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More than a quarter of all Big Apple shootings take place in just six harried NYPD precincts — all of them in the Bronx and Brooklyn, according to a citywide performance report released this week.
The Mayor’s Management Report highlights the city’s most bullet-riddled neighborhoods — covering areas including Mott Haven, Morrisania and Woodlawn in the Bronx, and Brooklyn’s Brownsville, East New York and Cypress Hill — where about 27% of shootings take place.
“I am tired of it. Sometimes you can’t even sleep because of the shootings,” said Ralph Campbell, 59, who has lived in his Brownsville neighborhood for 45 years.
“You are in your kitchen, you get shot. It’s unsafe,” he told The Post Wednesday.
Police and law enforcement experts blamed surging post-pandemic crime and lenient state laws that make it harder to keep repeat offenders behind bars for the gun violence paralyzing those areas.
“These are historically high-crime precincts,” explained Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and now a professor at John Jay College.
“You’ve kind of come to the point where you’re not going to have the personnel to do these things,” he said.
“If they can’t get Albany on board to change some of these ridiculous laws they’ve created and you can’t get prosecutors on board to do their job, then all of this will collapse under its own weight.”
Cops are trying to stem the violence by beefing up manpower at the NYPD’s Firearms Suppression Division, which now has 262 uniformed officers, and by deploying new anti-gun units dubbed Neighborhood Safety Teams.
The city’s blueprint to end gun violence took more than 6,600 guns off the street through October, according to the report put out by Mayor Eric Adams’ office.
Over the first four months of the city’s fiscal year, which began on July 1, shootings are down 16% and gun arrests are up 140%, the report said.
But that’s been little consolation for New Yorkers caught in the crossfire.
“It’s out of control,” 22-year-old medical writer and Bronx resident Jacqueline Nduro told The Post Wednesday
“I feel as if it’s not going to get better. This is as good as it gets. The only solution is to move out.”
Pablo Moreta, manager of Barbara Deli Food within the boundaries of the 44th Precinct in the Bronx, said he’s actually heard the gunfire from his store.
“When we call the police they don’t come. Two, three hours later they call, ‘Everything okay?’ but they don’t come,” Moreta, 28, said.
“If it doesn’t get better more and more innocent people are going to die. It’s not good for the community. I want to see it get better,” he said. “I can’t move. I can’t close the store. We have to say and work. We have families.”
According to the report, three of the worst precincts for gunplay last year were the 73rd and 75th in Brooklyn and the 40th Precinct in the Bronx. Two of those remained high on the list despite drops in shootings last year over 2021.
The 73rd Precinct recorded 63 shootings in 2022, a 20.3% decrease over the 79 incidents the prior year, while the 40th Precinct in the Bronx had 52 last year after 63 in 2021.
Meanwhile, Brooklyn’s 75th Precinct — the only stationhouse on the list that saw a leap in shootings year-to-year — reported 79 incidents in 2022, up 11.3% over the 2021 figure of 71.
Among the shootings that plagued those communities last year are:
- The broad daylight shooting death on May 18 of 20-year-old Rockland County resident Jefferson Hernandez, who was shot in the head in Mott Haven after he showed up to buy a motorcycle he found listed on Facebook Marketplace.
- Jason Perez, 17, was shot and killed after he was set upon by a gang of teens outside a bodega in the Highbridge section of the Bronx on May 10. Police later charged a 15-year-old boy in the fatal shooting.
- The April 8 fatal shooting of Angellyh Yambo, 16, who was gunned down a block from her school, Mott Haven Village Preparatory High School by a stray bullet.
One veteran Brooklyn cop said the gunmen are typically “repeat offenders.”
“That’s really what it comes down to,” he said. “No one’s afraid of that system. No one’s getting locked up. It’s the same people you know.
“I don’t care how you grew up,” he said. “There’s no care for life. They don’t really care. Nothing fazed them. Until you start putting people in jail, it’s going to be the same. That’s really what it comes down to right now. No one is afraid of the system.”
Additional reporting by Amanda Woods and Craig McCarthy
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