The emotion caused by the death of two police officers, killed by firearm in New York, puts the new mayor of the city, Eric Adams, in the front line and allows him for the moment to garner support on his firm line to fight crime.
Witness to this support, the former police officer, who has become the second black mayor of the megalopolis, welcomes the President of the United States, Joe Biden, on Thursday to discuss the fight against the proliferation of firearms, which he has erected into priority on the evening of the attack in Harlem on January 21.
The two officers, Jason Rivera, 22, and Wilbert Mora, 27, were shot and killed in an apartment they were responding to following a call from a mother struggling with an abusive son. A drama that adds to the death a week earlier of a 40-year-old American-Asian woman, pushed onto the subway tracks in Times Square by a homeless man suffering from psychiatric disorders, and that of a Puerto Rican woman from 19 years old, killed during a robbery in the Burger King where she worked, still in Harlem.
At no charge, Eric Adams announced a plan of action, ahead of the funerals of the two officers on Friday and Tuesday, which saw thousands of uniformed police parade through midtown Manhattan.
Undercover patrols
On the menu, the return of plainclothes law enforcement patrols, “neighborhood security units”. The mayor promised that they would be different from those feared for years by young blacks and Hispanics for their controversial searches, under the mandates of Democrat Michael Bloomberg (2002-2013). They were removed in 2020 after the death of African-American George Floyd, killed by a police officer in Minneapolis.
Eric Adams also proposed giving judges more latitude to place a suspect in pre-trial detention and lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 16 or 17, rather than 18, for carrying a weapon, measures that will have to d to be voted on New York Statewide.
The plan was hailed by the city’s main police union (PBA), which hated former mayor Bill de Blasio (2014-2021), deemed too lax, as well as a coalition of more than 200 business bosses and municipal leaders – like the CEOs of JP Morgan or Pfizer – for whom “crime and the quality of life have worsened” in the megalopolis of nearly nine million inhabitants “during the pandemic”.
But the tougher measures on pre-trial detention or the charging of young people, “immediate politically appealing”, are “unlikely to improve public safety”, judge Jeffrey Butts, professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York University. “The mayor himself recognizes the need for a diversified approach: deterrence, law enforcement, but also prevention,” he told AFP.
State support
The deaths of the two police officers came against a backdrop of disagreements between a firm line, embodied by Eric Adams, and a line more focused on prevention, embodied by the new Manhattan prosecutor, Alvin Bragg.
“For now, it’s [Eric] Adams who is taking over, because of these murders and the increase in the homicide rate, even if it remains low in historical comparison”, reports to AFP Robert Shapiro, professor of political science at the University. Columbia.
In New York, crime has increased since the start of the pandemic (488 murders in 2021, compared to 319 in 2019), but the number of murders remains 75% lower than 28 years ago, according to figures from the service of city police.
Eric Adams was elected in the 2021 Democratic primary by targeting security more than his competitors and by opposing any idea of cutting police budgets. A position more in tune with society, according to Saladin Ambar, professor of political science at Rutgers University, New Jersey. According to him, Eric Adams is looking for the right way to satisfy “a real need for security, often coming from the black community, more victims of guns and violent crimes, while recognizing that a reform of the police, rather than its dismantling, is more likely to achieve political success”.
But the mayor, who will need results, himself recognizes that the City cannot act alone against the proliferation of firearms and that it will need the support of the federal state. “There is no arms manufacturer in New York,” he has been repeating since taking office on 1er January.