Admin
With the press reporting on a brand new “gun czar,” Mayor Eric Adams introduced to nice fanfare Thursday that A.T Mitchell will co-chair a brand new Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. But Mitchell instantly bought a key level incorrect, telling the excited crowd, “We’ve been dealing with this issue for far too long, and we’ve been using the same tactics over and over again and getting the same results.”
No, we haven’t been utilizing the identical techniques over and over. In truth, Adams has introduced again techniques that have gotten the identical optimistic outcomes as different mayors earlier than Bill de Blasio: specifically, robust and relentless policing.
And it’s bringing outcomes: Not simply report ranges of weapons off the streets, however taking pictures incidents down 39.5% (12 months over 12 months) as of May 29. Better but, homicides are down 9% up to now this 12 months.
Meanwhile, Mitchell is not any “czar”: He’s co-chair with a deputy mayor of a bunch stuffed with company heads that can guarantee different businesses do their job on crime. Adams’ favourite instance: having Sanitation do extra rubbish assortment in areas the place perps routinely stash weapons within the trash.
Mitchell’s specific finish of it’s to coordinate with varied “violence interrupter” teams and different outdoors events in order that they work town’s methods. Adams and lots of of his supporters are large followers of this social work, and we’re wonderful with it as an add-on effort to the NYPD’s very important work.
No, we’re not loopy about Mitchell’s problematic historical past. In 2019, the Department of Investigation flagged his mentoring and neighborhood outreach group Man Up! for a bunch of economic irregularities, together with using a number of members of his household and a few obvious diversion of the nonprofit’s funds to Mitchell’s private accounts.
But because the mayor notes, Man Up! addressed these points on the time, and Mitchell will function an unpaid volunteer.
And we endorsed Eric Adams for mayor above all else as a result of he was saying all the proper issues on crime, not as a result of we thought he was a closet small-government Republican. We all the time knew we’d wince at a few of his selections, and a number of the rhetoric from his camp.
The mayor is beginning to ship on crime, and it’s the outcomes that rely, not the noise.
