President Joe Biden last week vowed to support Mayor Eric Adams in the mayor’s battle to stem gun violence in New York City.
In his first visit to the city since Adams’ inauguration, Biden praised the mayor’s recently released blueprint to end gun violence, called on Congress to provide $300 million in a grant program to hire more NYPD officers and an additional $200 million to help fund gun violence prevention programs. “I want to help every major city follow New York’s lead,” President Biden said at an anti-crime meeting at NYPD headquarters in Lower Manhattan, where he received a classified briefing from the department’s Joint Gun Violence Task Force.
Biden said his administration is about to engage in a crackdown on “ghost guns” – weapons that aren’t subject to background checks and do not have traceable serial numbers.
The Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) are sending teams of specialized prosecutors and investigators to every district in the country to help local law enforcement officers track down the ghost guns and lock up the people who use them to commit crimes, Biden said. “If you commit a crime with a ghost gun, not only your state and local prosecutors are going to come after you, but expect federal charges and federal prosecutors as well.”
Adams, who friends and associates refer to as “The Biden of Brooklyn,” said the President’s plans are right on target. “The President is here because he knows what the American people want: Justice, prosperity and safety – and they deserve it. He wants to end the gun violence in our city and in our country,” Adams said.
“Mr. President, Eric Adams is reporting for duty and ready to serve.”
Adams’ blueprint includes stipulations to beef-up the NYPD and create a modified version of the department’s highly successful Anti-Crime Units.
Adams said the revamped, renamed, plainclothes Neighborhood Safety Teams would roll out over the next few weeks at 30 New York City commands where 80% of the city’s violent crimes are reported – including the 114th Precinct in Astoria. More than 400 officers will be deployed to each of the new teams with a focus on gun violence, Adams said.
“The answer is not to defund the police,” Biden said. “It is to give you the tools, the training, the funding to be partners, to be the protectors communities need. We are not about defunding. We are about funding,” Biden said his administration deployed federal strike forces to New York and other big U.S. cities last year to track down traffickers of illegal firearms. “Those teams have confiscated thousands of weapons since then,” he said.
The president was joined at the meeting by Adams, Attorney General Merrick Garland, members of the state Congressional delegation, Gov. Kathy Hochul, NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, police officials and officers from the 32nd Precinct in Harlem.
Biden said he spoke with the young wife and family of Det. Jason Rivera and the family of Det. Wilbert Mora, who were ambushed and shot by a parolee with a high-powered weapon while answering a domestic call in Harlem on January 21. Det. Rivera died on the scene, Det. Mora died a few days later from a gunshot wound to the head.
The president offered condolences and told the families that Rivera and Mora were “the personifications of the who and what law enforcement ought to be,” a White House spokesperson said.
Following the meeting, Biden, Hochul and Adams visited Public School 111 in Long Island City to learn how community violence intervention programs help overcome rising crime and gun violence in the area.
The president spent most of his time at the public elementary school listening to Adams, the school principal, violence interrupter team members and leaders who described the purpose and progress of the program, while touting its accomplishments, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said—Liz Goff
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