New York subway shooting new test of mayor’s promise to police gun violence

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Eric Adams ran for mayor of New York Metropolis with marketing campaign adverts that includes previous images of him in his police uniform and a vow to safe a pandemic-scarred metropolis towards the gun violence that surged alongside COVID-19.

On his 102nd day in workplace, Adams, a former police captain, confronted the newest problem in his efforts to allay New Yorkers’ fears: A gunman opened fireplace on a subway automotive Tuesday morning, capturing 10 individuals.

Violent crime has risen throughout the USA over the pandemic, and New York Metropolis has been no exception. Adams, a Democrat, has set himself the problem of balancing New Yorkers’ anxieties about crime with the mistrust some have of a $10 billion police division that continues to reckon with a historical past of brutality and racism.

Whereas town stays one of many most secure within the nation and much much less harmful than it was within the Nineties, when Adams was rising by the New York Metropolis Police Division’s ranks, the brand new mayor has revived a number of the tough-on-crime policing ways related to that period underneath the Republican mayor Rudy Giuliani.

These embody a crackdown on low-level “high quality of life” offenses corresponding to public consuming and the revival of a plain-clothes police unit disbanded in 2020 over complaints of lethal violence and unaccountability.

To civil rights teams alarmed that police may once more disproportionately goal poor, Black and Latino New Yorkers, Adams has pointed to his personal experiences with police brutality rising up as a Black man in Brooklyn’s poorest corners.

“I grew to become a police officer to bridge the hole between us and to tackle systemic racism from inside,” Adams, 61, stated in a marketing campaign advert. “To revitalize our metropolis New Yorkers must really feel secure and safe that our children can play with out getting hit by a stray bullet.”

Since he took workplace on Jan. 1, 363 individuals have been shot within the metropolis as of final week, up about 9% from the identical interval final 12 months. Rapes have elevated 17%, assaults practically 20% and robberies 48%. Murders have fallen 11% from early 2021, to 103 to date.

Some crimes have been front-page information: a lady pushed to her demise onto the tracks on the Occasions Sq. subway station in February; a person who stabbed two employees on the Museum of Fashionable Artwork. Simply final week, Adams stood beside a mom whose 12-year-old son was killed by the form of stray bullets he had apprehensive about in his marketing campaign adverts.

Just a few weeks earlier, Adams was defending law enforcement officials who shot an 18-year-old man within the head, leaving him critically wounded, after they stated he tried to flee a visitors cease.

Adams, who usually visits scenes of high-profile crimes and has made a degree of using the subways wherein he started his policing profession, was caught within the mayor’s residence on Tuesday, isolating after testing optimistic for COVID-19. In a recorded video assertion, he stated: “We won’t permit New Yorkers to be terrorized, even by a single particular person.”

Haitham Taher, 20, who was ready to select up his brother from a college close to the subway station the place Tuesday’s capturing occurred, stated he felt the police have been at greatest ineffective.

“You are feeling you are not protected,” he stated, as tons of of police milled round him. “If there is a parking ticket violation they are going to catch you straight away however an individual with a gun they will not catch for hours.”

As of Tuesday night, roughly 11 hours after the subway capturing, the suspected gunman was nonetheless at giant, although police named a person whom they referred to as “an individual of curiosity.” https://twitter.com/NYPDnews?ref_src=twsrcpercent5Egooglepercent7Ctwcamppercent5Eserppercent7Ctwgrpercent5Eauthor

In restoring the anti-gun unit, Adams has stated officers are receiving further coaching and put on body-worn cameras and a modified uniform as an alternative of plain garments.

They’ve made 26 arrests for unlawful gun possession, however have extra usually made arrests for lower-level offenses, together with possession of a faux ID, in keeping with knowledge obtained by the Metropolis & State information outlet.

Persevering with a follow of his predecessors, Adams has additionally touted his effort to brush tons of of homeless encampments, saying he hopes to “rebuild belief” and induce homeless individuals into the much-maligned shelter system.

Adams, who additionally ran on a platform of reasonably priced housing, says he’s performing out of sympathy for individuals dwelling in “inhumane” situations. However homeless individuals and their advocates say the objective is to obscure seen indicators of poverty, and say the sweeps are merciless and ineffectual, shuffling round individuals who have determined that the streets are safer than shelters.

Some authorized observers say the sweeps are unconstitutional when sanitation employees and police trash New Yorkers’ belongings with out due course of.

“It is simply very straightforward for somebody who got here up within the NYPD by the Giuliani years to succeed in again to that playbook,” Beth Haroules, a workers legal professional on the New York Civil Liberties Union, stated after watching metropolis officers throw homeless New Yorkers’ tents in a rubbish truck final week.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; enhancing by Paul Thomasch and Leslie Adler)