New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday that he is fulfilling a campaign promise and bringing back a new version of the once-controversial plainclothes anti-gun unit, as part of his blueprint to end gun violence.
The New York Police Department is expected to launch the new units, renamed neighborhood safety teams, within the next three weeks to enhance uniformed public safety teams. Hundreds of candidates have been identified. The plainclothes units will focus on the 30 precincts where 80% of violence occurs.
It’s an issue Adams, a former NYPD sergeant, campaigned on after shootings and violent crime spiked in the Big Apple when the original units were disbanded in 2020 under his predecessor Bill de Blasio.
“Let me just say that New York City has the third-strictest gun laws in the United States. Let’s use those gun laws to prosecute,” she said. “Anyone who uses a firearm in the commission of a violent felony, whether it’s threatening someone during an armed robbery, during a carjacking, what you know during a domestic dispute, they need to be charged and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And while that process is playing out from their arrest to their trial to their conviction, they need to be incarcerated. We encourage the mayor to speak honestly with people about that and encourage bipartisan support for all of that.”
Danielle Wallace is a breaking news and politics reporter at Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to danielle.wallace@fox.com and on X: @danimwallace.
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