Firearm casualties: New York declares a disaster emergency

Antje Passenheim
ARD-Studio New York

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It’s not an isolated incident. Not that it happens in broad daylight. Not that it affects children. Not that bystanders get caught in the hail of bullets. Most of the shots were shot by gangs. They have been very popular since the corona pandemic. The prisons have washed many prisoners onto the streets and simply left them to their own devices. Thousands of jobs have been destroyed. In the South Bronx, life has become more desolate for young people, says ex-gangster Ronnie. “Everyone here goes to the front, to the war. For one side, a bloc, a quarter. Against the other side. That is territorial – like in Afghanistan or Kuwait or Pakistan.”

Violence in all parts of the city

It’s drugs, it’s poverty, it’s revenge or it’s anger. “Guns and violence are spreading in our neighborhood. That scares us,” says a woman in Brooklyn. The police register three quarters of all cases in areas where many Afro or Latin Americans live. But it hits all parts of the city.

In a fine steak house, guests get into the line of fire of two arguing men. In Times Square, a bullet hits a tourist in the back as he and his family walk across the busy square in broad daylight. Shortly before that, two women and a toddler had been struck by astray. New York Attorney General Letitia James has had enough: “I’m sick and tired of going to funerals. Sick and tired of holding mothers and fathers in front of open coffins.”

Gun laws in New York are the strictest in the country

James is mobilizing with Governor Andrew Cuomo. New York is the first US state to declare a state of emergency due to gun violence.

The New York gun laws are already among the strictest in the country. But many pistols and rifles easily get in via neighboring states. The state of emergency makes it possible to put money into their defenses. Cuomo plans the equivalent of 118 million dollars for this. The largest part should flow into new jobs. The other in church work.

Programs: Arms for Money

For years, the New York Police Department has offered programs in which owners can hand in their weapons for money. Whole arsenals fill up. Ex-gangster Ronnie, however, has joined the “Violence Interruptors”. The violence interrupters use their influence in their neighborhood, he says: “I was a nuisance. But now I’m doing something positive. When the boys see that I’m not on the corner with guns and drugs, but that I have a hand -Distribute disinfectants, information material and job advertisements, then you can see what we can do. ”

He was in prison for the first time when he was 17. His brother, stepbrother and grandfather were shot dead within 14 days. Ronnie’s cousin got it a few weeks ago. “To stand here and say: Somebody killed my cousin and I didn’t prevent it: It hurts. A lot. But you have to go on. Because I don’t want my cousin to die for nothing like this.” He wouldn’t be, says Ronnie, if he could get even one person to put down the gun himself.