Two black community leaders on Monday urged the New York City Police Department to bring back the recently disbanded Anti-Crime Unit after the fatal shooting of a 1-year-old baby.
Davell Gardner Jr. was killed at a cookout on Sunday in a Brooklyn park, becoming one of the latest casualties in a summer of rising gun violence.
- This weekend alone, there were 28 shooting incidents and 35 victims across the city’s five boroughs.
Eric Adams, the borough president, blamed the shooting on the shutdown last month of the Anti-Crime Unit as a concession to calls to defund the department.
- The citywide network of undercover officers had focused on confiscating illegal guns and combating local crime sprees.
“I think that a total elimination is something we need to reevaluate,” said Adams, a Democrat. “Right now, bad guys are saying if you don’t see a blue and white you can do whatever you want.”
Tony Herbert, a prominent community activist, similarly faulted the government’s decision to reduce policing.
“The guns keep going off and now we have a 1-year-old and the blood is on the hands of the mayor and the state Legislature,” said Herbert, who heads the New York Multi-Cultural Restaurant & Nightlife Chamber of Commerce.
Other black New Yorkers have voiced opposition to abolishing the police, as Black Lives Matters protesters nationwide have demanded in recent weeks.
- In Minneapolis, prominent black leaders have condemned the City Council’s recent moves toward dismantling the police department.
- A June Monmouth poll found 72 percent of black Americans are either satisfied or very satisfied with their local police.
In addition to closing the Anti-Crime Unit, New York City officials last month agreed in principle to cut about $1 billion from the police department’s budget.
- New York State banned chokeholds and repealed a law that kept police disciplinary records secret.
Police leaders opposed the moves, saying they would hurt the department’s ability to deter violent crime, especially with shootings on the rise.
- Some, including Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, have also pointed to recent criminal justice reforms, including a new bail law and other measures meant to reduce the jail population.
- Experts have said the increase in shootings is an annual summer trend that has been exacerbated by the pandemic.
Samantha Gardner, a grandmother of the baby who was shot dead, delivered a message to those responsible on Fox News on Monday.
“For the cowards that did this, you should be ashamed of yourself because everybody talks about Black Lives Matter. What about baby lives? What about teenager lives?” she said.
“You took an innocent child from [his] mother and father as well as the grandparents and I don’t think it’s fair.”
