Police examine a double capturing in Brooklyn on Sept. 4, 2025 that left a person lifeless and one other wounded.
Picture by Lloyd Mitchell
New Yorkers don’t want statistics to know what’s taking place on our streets. They see it. They hear it. They really feel it.
A 69-year-old girl shot and killed in broad daylight whereas strolling down the road. A mass capturing at a nightclub leaving three lifeless and 9 injured. Youngsters enjoying basketball however find yourself ducking gunfire. Within the final a number of weeks, we’ve seen a spate of shootings throughout Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx that when once more reminded us of the human value of gun violence. Lives stolen, households shattered, complete neighborhoods shaken.
Added to the chaos is a convergence strategy of willful ignorance from each the acute proper and excessive left. The intense proper likes to fake that weapons don’t have anything to do with gun violence, whereas the acute left likes to fake that crime actually isn’t a lot of an issue in any respect, and to the extent it’s, that police will not be a part of the answer.
We really dwell in unusual occasions. However as Fiorello LaGuardia, maybe the very best mayor New York has ever had, as soon as famously stated, “There is no Democratic or Republican way of cleaning the streets.” Such can be the case with combating crime.
However this isn’t a tutorial train, a matter for ideological pontification or simply one other front-page story. It’s a matter of life and dying. And it’s the first accountability of the federal government. As a result of nothing else works – colleges, housing, financial improvement – if folks don’t really feel secure.
Public security is job one. All the time has been, all the time might be.
However the onerous fact is that this: denial isn’t a life technique. For too lengthy, leaders have appeared the opposite manner, telling folks to not consider their mendacity eyes, deploying selective statistics or insisting that a number of remoted incidents don’t require an actual resolution to a systemic disaster. New Yorkers know higher. The issue of gun violence is each speedy and structural. It’s about gangs and weapons, but additionally about unemployment, disinvestment, and hopelessness. And so the answer should even be each speedy and structural.
That’s the reason, final week, I laid out a complete five-point plan to fulfill the problem head-on. It isn’t theoretical or ideological. It’s grounded in what works, what has labored earlier than, and what’s going to work once more.
On the coronary heart of it’s a recognition that legislation enforcement and neighborhood funding will not be competing values—they’re complementary requirements. New York Metropolis right this moment has hundreds fewer officers than within the Nineties, after we drove crime right down to historic lows. That absence is felt most acutely within the subway system, the place riders really feel beneath siege. We should rebuild the ranks: 5,000 extra officers citywide, 1,500 devoted to transit, and supply the incentives to maintain skilled cops from strolling away. Presence issues. Coaching issues. Precision policing that focuses on the few people and locations driving nearly all of crime issues.
However policing alone isn’t sufficient. Violence doesn’t start with a set off pull—it begins with despair. If a 17-year-old believes he has no future, the gang on the nook turns into his solely employer, his solely household. Once I was governor, we invested tons of of tens of millions in workforce improvement and youth employment throughout the state, together with in New York Metropolis. It labored. Younger individuals who had choices took them. Hope is the very best deterrent to violence. That’s why my plan requires a brand new $100 million funding in workforce packages and youth jobs proper right here in our metropolis.
We should additionally confront the tradition of violence itself. Neighborhood-based teams—the violence interrupters who mediate disputes earlier than they erupt—are saving lives day by day. Packages like Remedy Violence and Save Our Streets have lower shootings by double digits the place they function. They aren’t an alternative to legislation enforcement; they’re a associate in prevention. We must always double down, increasing their attain and funding them to do what authorities can’t do alone: rebuild belief, defuse tensions, change habits block by block.
And now we have to get the weapons off the road. Each unlawful gun we take away is a life doubtlessly saved. Gun buyback packages aren’t glamorous, however they’re efficient. Each firearm surrendered is one much less instrument of destruction circulating in our neighborhoods.
Whenever you weave these threads collectively—restoring police ranks, investing in youth and jobs, supporting interrupters, shopping for again weapons, and focusing on enforcement with precision—you start to see the tapestry of a metropolis that may as soon as once more really feel secure. A metropolis the place kids can play exterior with out worry. A metropolis the place households don’t must dwell with the each day nervousness of stray bullets. A metropolis the place justice is measured not in political slogans however in lives preserved.
Some on the far left need to defund the police, as if stripping away legislation enforcement will someway make us safer. It gained’t. Others on the correct discuss solely about extra cops, as if flooding the streets alone will clear up the issue. It gained’t. The reality is tougher—and extra hopeful. We’d like police to guard, jobs to forestall, interrupters to heal, and a technique that’s sensible, truthful, and relentless.
We’ve carried out it earlier than. Once I was governor, we confronted spikes in gun violence, and we introduced them down. Once I was HUD Secretary, we pioneered holistic approaches that grew to become nationwide fashions. We all know what works. The one query is whether or not now we have the braveness to do it.
Gun violence isn’t inevitable. It isn’t future. It’s the results of selections—our selections as a metropolis. Let’s select security. Let’s select alternative. Let’s select life.
Andrew Cuomo, a former governor of New York, is an unbiased candidate for NYC mayor.
