Murders in New York City rose 125% in the first ten days of 2021 compared to the same period last year and experts predict ‘it’s only going to get worse’
- Nine murders took place in New York City between Jan 1-10 this year, compared to 4 in the same period last year, a rise of 125%
- Shootings rose by 25% from 25 to 31, with victims increasing 29% from 28 to 36
- 20-year-old man shot dead in Queens just one hour after Midnight on January 1
- 33-year-old woman struck by a stray bullet as she lay in bed in Brooklyn just minutes after New Year’s Eve fell, but she survived
- On Jan 14 a man was spotted walking in the Bronx with an assault rifle
- Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, predicted: ‘It’s only going to get worse’
- Number of 2020 shootings and victims matched combined total for two years
Murders in New York rocketed by 125 per cent in the first 10 days of 2021 with a 20-year-old man shot dead just one hour after the ball dropped in Times Square.
Nine people died between January 1 and 10 this year, compared to four in the same period last new, new figures have shown.
The first victim of the year in the Big Apple was a 20-year-old man shot dead minutes after midnight outside the notorious Umbrella Hotel in Kew Gardens in Queens.
Shootings have surged by 24 per cent on last year, from 25 to 31 incidents.
Gunshot victims increased by 29 per cent from 28 to 36, including a 33-year-old woman struck by a stray bullet as she lay in bed in Brooklyn just minutes after New Year’s Eve fell.
The early violence does not bode well for 2021, considering the number of shootings and gun victims in 2020 matched the totals for the two prior years combined.
Murders in New York spiked 125% in the first 10 days of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020
Members of the New York Police Department are seen investigating the scene of a triple shooting outside the Umbrella Hotel in Kew Gardens on Friday, January 1, 2021 in Queens, New York. A 20-year-old man is believed to have been the first fatal shooting of 2021 in the city
The Umbrella Hotel in Kew Gardens in Queens, where the shooting took place, is known as a notorious location for crime
NYPD commissioner Dermot Shea, pictured in 2019 at a news conference at New York’s City Hall, blamed last year’s sharp rise in crime on new bail reforms
Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told New York Post: ‘It’s only going to get worse.’
He added: ‘It’s a year later and if bail reform was such a success, the architects and academics that helped design it would be shouting from the mountain tops. They aren’t.’
New state reform laws enacted in 2020 demand that suspects in a long list of crimes go free without having to post bail.
On January 14 a man was captured on CCTV in the Bronx casually walking down a New York City sidewalk with an assault rifle.
The man was spotted with the black assault rifle in the Bronx on Thursday afternoon.
Surveillance video showed him walking down Webster Avenue at about 3.30pm with the rifle in his left hand.
The rifle the man was carrying had a high capacity magazine, according to police.
NYPD figures show that 1,868 people were hit by gunfire in 1,531 separate shooting incidents last year — matching the combined totals for 2018 and 2019, when 1,820 victims and 1,531 shooting incidents were recorded.
Last year, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea blamed New York’s sharp rise in crime on New York’s new bail reform laws.
Expert Giacalone suggested re-deploying resources.
He said: ‘Now that most of the protests have abated, assign more people to the detective squads to close open cases. Violence begets violence and retaliation is a real threat.’