![]() ![]() Vitale: Why has there been an increase in shootings? It’s pretty closely correlated with the onset of COVID. ‘People are Angry’Īlex Vitale is the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. ![]() So He just made me confused and disoriented. I think God didn’t allow me to see him like that. I was in house clothes and I just couldn’t find nothing decent to put on to go outside. Then the neighbor knocks on the door and she tells me my son just got shot and he’s laid out in the middle of the street. But it didn’t dawn on me at the time because I was in a deep discussion with my mom. I was doing some stuff with my mother in the living room. I asked him to pick stuff up from the supermarket and he was only gone about an hour. Gonzalez: My son, he graduated last year from high school. There’s mold and cockroaches everywhere in the NYCHA facility in my area in Lower Manhattan. This veteran NYPD sergeant works in Lower Manhattan. But the mother wanted to stop by and I didn’t want to say no. We were actually supposed to be closed that day. And we were trying to get his body released from the morgue. Last week, I was dealing with a mother who was trying to bury her son who was shot. Iesha Sekou is the Founder and CEO of Street Corner Resources, Inc., a crime interrupter group based in Harlem. I’ve lived in the Kingsborough Houses for 23 years. I’ve got my oldest niece living with me as well. Because I don’t even know what to do with myself anymore. Maria Gonzalez’s son, Armani Hamilton, 22, was fatally shot twice in the torso in Crown Heights on July 23. Here’s what they had to say: ‘I See a Lot of Suffering’ They were each asked two questions: Why do they think there has been a spike in shootings? And what needs to be done to curb the violence? Members and sponsors make THE CITY possible. THE CITY spoke separately to four people who are, to varying degrees, on the front lines: a mother whose son was killed, an NYPD sergeant, a violence interrupter and an academic who focuses on crime. They say economic hardships exacerbated by the pandemic and a lack of government support to those hardest hit are among the primary culprits. Police reformers and academics contend that’s merely an excuse with no data to back the claim. Shea and some police unions and lawmakers blame the increase in shootings on bail reform enacted by the state Legislature. Victims range from a 1-year-old boy shot at a barbecue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a 29-year-old father gunned down as he walked hand-in-hand with his young daughter while crossing a street in Claremont and a 60-year-old woman struck by a stray bullet in Brownsville. Meanwhile, murders are up 40%, from 312 in 2019 to 436 so far, NYPD records show. The city is expected to finish 2020 with a 14-year high in that category of violence, according to Police Commissioner Dermot Shea. The statistics are grim: 1,480 shootings in New York City as of Thursday, almost double the 748 logged during the same period last year.
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