Props to the NYPD, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Mayor Eric Adams: Shootings so far this year plunged to the lowest level on record.
Don’t let anyone get away with pretending this just happened: It was the result of Adams’ pro-police policies and Tisch’s first-rate leadership.
Indeed, shooting victims peaked at over 1,000 for the first seven months of 2021 under Mayor Bill de Blasio, after he shifted over $1 billion away from the NYPD and declined to to hire more cops.
With City Hall supporting New York’s Finest, the number of victims has more than halved.
Total shooting incidents, which exploded during the pandemic and amid de Blasio’s retreat from proper policing, have also more than halved.
Overall crime rates are now steadily dropping, too.
Yes, Adams took far longer than he should’ve to get his public-safety leadership team straight, but it’s clear that bringing in Tisch has fully turned the tide.
Heck, overall crime can and should keep going down: Brooklyn is joining Manhattan and The Bronx with full coverage of quality-of-life cops to deal with the daily concerns of New Yorkers; Queens and Staten Island will follow later this month.
The initiative has lowered emergency response times by over 45 minutes and effectively tackled disorder like abandoned vehicles, homeless encampments and open drug use on city streets.
But the tide can readily turn back if Zohran Mamdani wins in November; even if he’s abandoning his years of anti-cop, anti-policing, anti-NYPD rhetoric, he’s still pushing extremist policies well to the left of de Blasio’s.
The ultraprogressive Mamdani, who once mocked a crying officer, doesn’t want to expand the force and plans to axe the elite task force that responded to the deadly Midtown attack.
He’s a longtime ally of the city’s most devoted cop-bashers, such as Queens Councilwoman Tiffany Caban; his entire Democratic Socialist crew is deeply committed to a poisonously foolish approach to policing, disorder and crime.
For Mamdani and his movement, the great tragedy is that cops are arresting people again.
Hand him the keys of Gracie Mansion, and he’ll put a stop to that.