City to put half a billion dollars toward gun violence prevention
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Mayor Eric Adams was joined by several of the city’s district attorneys, the NYPD commissioner, top members of his administration, Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James to announce nearly $500 million in funding for gun violence prevention programming. Photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
By Jacob Kaye
Top elected officials from across the city and state gathered in City Hall on Monday to announce that they were pouring nearly half a billion dollars into additional gun violence prevention measures.
Mayor Eric Adams, Governor Kathy Hochul, State Attorney General Letitia James, several of the city’s district attorneys, the city’s police commissioner, and dozens of top officials within the Adams administration celebrated on Monday the investment into youth, employment, housing, entrepreneurship, mental health and other social programs, all of which aim to lower instances of shootings in the city.
According to the mayor, the over $485 million in funding will be doled out based on the findings of the Adams administration’s Gun Violence Task Force, which issued an approximately 50-page report on Monday titled “A Blueprint for Community Safety.” The report outlines a little over a year of work for the task force and includes its findings and recommendations about how gun violence is and should be addressed by the city.
“Our time has arrived and now we have to get something done,” the mayor said from the steps of City Hall. “There's a small window of opportunity to bring the level of aggressiveness that we need – intervention and prevention.”
Adams said that the city has thus far been focused on intervening in its gun violence problem – the mayor highlighted the work of the both violence interrupters and the NYPD while celebrating the city’s 27 percent drop in shootings and 11 percent drop in murders when compared to last year.
Now, the mayor said, it’s time to shift the city’s eyes toward gun violence prevention.
“If you see high gun violence, you're also going to see high unemployment, you're going to see dropout rates high, you're going to see mental health issues high,” Adams said. “We're going to activate every level of city government, because it's a holistic approach and we're going to prioritize prevention-based approaches to public safety.”
“The way to deal with these issues is to approach it in a holistic way,” he added.
The city plans to put a little more than $118 million toward programs for young people, including mentorship opportunities and other support programs, all of which will be aimed at preventing them from becoming involved in gun violence.
An additional $118.5 million will go toward employment and entrepreneurship programs for young people and justice-involved New Yorkers, and around $106 million will go toward funding mental health resources for teens and young adults, as well as those diagnosed with mental illness.
Adams said nearly $68 million would be invested in programs that help connect New Yorkers with public benefits and that assist justice-involved individuals and their families to navigate benefits programs.
Around $57 million will be put toward improving “existing housing conditions, especially for public housing residents, and increase access to transitional, supportive, and permanent housing units,” according to City Hall.
The city will also pour $8.64 million into public spaces, parks, playgrounds and community centers, and $2.6 million into police programs aimed at establishing positive relationships with the public.
Lastly, Adams said that an additional $1.5 million will go toward the city’s evaluation of its gun violence prevention strategies.
The mayor did not specify how the money will be spent, and which groups will be tapped to administer the various programs. However, City Hall said that $6 million, or about 1.2 percent of the overall investment, will come from the state.
Monday’s announcement was the latest effort made by both Adams and Hochul to tackle gun violence. Shortly after Adams took office in 2022, he announced his “Blueprint to End Gun Violence,” which was also championed by the governor and included recommended changes to the state’s bail and discovery laws that Hochul later pushed for.
On Monday, Hochul said that the newly-announced funding was another example of how she and Adams have bucked the trend of fueling an acrimonious relationship between the mayor of the city and the governor of the state.
“This is what a strong, healthy, productive relationship between the State of New York and the City of New York looks like, if you’ve not seen it much,” Hochul said. “People are united together and have a common cause – to eradicate crime, and violence and pain from communities.”
Hochul also pointed to funds allocated in the state’s budget that this year will go toward district attorneys’ and public defense offices, both of which have struggled to keep up with the demands of the state’s recently changed discovery laws.
“We have some backlogs in our courts – it happened before but really was exacerbated by the pandemic when so many trials never happened,” the governor said. “As a result, you have two scenarios. One, is that people are languishing in Rikers, waiting for their day in court because the system is so backlogged and jammed up and that is not justice. But also we have people who are still on the streets, who need their day in court, so if necessary and if justice demands they end up behind bars.”
In the state’s budget passed earlier this year, Hochul and lawmakers sent $170 million each to DA’s offices and public defense firms.
Top officials in state and city government announced new gun violence prevention measures from City Hall on Monday, July 31, 2023. Photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
The Gun Violence Task Force’s report, which recommended many of the investments announced on Monday, found that gun violence in the city is mostly concentrated within 30 precincts across the five boroughs.
Six of those precincts, all of which are either in the Bronx or Brooklyn, account for 39 percent of confirmed shots citywide, the report found.
According to the task force, the areas with the highest levels of gun violence also saw disproportionately high levels of rent burdened New Yorkers, unemployment, chronic school absenteeism and lower high school graduation rates.
Though Adams did not specify how the prevention strategy would be measured, he said that he would look to the 30 precincts that see the most gun violence incidents to gauge its successes.
"This living document is the beginning of a historic collaborative effort, that once implemented, will work to prevent gun violence from happening in our city,” said A.T. Mitchell, the co-chair of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force and the founder, Man Up, a violence interruption program. “It is my professional opinion that this plan will work because it was created by every facet of the city that is impacted by gun violence.”
“I cannot wait to see the effects of these seven strategies once applied into the first six precincts and eventually into the other top 30,” he added. “I will remain committed, as I have for over the past 30 years, to see our great city rise above the ashes of senseless gun violence."
