There were 40 shootings in the city last week and 128 over the past month, a number officials say far outreaches 2014's stats. Now, the NYPD's looking to hire more police officers, but since de Blasio's ushered in the Bad Old Days or something, the tabloids speculate that won't help much.
In addition to the aforementioned stats—40 shootings last week as compared with 24 during the same period last year, and 128 shootings over the last month as opposed to 96 last year—data shows that murders are up 10 percent this year, with more reported gun violence on the Upper West and East Sides, in Harlem, Inwood and in Washington Heights.
Other serious crime, however, is down 7 percent citywide and 10 percent in housing projects, where 21 percent fewer people were shot this year.
Police Commissioner Bratton has been calling on the mayor to hire more cops, but de Blasio argues that cops have more time to policehand out citations to cyclists now that they're not doing stop-and-frisks. The mayor not include money for new hires in his new budget.
The Post looks at all of this and finds an anonymous police source to provide the right Postian nihilistic perspective, which is that de Blasio secretly wants to abolish the NYPD, so adding more cops will only give him more opportunities to undermine the police. "Warm weather means there are more people on the streets carrying guns, and it is only going to get worse — no matter how many cops you hire — if you don’t back the police," the "police source" told the Post, cranking up the Nine Inch Nails and carving "NOTHING MATTERS" into the squad car's dashboard.
It's going to be a long summer.
