“Gun violence is a public health crisis that continues to threaten every corner of the city.” The new mayor of New York, Eric Adams, promised Monday to rid the megalopolis of firearms, after a series of violence in recent days.
“Public safety is my administration’s top priority and that’s why we’re going to get guns off our streets, protect our people, and create a safe, prosperous, and just city for all New Yorkers,” he said. this elected representative of the right wing of the Democratic Party. “We are not going to abandon our city to the violence of a few.”
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One of the key measures of his plan is the re-establishment of plainclothes police patrols, ‘anti-crime units’ renamed ‘anti-gun units’ which were cut in 2020 after the death of the African American George Floyd, killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. These police officers were feared, when Michael Bloomberg was mayor (2002-2013), for their controversial searches of young Blacks and Hispanics suspected of carrying firearms.
Resurgence of violent miscellaneous events
Arrived at the town hall on January 1 on a program to fight against insecurity and socio-economic inequalities, the former police officer Eric Adams is confronted with an upsurge in various violent incidents. On Friday, a 22-year-old New York City Police (NYPD) officer was killed and another seriously injured in an exchange of gunfire at an apartment in Harlem, northern Manhattan.
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A week earlier in the same neighborhood, a 19-year-old Puerto Rican was shot dead by a robber in a fast food restaurant. On January 15, a 40-year-old Asian American woman was killed by a mentally ill homeless man who pushed her onto a subway track as the train pulled into the Times Square station. This murder, without a weapon, marked the spirits, as much as the injuries inflicted on an 11-month-old girl hit by a stray bullet in the Bronx, while she was in the car with her mother.
Gun violence in New York – disproportionate to what it was 30 years ago – increased slightly in 2021 (+4.3% compared to 2020, itself up on 2019) in particular due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
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