Community Corner

NYC Shootings Up As City Grapples With Gun Violence

Shootings have increased 5 percent so far this year despite a slight drop during a sometimes violent July, new NYPD statistics show.

A police officer walks by yellow evidence markers at a playground in Brownsville on July 28, 2019, after a shooting killed one person and injured 11 others.
A police officer walks by yellow evidence markers at a playground in Brownsville on July 28, 2019, after a shooting killed one person and injured 11 others. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

NEW YORK — Efforts to grapple with gun violence in New York City and across the nation come amid an increase in shootings in the five boroughs, new police statistics show.

The city had seen 448 shooting incidents in 2019 by the end of July, 5.2 percent more than the 426 logged in the same period last year, according to NYPD figures released Tuesday.

The overall spike comes despite a slight drop in gunplay during a sometimes violent July, the data show. Last month saw two fewer shootings but more murders, rapes, robberies, felony assaults and auto thefts than in July 2018, the NYPD says.

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The new statistics come on the heels of mass shootings in Brownsville and Crown Heights that killed one person and injured more than a dozen, as well as the weekend massacres in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio that left 31 dead within 24 hours.

Gang violence is driving up the numbers, as roughly half the city's shootings are gang- and crew-related, NYPD officials said. The Bronx's 48th precinct, for instance, saw five gang-related shootings last month after recording no shootings in July 2018, Chief of Crime Control Strategies Lori Pollock said.

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The NYPD noted that the seven most serious crimes — murder, rape, robbery, burglary, felony assault, grand larceny and auto theft — are down about 4 percent overall so far this year. Cops aimed to continue their efforts to drive down crime and strengthen community ties at several events marking the National Night Out Against Crime Tuesday, the police department said.

"To sustain record-low levels of crime in New York City, and to further reduce violence, we must all come together — it is a shared responsibility," Police Commissioner James O'Neill said.

The recent rise in shootings seems to have slowed last month — the NYPD recorded 87 shooting incidents, down from 89 last July. But the decrease was not enough to overcome the 7.1 percent shooting jump in the first six months of the year, which was concentrated in Brooklyn and Queens, according to amNewYork.

Police have sought to crack down on the dangerous weapons — gun arrests rose nearly 22 percent from last year to 331 in July, marking the "fifth consecutive month that we have made more gun arrests than the previous month," Pollock said.

Among last month's incidents was the July 27 shooting at an annual community festival in Brownsville where one person was killed and 11 others were injured. Half of the murders and shootings in the neighborhood's 73rd Precinct are gang-related, O'Neill recently said on Twitter.

Locals and elected officials gathered in the neighborhood last week to demand the city fund anti-violence programs rather than rely on policing alone. Cops are still looking for the culprits of the shooting and another in Crown Heights that wounded four people early Monday morning.

Other serious crimes have seen the opposite trend as shootings, rising last month while falling for the year overall.

The city saw 31 murders in July, up from 28 in the same month last year, police statistics show. But the NYPD recorded 13 fewer killings in the first seven months of 2019 than in the same period in 2018.

Rapes similarly jumped to 162 last month from 147 in July 2018 despite a 0.6 percent decrease year-to-date, police figures show. Nearly 90 percent of the rapes reported last month have happened this year while just 17 occurred in previous years, according to the NYPD.


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