Eric Adams, former police officer, announced the recovery of anti-religious units, removed after George Floyd’s death.
Le Monde with AFP
The new Mayor of New York, Eric Adams, promised Monday, January 24, to rid the megacity of firearms, notably by deploying police officers in the streets after a series of violence in recent days that cost the life to a young agent.
“Firearm violence is a public health crisis that continues to threaten every corner of the city”, launched this former African-American policeman at the announcement of a series of measures.
“Public security is the priority of my administration and that’s why we will remove firearms from our streets, protect our population and create a safe, prosperous and just for all New Yorkers” , said this elected of the right wing of the Democratic Party.
Arrived at the Town Hall on the 1st January on a program to combat insecurity and socio-economic inequalities, Mr. Adams faces a resurgence of violent facts.
Friday, a 22-year-old New York (NYPD) police officer was killed and another seriously injured in an exchange of gunshots in a Harlem apartment in Northern Manhattan.
A week earlier in the same neighborhood, a 19-year-old Portorian was slaughtered by a rusher in a fast food. On January 15, another woman, 40 years old, had been killed by a homeless with psychiatric disorders that had pushed him on a subway track at the time the train entered the Times Square station.
Anti-gun patrols
This murder, without a weapon, marked the spirits, as well as the wounds inflicted on a little girl of 11 months affected by a bullet lost in the bronx, while she was by car with her mother. “We are not going to abandon our city to the violence of a few,” said Adams.
One of the main measures of its plan is the restoration of patrols of civilian police, “anti-religious units” renamed “anti-gun units” that had been removed in 2020 after the death of the Afro- American George Floyd, killed by a policeman at Minneapolis.
These police officers were dreaded when Michael Bloomberg was mayor (2002-2013) for their controversial excavations of young and Hispanic young people suspected of wearing firearms.
Firearm violence in New York, without a common measure with what it was thirty years ago, increased slightly in 2021 (+ 4.3% compared to 2020, itself rising on 2019) in particular because of the pandemic of COVID-19.