By Emily Drooby
On Monday, July 6, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke out about the growing gun violence gripping the city, calling it “a very serious situation.”
The mayor pointed a finger at the coronavirus pandemic and the shutdowns it’s caused.
“We have a real problem here, and I think profoundly the fact that our court system is not functioning and needs to function again underlies all of this,” he said. “We have to get things back into gear.”
During the Fourth of July weekend, 10 people were killed and over 60 others were shot.
According to the newest NYPD crime stats, there were 205 shootings in June 2020, more than double the number from 2019.
The NYPD’s Chief of Department, Terence Monahan, blames several factors for the surge.
“Bail reform, COVID releases from prison, court shut down, which has Rikers at half of where they were last year of the population,” he said. “I have said this before: the animosity towards police out there is tremendous.”
New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan is calling for an end to that animosity and the demonizing of cops.
In an op-ed, he wrote, “The men and women of the department realize they are far from perfect. But we know that while bad apples there indeed may be, they are very rare.”
Paul DiGiacomo, the president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, Inc, is worried about the effect new police reforms have had and will have. He argues it’s now harder for cops to subdue suspects.
“It emboldens the criminal element and it lessened the authority of the police department,” he said. “If the police don’t have the full backing of our elected officials to support them, this is the end result.”
Brooklyn Monsignor Robert Romano, the Assistant Chief Chaplain of the NYPD, is also calling out elected officials.
“Progressive doesn’t mean to let people do what they want to do, because if it continues this way, those same politicians are going to be the ones begging the NYPD to do something,” he told Currents News.
The mayor is turning to the police and the community to get the violence under control.
“We have to double down on neighborhood policing efforts in upper Manhattan,” de Blasio said. “It will take the efforts of clergy and block associations, and elected officials, and civic groups and parents. We are going to need all hands on deck to address this issue.”