DE BLASIO BLAMES SHOOTINGS ON 'PERFECT STORM OF COVID'

Terrified mom asks de Blasio, ‘What’s being done?’ about daylight shootings

 

By Nolan Hicks, Craig McCarthy and Bruce Golding 

 

New York Post

April 9, 2021 

 

A terrified mom confronted Mayor Bill de Blasio point-blank on Friday about a daylight shooting near his old Brooklyn neighborhood — and he quickly lapsed into talking points to downplay the city’s alarming surge in gun violence.

During de Blasio’s weekly appearance on WNYC radio, a caller who identified herself as “Nicole” said she had just parked her car with her preschooler son when bullets started flying around her just south of the Prospect Park Parade Grounds on Tuesday afternoon.

“I was right there when it happened,” she said, sounding still shaken from the incident.

“I was happy my 4-year-old got in the house and they found bullet casings right by where I was standing, in addition to other places on the block.”

Nicole added, “I know gun violence has increased in our area,” but noted, “This is in broad daylight, 4 in the afternoon.”

“I’ve thought about this and I want to know, what’s being done? What’s being done?” she asked the mayor.

When the concerned-sounding host, Brian Lehrer, asked how safe she felt, Nicole said that “when I open the door, even to take the garbage outside or something like that, I very carefully look from one side to the other to the other.”

“And when I had to take my son down the block — I have a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old — I carried him right in front of me so if we had to duck and cover, we could do that,” she said.

De Blasio, who owns a home just blocks away in Park Slope but lives in Manhattan’s city-owned Gracie Mansion, responded by saying, “Nicole, first of all, as a parent, I’m feeling what you’re saying very deeply.”

“It must have been terrifying and a parent’s first instinct, obviously, is anything to protect their children,” he said.

“So, I’m very sorry you went through that and I’m sure it was very upsetting.”

But Hizzoner then pivoted to rehash the remarks he’s been making since crime and shootings began spiking amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“I think it comes back to this horrible combination of things we saw,” he said.

“People didn’t have jobs, almost a million people lost their jobs; schools were closed, houses of worship were closed. Things really were falling apart.”

De Blasio also vowed that “this year is going to be very, very different because we’re going in the reverse direction, thank God.”

“So, it’s very upsetting, but I know we will turn the tide, and New York City has before and we will again,” he added.

De Blasio’s promises came just two days after he dismissed concerns over a rash of recent shootings, including that of a tourist from Kansas who was hit by a stray bullet near Penn Station early Wednesday.

“We had a horrible disruption last year, the perfect storm of COVID,” he said hours after that incident.

“But the NYPD is out there doing great work, [making] more gun arrests than we’ve had in a quarter-century.”

De Blasio, who’s repeatedly invoked the “perfect storm” metaphor while discussing the city’s crime problems, also claimed that “we are in the process of overcoming that” following a doubling of subway murders in February.

And in September, he predicted that the plague of gun violence was only “temporary” and that once coronavirus vaccines were available, “there will be a turnaround.”

The latest statistics from the city Health Department show that 39 percent of adult city residents have received at least one dose of vaccine and 24 percent are fully vaccinated.

The NYPD said two people were wounded during Tuesday’s incident, which took place near the intersection of East 18th Street and Caton Avenue.

A 43-year-old woman walking on East 18th toward Caton was shot in the left thigh and a 53-year-old man walking south on East 18th was hit in the arm.

The shooting was gang-related, and neither victim was the intended target, a police source said.

More than a dozen shell casings were found and the suspects got away in a black Jeep Grand Cherokee, police sources said.

Reached by The Post on Friday evening, Nicole said that de Blasio seemed “kind and compassionate.”

As for his assurances that crime will go down, she said, “I hope it does, too, but I just hope the programs are in place to do that.”

She knows shootings are up this year, she said.

“l did look at the [shooting] statistics and the statistics for this year so far are worse than they were last year and certainly are worse than the year before,” she said.

Nicole also noted that she and de Blasio “didn’t have a lot of time [to speak] because the mayor got there late.”

“I would have loved to hear a little bit more about what he had to say … there just wasn’t time,” she added about the perpetually tardy mayor.

Nicole’s husband, who declined to give his name, said, “What makes us feel unsafe is thinking that this person is still out there and may come back and do another shooting.”

Last week, NYPD statistics showed a 40 percent annual increase in overall crime, with all but one of seven categories of major felonies on the rise.

The CompStat data also showed 27 people shot in 25 incidents between March 22 and March 28, compared to just nine victims in seven incidents during the same period in 2020.