What is your plan for reducing gun violence, sex crimes, and assaults or muggings?

Violent crime has risen to alarming levels, and home burglaries are up. These crimes instill fear in the public and harm the quality of life for city residents.

Andrew Yang

New York City can no longer take a passive and outdated approach to addressing the gun violence epidemic across the five boroughs, and the growing incidence of crime. Gun violence is the leading cause of death of young people and disproportionately impacts communities of color across the five boroughs. There have been far too many casualties of this crisis, and we must build an ecosystem of harm reduction to end this epidemic, once and for all.

Crime was at an all-time low before the pandemic. We know we can get back here. But it will not happen just by vaccinating New Yorkers and reaching herd immunity. As a city, we must address the unrest, loss and lack of opportunity that has been exacerbated by COVID, take gun violence with the utmost seriousness, and continue to institute reforms while elevating and investing in the solutions of frontline organizations with proven efficacy.

Gun violence causes significant harm to women, who bear the brunt of gun-related domestic violence crimes. Women are at disproportionate risk of sex crimes and assaults/muggings – and must be taken with the utmost seriousness by the NYPD.

A Yang administration will focus on ending the iron pipeline of illegal guns flowing into New York City, adding capacity to the Gun Violence Suppression Division and Violence Reduction Task Forces of the NYPD to address mounting toll that gun violence is taking on communities across the five boroughs, immediately reopen courts to address illegal gun possession and gun crimes, invest in early intervention, expanded youth referrals and a citywide scaling of Cure Violence, expanding the Brownsville pilot, and work with New York State to ensure that funds from the Community Violence Intervention Act reach New York City.

Eric Adams

The scourge of gun violence is one that requires a 24 hour response. I have outlined a plan that would work to curb the cycle of gun violence as well as address the flow of illegal guns into our City. To do this I would:

• Form a tri-state commission to formulate policy proposals that would stop the flow of illegal handguns into our communities
• Rebuild a modified version of the New York City Police Department (NYPD)’s plainclothes unit
• Fully fund the City’s Crisis Management System and allow for more centralized coordination between different organizations throughout the city
• Convene citywide clergy leaders and law enforcement officials to partner on public safety initiatives in hotspots, and
• Create a comprehensive employment program targeting young men and women ages 18 to 25, focused on those who are unemployed and out of school

We must also deploy our officers to undertake real public safety to combat sex crimes, assaults and muggings. We can do that by civilianizing the NYPD to move officers away from activities like barrier deployment and into the business of public safety.

Shaun Donovan

For decades, Congress has restricted CDC research on gun violence. In 2019, Congress appropriated $25 million to gun violence research, a pittance compared with the number of gun deaths in the United States.

New York City can step in where the federal government is falling short. City agencies will initiate and fund research on the causes and prevention of gun violence through a public health lens. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will collaborate with researchers, non-profits, and other relevant City agencies—including the Department of Social Services and the Department of Education—to study and report on the causes of gun violence. We will invest in and prioritize community-led and community-centered research as part of these efforts, recognizing that those closest to the problem are closest to the solutions.

Through this effort, New York City can serve as an example to cities across the country, collaborating with other mayors to mobilize resources and pool efforts to better understand and address gun violence as a serious public health problem.

Kathryn Garcia

We must hold the NYPD accountable for driving down crime. That means we must reimagine  COMPSTAT to measure what we want to see- crime reduction, and positive community engagement. At the same time, we must address the primary socio-economic drivers of crime: lack of access to housing,  education, and jobs.

What is it going to take to keep our communities safe? We need an experienced leader who is ready to work with the police union to get results. I am the only candidate that has the commitment and the experience to get it done. As the leader of a uniform agency with a 98% male force and law enforcement division, I was tough but fair–and fired Sanitation Workers that broke the rules. Right now we are seeing many retirements in the upper ranks at NYPD- which means we have many opportunities to promote cops that exhibit what we want to see and change the culture to be a service to communities.

Key immediate steps to refocus the agency and drive down crime include:

• Reimagine COMPSTAT to include crime reduction, reduction of aggressive policing, and community engagement.
• Reward officers for driving down crime, not making arrests, and promote officers who embody the guardian mindset.
• Address gang and gun violence with solutions that interrupt the cycle, such as the Bronx Connect  “Release the Grip” program, which trains credible messengers such as formerly incarcerated individuals to intervene in conflict before gun violence happens. Fund Cure Violence groups that mediate conflict and connect people to resources, from education to legal assistance, and violence interrupters.

Ray McGuire

Our city is facing a disturbing surge in crime. Murders and shootings are up sharply. There’s a palpable sense of fear throughout the city. My approach to public safety is to tackle gun violence head on, assure a better quality of life for all New Yorkers — and at the same time to tackle the root causes of so much of the current disorder. I will shift resources within the NYPD budget to increase the number of officers focused on seizing illegal weapons and preventing, investigating, and prosecuting gun crimes, integrated into broader community policing efforts in the 10 precincts suffering from the highest incidence of violent crime. I will also invest in community-based crisis management programs in these neighborhoods, and partner with local, state and federal prosecutors to crack down on the flow of illegal guns into our city.

Dianne Morales

I will not give credence to law and order rhetoric. As we have seen for decades, reactionary policies to perceived high crime rates lead to racist policies that oppress, detain, and kill Black and Brown people. Crime has been declining overall for decades, and the recent spike makes it more clear than ever that crime rates are tied to people’s social stability. Crime rates spiked during COVID because New Yorkers lost jobs, were worried about their housing, anf faced tremendous health concerns. I will make this clear in both my rhetoric and my policy.

I will work to do everything in my power to house everyone in long-term supportive, social, and fully-funded public housing and to bolster the city’s social net. Real safety comes with ensuring that all New Yorkers are seen as human and given this basic dignity and right. This would allow us to start envisioning the real needs of our city from there.

Maya Wiley

I believe in investing in community driven solutions to gun violence and crime. As a result of multiple instances of gun violence last summer, I held my first people’s assembly on the issue, which led to the December release of my Gun Violence Prevention Plan. A key component of this plan is the establishment of an $18 million Participatory Justice fund targeting those communities that are hardest hit by violence. This fund will allow residents of impacted communities to participate in the development of solutions that work specifically for them. We must commit to democratic, community-based participation in developing and implementing gun violence solutions–including an examination of what initiatives and innovations are working, as well as what additional investments, strategies, and partnerships will contribute to a meaningful change to the conditions that drive violence in our communities.