by Al Baker, The New York Times
Arrests for illegal handguns are considerably ahead of last year’s pace, the mayor and the police commissioner said yesterday in announcing the strengthening of an effort to drive down the numbers of guns on the city’s streets.
At the same time, the number of shootings in the city is increasing, a trend that was underlined by a shooting of a man in Greenwich Village on Saturday that was reminiscent of a more violent era.
The increases in those two barometers of crime caused so much concern that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg chose to use 1 Police Plaza as the site for a formal news conference for the first time in his mayoralty. There, with Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, the mayor sent a message that any increase in crime would be tackled quickly and forcefully.
Standing before tables displaying about 500 seized handguns of assorted makes and models, the two men said that they had made significant changes to the city’s Operation Gun Stop, a program in which residents are paid to report to the police anyone suspected to be in possession of illegal handguns, provided those reports are corroborated by investigators.
“The good news is New York City continues to be the safest big city in the nation,” Mayor Bloomberg said. “The bad news, of course, is that there are still bad people out there, and we have to continue our efforts to get guns off the street.”
Operation Gun Stop, which started in January 2001, is one tool the Police Department has used to seize handguns, along with an overall strategy to crack down on quality-of-life offenses.
Since the program’s inception, 574 tips have been received, resulting in 288 arrests and the seizure of 133 illegal handguns.
As of Sunday, 1,019 gun arrests have been made so far this year, a 25 percent increase over the 816 gun arrests in the first three and a half months of last year.
The mayor and the police commissioner announced two changes in the Gun Stop program: the reward has been doubled to $1,000, and the money will be paid within 72 hours of an arrest, rather than up to two months later. The police have asked those with gun tips to call (866) GUN-STOP - (866) 486-7867 - a 24-hour line.
The mayor said he and Mr. Kelly hoped these changes would further drive down violent crime. He noted that so far this year, overall major crime in the city is down 8 percent compared with last year.
Mr. Kelly said that the average number of shootings per week during the first three months of this year was 27, compared with 24 in the average week during the same period last year.
But Mr. Kelly noted that over all, the average number of shootings for any week for all of last year was 31, driven by a spike at the end of the year. That average was below the average of 34 shootings for any given week in 2000, he said.
Criminal justice experts are not always sure how to interpret an increase in gun seizures. The numbers could be higher because more people are carrying guns or because the Police Department’s efforts to seize them have become more assertive, analysts say. Gun arrests usually rise and fall with the ebb and flow of gun crimes.
While shootings are on the rise this year, all murders are down nearly 29 percent from last year, which was one of the least deadly in almost two decades.
As of Sunday, the number of shootings citywide had risen to 405 from 341, an 18.8 percent increase compared with the same period last year. The number of shooting victims in the same period rose to 463 from 366, a 26.5 percent increase.
Slightly more than 56 percent of the shootings and victims were located in two areas, the Bronx and northern Brooklyn, said the president of the Citizens Crime Commission, Thomas A. Reppetto, who has studied the pattern of shootings and arrests.
Mr. Reppetto said that slightly more than 57 percent of the gun arrests had been made in those two areas, “which suggests to me that the police have deployed their forces where the shootings are most common.”
Because of that, Mr. Reppetto said, he expects fewer shootings to happen in the coming days.
“Where the gunmen are, the police are,” he said.