Violence spiked in New York City over the Fourth of July weekend with 30 shootings and 10 homicides on Sunday alone. Between Friday, July 3, and Monday, July 6, the five boroughs of New York City saw 44 shootings with 63 victims, according to New York Police Department data.
Compare this to the same time last year when there were 16 shootings over the holiday weekend with 21 victims, NY1 reported.
This drastic increase in violence came as protesters demand the defunding of police across the U.S. in wake of police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and others.
This amount of gun violence hasn’t been seen in NYC for a quarter century, The New York Times reported. The city experienced 125 shootings in the first three weeks of June, more than double the number recorded over the same period last year, police data revealed.
The shootings took place in a variety of places — from barbeques to a teenager being shot at her college graduation party to a clothing designer who was washing his car when he was fired upon. Despite this, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city sent more officers into the streets. He said he will not back down from efforts to reform the police department.
“We’re not going back to the bad old days when there was so much violence in the city,” the mayor said at a news conference, “nor are we going back to the bad old days where policing was done the wrong way and, in too many cases, police and community could never connect and find that mutual respect.”
NYC is not alone in its violent surge. There was an increase in shootings in other cities across the country such as Chicago, Minneapolis and Atlanta.
More than 100 people were shot over the weekend in Chicago — the most in a single weekend since 2012 — and 14 died, NYT reported. In Minneapolis, police said that 111 people were shot in the four weeks since the death of George Floyd.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.
So what caused the increase in shootings nationwide? Some speculate it was the first major holiday since cities have lifted covid-19 restrictions. People who have been quarantined for months were now able to be outside in social gatherings and some went crazy.
Others in New York say the rise in gun violence is due to a bail law enacted this year which limited judges’ ability to detain people in jail before trial if they had been arrested on certain charges. Add to this the release of thousands of people from jail and prison to help decrease the spread of coronavirus.
