This is part of our One Issue Explainer series, where we break down where mayoral candidates stand on issues concerning New Yorkers. What do you want to hear about? Email us at [email protected] (subject line: One Issue Explainer)
The recent shooting that injured three people including a 4-year-old girl in Times Square was the latest incident in a disturbing rise in gun violence in recent months. While the majority of the gunfire has been concentrated in Central Brooklyn, Upper Manhattan, and parts of the Bronx, it’s become increasingly random, striking diners at Peter Luger Steakhouse in Williamsburg and a woman in broad daylight in Park Slope.
This weekend's shooting in the popular tourist area has crystalized the distinction between the platforms of more centrist candidates like Andrew Yang, Eric Adams, and Kathryn Garcia, who suggest revamping current police responses to gun violence, compared to more left-leaning candidates like Maya Wiley, Dianne Morales and Shaun Donovan, whose plans revolve around shifting funds from police and focusing more on the root causes of the violence. Candidates like Scott Stringer and Ray McGuire are straddling that line, offering a combination of improved police response and surge in supportive services.
Read More: "Defund" The NYPD: What It Means And Where Democratic Mayoral Candidates Stand On It
The latest shooting sparked an outpouring from the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for mayor. Borough president Adams denounced the shooting and called for greater measures to curb gun violence. “I don’t understand why the other candidates are attempting to ignore that we’re dealing with a gun violence crisis in this city,” he said at a press conference just hours after the incident.
The next day, Andrew Yang held a press conference himself in the same Times Square plaza, making his most definitive statement yet on policing. “The truth is New York City cannot afford to defund the police,” Yang said, adding the shooting took place just blocks from his family’s Hell’s Kitchen apartment. Hours after Yang’s appearance, Adams was back in Times Square to directly call out Yang for only denouncing gun violence when it hit close to home. By Monday, business executive Ray McGuire had made an appearance, too.
“The solution is not defunding the police,” McGuire said in Times Square. “And it is not about adding to the police force, either. It’s about addressing the root causes of gun violence and crime in our community.”
On Tuesday both Garcia and Wiley held press conferences of their own. Wiley reiterated her pledge to decrease the police budget by $1 billion in her first year in office, saying New Yorkers should no longer have to make a “false choice,” between being “safe from crime or [choosing] whether Black and brown people can be safe from police violence.”
Outside the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg, one of the few precincts with a gun-buyback program, Garcia said she would, “put in place strategies that will work to get guns off streets through incentives, investigations and enforcement.”
The 463 people shot so far this year is 78% greater than the same time period last year, according to NYPD statistics. Murders are up 16% this year. Meanwhile clearance rates, or when arrests are made, remain stubbornly low. Fewer than half the murders last year resulted in an arrest, NYPD statistics show.
Here’s where the candidates stand on gun violence and what proposals they’re offering to decrease it.
Eric Adams
Adams wants to increase funding for the NYPD’s Gun Violence Suppression Division, and to increase spot checks at train and bus stations to try to find more illegal guns. He wants to create a citywide special prosecutor specifically for gun crimes, and to bring back the controversial plain clothes anti-crime unit that was dismantled last year as an anti-gun unit. Adams does not want to decrease the NYPD budget, but said he would find $500 million in savings to redirect towards gun violence prevention programs like the city’s Crisis Management System, a network of nonprofit violence interrupters that work to de-escalate conflicts and refer people to services they might need.
Shaun Donovan
Donovan would boost funding for public-health studies of gun violence and gun violence prevention programs. He would target investments at communities most greatly impacted by shootings with “community-led public safety and racial justice initiatives.” His campaign declined to specify what those might include. And Donovan said he would reorient police resources to put them towards gun crimes and work with federal partners to stop the flow of illegal guns into the city.
Kathryn Garcia
Garcia said she would put in place a gun task force with members of the NYPD, the federal government and local prosecutors. She’d increase the amount you could receive in the gun buyback program from $200 to $2,000, increase the size of the NYPD’s Gun Violence Suppression Division, and increase patrols in neighborhoods hit hardest by gun violence. Also, as part of the plan Garcia said she would, “aggressively enforce against open- air drug dealing to keep communities safe.”
Ray McGuire
McGuire says he’ll increase funding for violence interruption groups, hospital-based interventions, school-based conflict mediation, and services for at risk youth. He’d work with federal and state partners to stem the flow of illegal guns into the city and he’d shift NYPD resources to assign more officers to search and seize illegal guns. He wants to increase community policing initiatives, funding for mental health services and social services.
Dianne Morales
Morales would dramatically boost funding to restorative justice and violence interruption programs and would create “gun-free” zones. Her campaign didn’t return a request for comment on what those zones would entail.
Scott Stringer
Stringer’s plans to curb gun violence includes boosting arrest rates for serious crimes, increasing funding for CURE violence groups and targeting at-risk youth with employment. His campaign website points to his City Comptroller site where these plans are flushed out in greater detail. To improve arrest rates, he’d reassign detectives in specialized bureaus to handle homicides in Brooklyn and the Bronx. He’d also push for more use of federal gun trace data to better track the sources of illegal guns that make their way to New York City.
Andrew Yang
Yang said he would assign more police officers to communities with gun violence and would revamp an “anti-violence and community safety unit” that will include officers in plain-clothes. It echoes a pitch from Eric Adams’s camp to revive the controversial anti-crime task force that was disbanded last year. Yang’s website said he would increase funding to CURE violence groups. At a presser on Sunday he said he would also empower NYPD’s intelligence units to do more to disrupt the pipeline of illegal guns, but his campaign didn’t offer clarification on what that meant.
Maya Wiley
Wiley’s plan to decrease gun violence would include doubling the job slots available for at-risk youth, increasing funding for hospital and community-based violence interruption programs, and establishing an $18 million “participatory justice fund” that neighborhoods impacted by gun violence would decide how to spend. She’d match youth with mentors to help them handle an array of situations.
There are five other candidates who will be on the ballot for Democratic voters to choose from; Art Chang, Paperboy Love Prince, Jocelyn Taylor, Aaron Foldenauer and Isaac Wright Jr.
