New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday that he is fulfilling a campaign promise and bringing back a new version of the once-controversial plainclothes anti-gun unit, as part of his blueprint to end gun violence.
The New York Police Department is expected to launch the new units, renamed neighborhood safety teams, within the next three weeks to enhance uniformed public safety teams. Hundreds of candidates have been identified. The plainclothes units will focus on the 30 precincts where 80% of violence occurs.
It’s an issue Adams, a former NYPD sergeant, campaigned on after shootings and violent crime spiked in the Big Apple when the original units were disbanded in 2020 under his predecessor Bill de Blasio.
“New Yorkers feel as if a sea of violence is engulfing our city. But as your mayor, I promise you, I will not let this happen. We will not surrender our city to the violent few,” Adams said at City Hall Monday. “Gun violence is a public health crisis. There’s no time to wait. We must act.”
Criticism toward the plainclothes units, accused by progressives for disproportionally targeting Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, reached a fever pitch during calls to defund police after George Floyd’s death.
Mayor Eric Adams speaks as hundreds of police officers and FDNY officers gather at the 32nd Precinct for a vigil for two officers shot in Harlem Jan. 22, 2022. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The mayor’s office says the city will be conducting “listening tours in key neighborhoods, truly understanding the challenges of past Anti-Crime Units and providing additional training, supervision, analytics and risk monitoring to ensure these enhanced teams work with communities.”
A plainclothes unit is crucial in investigating and reducing gun-related crime, National Police Association spokeswoman Betsy Brantner-Smith, a retired police sergeant, explained to Fox News Digital, because, generally speaking, she’s found that people who are illegally possessing a firearm for nefarious reasons are not going to be overt about their activity when they see a uniformed police officer in a marked patrol car. “
Comment: Well, pilgrim turcopoles, this fellow seems to be only slightly less worried about his image in “the community” than Bragg, the Manhattan DA. So, we will see if he has the cojones needed for this. pl
https://www.foxnews.com/us/nyc-mayor-eric-adams-reinstates-plainclothes-anti-gun-unit
“Listening tours”
So he’ll feel your pain like slick Willy and not arrest anyone committing crimes because noticing which races are disproportionately committing crimes violates the narrative that “The View” audience and assorted leftists adhere too.
The lack of money is the root of all evil. – Mark Twain.
Harlem lacks a lot of it. If the Public safety Team is handing out cash sure.
Listening tours? Whatever. The important part is to come down hard on the illegal guns and those involved in trafficking them. Be on them. There will be plenty of howling, but this should be done with gusto and determination.
TTG,
The guns are not walking, hitchhiking, taking trains, etc. to NYC on their own; nor are they prowling the streets and randomly aiming and discharging themselves, despite what people like Alec Baldwin want us to believe they are capable of.
It’s “coming down hard” on “those involved in trafficking them” that presents the political conundrum because those people tend to be sacred cows of the progressives; i.e. minority ethnicity criminals. How hard can you come down on them when laws and sentencing are being neutered to save on government budgets and to win minority and white progressive votes (see “equity”, “systemic racist systems”, etc)? What is he going to do? Throw some black and Hispanic gun smugglers into prison for long sentences? I don’t think so.
Progs created this problem with their twisted marxist outlooks and obviously idiotic policies. They will now reap the karmic whirlwind by living and dying in the dangerous hellholes that they created. And they won’t learn a damn thing from the experience.
Eric Newhill,
“The guns are not walking, hitchhiking, taking trains, etc. to NYC on their own.”
OK, you got me. Of course I meant going after those who possess and use illegal guns as well as traffic in them. Even possessing an unloaded pistol is a felony in NYC. Now Adams just has to convince the DA to prosecute those committing these particular felonies. As far as the guns themselves, seizing and destroying will suffice.
Those using guns are no one’s sacred cows, at least as shown on DC news. There’s plenty of minority families who want those hoodlums and murderers off the streets. I don’t imagine it would be any different in NYC.
TTG
But what the political leaders of the minorities actually doing about it?
Sending in the proposed, but not yet funded, social workers?
pl,
There’s a lot of squawking from the DC mayor, politicians and MPD leaders, but I’ve heard of no effective action. The “defund the police” talk has led to nothing. MPD failed to spend 3 million out of a 550 million budget last year.
TTG,
What about the knifings and people being pushed onto the tracks and hit by trains? The problem is with a subset of people and policies and incentives. Guns won’t go away anymore than booze did during prohibition. I know that’s a cliche thing to say, but it happens to be the truth.
Yes, NYC has the most restrictive gun policies in the country, maybe even in the western world. It is a mandatory minimum of three and a half years for having a handgun without a license in the entire state of NY and obtaining a license in NYC is just about impossible and only a little easier in NY outside of NYC. Having recently left the blighted place, I know all about it (happily reunited and enjoying quality time with my pistols, shotguns and rifles now that I am back in AZ permanently). I’m not even sure of the status of the gun licensing laws at this point. Are they enforced now?
At the same time, there’s now no bail and often no prosecution for a litany of crimes in NYC; basically, a decriminalization of just about everything that street thugs like to do on a daily basis. There is a burgeoning lawlessness that is encouraged by the politicians and justice system. This is part of an ideological movement, though I suspect at risk state budgets play a role in the goofy decision making as well. These street criminals aren’t exactly the types to be concerned with long term consequences. They are impulsive and think only about the moment or, maybe, the next few days.
The vast majority of the murderers and other violent criminals are minorities. Sorry, but that is a fact. Yes, their victims tend to also be minorities; just like in Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore and most other democrat controlled cities. Yes, many minorities who are hard working – or at least not criminally inclined – would like someone to so something to stop their victimization. The democrats in charge don’t care, though. They are ideologically allied with BLM and other radical groups; or are afraid of them. More and tougher policing means more blacks going to prison (= more “inequity) and more unpleasant interactions between police and George Floyd types. Black men will be shot; some Hispanics too. There will be riots. There will be bad press, calls for resignations. In my more conspiracy theorist leaning moments, I imagine that curtailing crime would lead to decreased pay-offs from drug dealers and the Soros/Chinese/Russian plan to weaken and destabilize the US set back; something the marxists want to avoid.
The democrats drew a monster on the wall and now that monster has taken on a life of its own and turned on its creator. Again, this new guy isn’t going to diddly about it and, even if he wanted to, the rest of the officials would thwart him as fast and hard as the democrats went after Trump.
I want to add that on top of all of that, part of this monster they created is that the democrats propagated the message that the police are the enemy and are genociding blacks.
Now the minorities are going to trust and support policing?
Near instant Karma, man
I agree. He should arrest the guns and send the to jail. And due it fast, furiously fast.
Dinkins v. 2.0? Time will tell. But there may not be much of that to play around with, Mr. Mayor, so better get a move on; otherwise you could have an East Coast version of Chicongo hanging around your neck in all its putrescent glory.
“Listening tours”??
Does everything have to be feminized to appeal to the liberal sensibility?
Sheesh
One by one, the liberal cities are abandoning their failed plan to defund the police, a strategy so stupid and catastrophic, that party members dare not mention its name. (for fear of not being reelected)
And have you looked at Black Lives Matter public approval rating lately?
Falling like a stone, now that people have finally realized that they are not a civil rights organization, not a social justice organization, not even a black power organization.
They are Marxist revolutionaries that hate private enterprise, personal freedom and our system of government.
I’m glad to see people are finally waking up.
Any honest, realistic person who lives in a major US city with a significant minority population knows, or should know, the near-futile challenge of separating illegal handguns from that particular group. Unfortunately it goes with the territory, and until the courts start imposing maximum penalties and sentences upon those who get caught (a huge challenge itself, especially as law enforcement reluctance increases) committing crimes with weapons, nothing much will change. I don’t know the statistics but I bet decriminalizing marijuana has done little to curb drug dealers’ turf wars and retribution. Where I live, it seems cops no longer even enforce traffic violations.