After another violent weekend, new NYPD strategy focuses on nighttime hours
NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- The fear of rising crime is gripping all five boroughs and is the focus of a new initiative by Mayor Eric Adams and top NYPD brass.
The new initiative comes after a violent weekend, with 11 shooting incidents and 12 victims from Friday to Sunday.
Officials say there were seven shootings with eight victims on Sunday alone, bringing the annual total to 402 shootings with 470 victims.
The violent day came after 45-year-old Zhiwen Yan, a Chinese food delivery worker, was gunned down while working in Forest Hills Saturday.
He leaves behind a wife and young daughter.
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Detectives are looking to talk to a customer of the Great Wall Chinese restaurant, where the slain deliveryman worked, after the manager told police a 50-year-old customer was having problems with Yan over his orders.
The customer previously menaced the manager with a gun and twice vandalized vehicles owned by his staff, authorities said.
One witnesses told police an older model Lexus SUV fled the murder scene, the same type vehicle driven by the customer.
The deliveryman was killed about a half mile from the restaurant, where he had worked for more than 20 years.
No arrests have been made
In its continued efforts to step the rising tide of violence, the NYPD is taking a new approach by increasing their manpower at night.
"We're trying to use a lot of resources that we've never tapped for this before and use them in very different and creative ways," NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey said. "And we think that we've found a nice balance where we'll be able to do that."
Corey and his top commanders are redeploying thousands of patrol officers determined to deter criminals and to respond quickly when crimes happen.
"We designated an inspector in each borough, two in the Bronx, actually, as the summer violence coordinators to take all of these additional resources that we're pushing out there and manage them very quickly," he said. "To be able to adapt to changing conditions on the ground and put the officers where they're most needed."
Responding to gang violence, he says, will be critical.
"We know that there is a high probability that there's going to be a retaliatory shooting so we're going to shift resources very quickly and try to prevent that shooting from ever happening in the first place, while we continue the investigation to apprehend the people responsible for the initial shooting," he said. "The heat is on, and they're very visible. The police are out there."
The department has already deployed hundreds of additional officers at night.
"We take 658 officers that are normally assigned to what we termed as non-operational assignments, meaning that their typical day to day duties don't involve them responding to 911 calls, and they're sent out into the streets and subways," Corey said.
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Mayor Eric Adams says it is necessary.
"The first order of business is to see, are we properly deploying what we have?" he said. "In order to start policing the city safely again, I heard across the board, it's time to get back to the basics."
In the 40 most violent precincts, plans are to:
--Move all 350 neighborhood coordinating officers into evening patrols
--Send field intelligence officers to the street
--Have three cars on the midnight shift start three hours earlier to cover the shift change
Officials say among the basics is to clamp down on fare beaters as the first step towards fighting crime on the subways. It worked for former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and they are going to try it again.
Adams is also asking for a more comprehensive approach from his agencies, saying he wants the departments of education, homelessness, and mental health to own some of this work.
"This is not a police problem," he said. "This is a city problem."
Adams believed former Mayor Bill de Blasio sent mixed messages to the NYPD and left them paralyzed. He says his orders are clear: He wants his police officers to fight crime.
Overall, crime is up 30% last month compared to April of last year.
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