The New York Police Department used National Gun Violence Awareness Day to announce a milestone it described as a sign of real progress, saying it has taken more than 2,000 guns off the streets so far this year. News 12 carried the announcement, in which officials framed every weapon recovered as a measure of harm prevented and a shooting that may never happen.
Alongside that figure, the department pointed to a striking set of crime statistics. Police said that through the first five months of this year, New York City has recorded the fewest murders, the fewest shooting incidents and the fewest shooting victims in its recorded history, with May alone seeing the fewest shooting incidents and victims of any May on record.
Officials were keen to stress where those reductions were being felt. In public housing, they said, the first five months of the year saw the lowest number of shooting incidents, shooting victims, murders and robberies ever recorded, improvements that the department said were landing in the communities and on the blocks that have historically endured the most gun violence.
The NYPD credited what it called a precision policing strategy, putting officers where they are needed most and targeting the gangs and crews that drive violent crime while recovering illegal firearms. Police argued that enforcement only becomes lasting public safety when it is matched by strong cases, strong prosecutions and real accountability in the courts.
To underline the point, the announcement was joined by district attorneys from across the city, including Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, along with federal and Staten Island prosecutors who have worked the gun cases.
Several investigations were singled out. In Queens, a 13-month undercover operation that concluded in April took 38 firearms out of circulation, among them ghost guns, a Tec-9 and a conversion device capable of turning a handgun into a fully automatic weapon. In Manhattan, a conspiracy case tied defendants to nine separate shootings over nearly a year, including violence around Harlem public housing.
Other cases reached into Brooklyn and the Bronx. Police said a 13-month investigation with the Brooklyn district attorney closed 16 separate shooting cases last month and ended a spree of gang retaliation in Coney Island that left seven people shot, one of them killed and four innocent bystanders struck, including one left paralyzed. In the Bronx, detectives indicted three people in March over the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old and the wounding of a 13-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy near a busy intersection.