On Wednesday, school safety agents recovered two handguns from a 15-year-old student in Queens. Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams pointed to the incident as an example of what’s gone wrong in the city.
“This is potentially 26 rounds of a child carrying it in his backpack, alright? His backpack,” the mayor told reporters. “So everyone laughed at Eric when he said check the backpacks of your students. There was a lot of mockery around it. But this is what’s happening.”
The city saw more high-profile crimes this week: An 11-year-old girl was shot and killed in the Bronx Monday. Wednesday night on Staten Island, an EMT was shot in an ambulance by the patient he was treating.
Adams on Thursday again defended the work of the NYPD in seizing guns, and highlighted the potential of new technology, like gun sensors currently being tested at City Hall.
And he made a plea to parents. “I’m asking today for every parent in this city to sit down with their child and talk about gun violence,” Adams said. “This is why I’m calling for new technology to detect guns.”
The mayor raised some eyebrows with his comments earlier Thursday in a TV interview. “In my professional career,” he said, “I have never witnessed crime at this level.”
Crime is on the rise, but nowhere near the highs of the 1990s, when Adams was an NYPD officer. He later seemed to walk back the comment.
“I didn’t say crime is higher than it’s ever been,” he told reporters, insisting he was instead referring to the proliferation of guns. “I have never seen anything like this – the over availabilities of guns, the easy use of guns and the comfort that people have in carrying guns.”
