Adams lays out plan to combat city’s rise in gun violence
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Mayor Eric Adams announced his administration's ‘Blueprint to End Gun Violence’ on Monday, Jan. 24, 2022. Photo by Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
By Jacob Kaye
Mayor Eric Adams announced the return of the NYPD’s plain clothes units, proposed reforms to the state’s criminal laws and a host of other initiatives and plans as part of his efforts to combat gun violence in New York City on Monday.
Following the shooting death of NYPD officer Jason Rivera on Friday and several other violent incidents that have occurred since Adams took office less than a month ago, the mayor said his new “Blueprint to End Gun Violence” would “remove guns from our streets, protect our communities, and create a safe, prosperous and just city.”
“We are going to turn our pain into purpose. We are going to unite and take action,” Adams said Monday. “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,” he added. “We are not going to go back to the bad old days. We are going to get trigger pullers off the streets and guns out of their hands.”
With shootings on the rise – there’s been a nearly 16 percent increase in shooting incidents in the past year, according to the NYPD – Adams’ public safety plan revolves around changes to policing, the courts and state law, specifically in regards to bail and the prosecution of youthful offenders. Rivera’s death, as well as a number of other high profile violent crimes, have shaped the first weeks of Adams’ administration, one that promised to make the city safer.
Adams said it was time to reexamine the state’s Raise the Age law, which passed in 2017 and made it so that 16- and 17-year-olds would be prosecuted as minors and not as adults.
Adams proposed reconsidering the legislation, noting that a number of gun violence perpetrators often pin the legal consequences on teens, who won’t receive as stiff a sentence. The mayor said that children are being used as “pawns,” and that in 2019, around 2.5 percent of kids under the age of 18 had possession of a firearm, a number that rose to 10 percent in 2021.
“If a 16- or 17-year-old is arrested on a gun charge, the NYPD should ask the individual where they got the gun from,” he said. “If the individual refuses to disclose that information, prosecutors should have the ability to charge the individual in Criminal Court, rather than Family Court.”
He also proposed making changes to the state’s bail laws. Though he’s advocated for rolling back recent reforms passed at the state level, he said Monday that he’d like New York judges to have the power to set bail based on a defendant’s perceived level of dangerousness, a proposal Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz has in the past been supportive of. New York is the only state in the country that doesn't allow judges to consider dangerousness as a reason for bail, which is only set to ensure a defendant returns to court.
Adams also proposed prioritizing gun cases in the court system, an initiative that has already begun in New York City.
In August 2021, Queens Supreme Court, Criminal Term Administrative Judge George Grasso began to spearhead the initiative, which aims to clear the backlog of top count gun charge cases throughout the five boroughs.
In November, three months into the program, Grasso told the Eagle the courts were already seeing results.
“We've put these gun cases up at the highest level of priority and we're seeing results,” Grasso said.
In August, there were around 1,800 backlogged top count gun cases inside New York City’s Criminal Courts. On Nov. 8, there were 1,290, a reduction of over 500 cases. Additionally, the courts processed over 760 new top count gun cases in that same period, according to the OCA.
Mayor Eric Adams attends a vigil for the two NYPD officers who were shot, one fatally, Friday night, outside the 32nd Precinct in Harlem on Saturday, Jan. 22, 2022. Photo by Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
Adams’ also called on the city’s five district attorneys to meet once a week with the police commissioner to discuss issues and work together to chart a path forward. He also asked the five DAs to triage gun charges to expedite the process.
A spokesperson for Katz said the Queens district attorney has made gun violence a top priority since taking office and would continue to do so.
“Since District Attorney Katz took office in January 2020, working with the NYPD to thwart gun violence has been and continues to be one of her top priorities, as evidenced by the number of takedowns and buybacks in Queens and her sharp focus on ghost guns,” the spokesperson said. “We have also worked closely with the Office of Court Administration to prioritize and expedite gun cases. DA Katz is ready to participate in any meeting the Mayor proposes to strategize and enhance coordination of a comprehensive response to gun violence.”
Also in the courts, Adams proposed changing social distancing rules from 6 to 3 feet within the courthouse to allow for more space to conduct jury trials.
“We must immediately look at the things that are holding us up including changing the current social distancing requirements,” Adams said. “Already in our public schools, we have moved from a 6-foot rule to a 3-foot rule. If it’s good enough for our children, it should be good enough for all of us.”
“The current rules are causing us to use two courtrooms for one trial,” he added. “Changing these rules would allow juries to sit together in one courtroom and expand court capacity.”
Much like the rest of New York City, the courts saw a massive spike in COVID-19 cases during the final weeks of December and the early weeks of January.
Twenty-two felony trials were scheduled for the week before the court’s holiday break in December and “probably all” were delayed due to COVID-19, according to an Office of Court Administration spokesperson.
However, the OCA said in a statement that it was in favor of the mayor’s plan announced Monday.
The Mayor’s call to arms is quite clear and we are ready to collaborate and respond to this seminal moment,” said Lucian Chalfen, the OCA’s spokesperson. “We are in agreement with the Mayor and in discussions with the state health department to reduce the social distancing from 6 to 3 feet that would greatly improve courtroom trial capacity.”
“Also we will be asking New York City’s District Attorneys what their plans are with the mayor’s call to triage gun cases which we will then respond to accordingly,” Chalfen added.
In calling for the courts to increase capacity, Adams specifically called out “lawyers, our legal aids, our defenders.”
“I strongly encourage all of us to get back to work,” Adams said.
Queens Defenders Executive Lori Zeno said she took exception to the categorization that public defense attorneys haven’t been at work throughout the pandemic.
“One thing that I would really like is for all of these politicians, when they get on and make their claims – whether it's OCA, whether it's the mayor, City Council, whoever it is – it would really be nice if they were accurate,” Zeno said. “We've been at work since 2020 – day, night, weekends – we have appeared on all arraignments. We handled every case that came through.”
Adams also announced that the NYPD’s controversial anti-crime unit would be returning to the streets in the coming weeks. The unit, which amounted for a disproportionate number of police killings, was disbanded in 2020 following racial justice protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd.
Queens City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán, whose campaign for office revolved around public safety and criminal justice reform, said Adams’ plan was “cause for deep concern.” Though she praised the mayor for promising to boost crime prevention strategies, including expanding the Crisis Management System, Cabán said the return of the plainclothes unit and changes to bail reform would have negative consequences.
“The truth is, rather than putting these preventive measures at the core of our city’s approach, the plan treats them as peripheral supplements to a program built on a foundation of surveillance and punishment, which are ineffective and dangerous,” Cabán said.
