Shootings in the Big Apple dropped by 35 percent while gun busts were significantly up last month compared to last year, NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said Thursday.
Murders also decreased nearly 50 percent compared to the same time period in 2020, the city’s top cop said at a press conference with Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“This is now two months in a row — and I take a lot of positive in that,” the commissioner said. “Two months in a row that were driving the violence down in New York City.”
According to the new NYPD statistics, there were 29 murders in the city last month, compared to 57 the same month last year — a 49-percent drop.
Shootings were also down to 158 incidents last month from 243 in July 2020, a 35 percent dip.
The July shooting numbers for the two years still represented a spike over the 2019 total, when cops reported 88 separate instances of gunplay. The number of murders for the month in 2019 was 34, slightly higher than this year.
“We’ve seen progress, but not enough progress,” de Blasio said, who has repeatedly blamed the crime spike seen this year on a “perfect storm” caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We need the court system back 100 percent full strength,” he said. “We need the court system to fully recreate where we were before the pandemic because that means consequences for people who do the wrong thing.”
He said cops “deserve a lot of praise and appreciation.”
Both Hizzoner and Shea credited the dip in crime in July, in part, to recent gang busts.
“The gang takedowns mean taking a lot of bad guys off the streets at the same time, a lot of shooters off the streets at the same time,” de Blasio said. “This is crucial.”
Meanwhile, cops took another bite out of Big Apple crime on Thursday by taking out 28 reputed members of warring gangs in Queens.
Queens prosecutors announced the indictment of the gangbangers from the Queensbridge and Ravenswood public housing projects, charging them with murder, attempted murder, attempted assault and gun possession.
“Gang warfare will not become the norm in Queens County,” District Attorney Melinda Katz said in a statement. “As alleged, these defendants have been drivers of gun violence, sometimes in broad daylight, and often with innocent bystanders nearby in Long Island City and Astoria over the past few years.”
The suspects are allegedly members of three rival gangs — Jet Blue, the Makk Ballers, and Money the Motivation/Obligated, prosecutors said.
Police and the DA’s office have been investigating the gangs since 2018.
Additional reporting by Sean Conlon