 Rockaway Ave. around 3:10 a.m. when someone behind him began firing, cops said. The killer sped off in a white sedan. Carroll died at Brookdale Hospital. There are no arrests.
“Out of all the ways I learned in school about the way someone could naturally die. To get a call saying y’all killed my brother. I’m truly f—ing disgusted. … I hate this world,” Tylia K. Carroll posted to Facebook hours after the slaying.
Even the playgrounds aren’t safe in Brownsville. The 73rd Precinct is hunting for two suspects who shot a pair of teenaged boys in a play area on Oct. 1. Shooters opened fire at the 15- and 16-year-old boys near Sterling Place and Saratoga Avenue at about 9:45 p.m. The 15-year-old was grazed in the shoulder and the 16-year-old shot in the leg.
The 44th Precinct, which covers nearly two square miles of the southwest portion of the Bronx, is second in the city with with 86 shooting victims, a 41% spike from last year.
The 75th Precinct, which serves East New York and Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, has logged 83 shooting victims so far this year, down from the 124 people shot in 2020, but still a 34% increase of 2019.
East New York’s Rosalyn Jackson, who lost her son to gun violence in Canarsie, Brooklyn, in 2015, now fears for her 16-year-old grandson.
“It’s crazy. It’s to the point where I don’t want to go outside. It’s too dangerous. You can’t ride a bus,” said Jackson, 53, whose heart “still aches” for her son, Donnell Smith, who was cut down at age 25. She now fears for her 16-year-old grandson, Khamani, who lives with his mom at the Linden Houses in East New York.
“If there were stiffer penalties, maybe a lot of these kids wouldn’t be shot and killed. They go to jail and jail is like a vacation to them,” she said.
The 42nd Precinct, which covers the Morrisania in the Bronx, reported 74 shooting victims, a 37% spike from 2020; while the 47th Precinct in the northern Bronx logged 72 victims, a 44% increase from the 50 shot in 2020.
The surge in gun violence began in 2020, following a period in which violent crime plunged to levels not seen in years.
Michael Alcazar, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former NYPD detective, blamed the surge in gunplay on bail reform measures and the June 2020 disbanding of the NYPD’s anti-crime unit. “The message is clear for the criminals: Bail reform will get you out of jail free and the cops have been handcuffed and can no longer patrol in plainclothes,” he said.
Alcazar added that Mayor-elect Adams and his hand-picked police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, “have the right idea” if they follow through on plans to resurrect the broken-windows theory of policing and bring back plainclothes cops.
It was just about exactly a year ago, that then-Brooklyn Beep Adams gathered with other community leaders to take a stand against gun violence.
“I’m not here for political reasons. I’m here for personal reasons,” Adams told the crowd. “My son is 24. Every time I hear a young man is shot I’ve got to look through the article and say, ‘Tell me it’s not my baby.’”
Patrick Lynch, head of the city’s largest police union, said, “New Yorkers don’t need to see year-end stats to know we’re in a crisis. They’re hearing the gunshots in our neighborhoods every night, and cops are responding.
“We’ve reached this point because Mayor de Blasio and his fellow ideologues in City Hall and Albany won’t even admit there’s a problem, much less reverse course and fix the mistakes that caused it. Things won’t magically get better on Jan. 1, but we’re hopeful that our new city leaders will at least live and govern in the real world, instead of a progressive fantasyland.”
The city recorded 1,531 shootings in 2020, a whopping 97% more than the 777 in 2019, NYPD data show. The number of shooting victims in the city ballooned 102% to 1,868 in 2020 from the 923 in 2019, the stats show.
Shooting victims are overwhelmingly minority: 73.9 percent of the people struck by a bullet in 2020 were black, and 22.5 percent were Hispanic, according to NYPD data. Blacks and Hispanics also accounted for 65.0 percent and 26.4 percent of murder victims, respectively, in New York City in 2020.
The races of shooting suspects followed similar patterns: 72.1 percent black and 24.7 percent Hispanic, according to the NYPD report.
Additional reporting by Kerry J. Byrne
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