More than two dozen shootings across New York City over the weekend left a one-year-old dead and at least 34 others injured, some potentially fatally, dwarfing the number of people killed there by the coronavirus during the same period.
It appears that over the weekend, particularly that fateful Sunday that left the one-year-old dead, NYC residents had a higher chance of getting shot than dying from coronavirus.
While NYC has largely tamed the lethal and highly contagious coronavirus, another epidemic is starting to rear its ugly head in the city once again — violent crimes.
“A one-year-old child is dead. The baby was with his family enjoying a Sunday night in the Summer when someone started shooting,” NYPD Chief Jeffrey Maddrey wrote on Twitter. “This. Must. STOP! We as a community, we as a police department denounce this disgusting violence.”
The child’s death on Sunday came a day after NYC reported no confirmed COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) deaths. By Monday, the NYC government had reported at least three “probable” deaths, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes as those “with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID-19.” Not all states report “probable” deaths.
Saturday marked the first day with no confirmed coronavirus deaths in NYC since March 13, two days after the city reported its first fatality associated with the disease, according to city data.
“For the first time in months, we have a 24-hour period where no one in this city died from the coronavirus,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday, seemingly referring to the zero confirmed deaths on Saturday. “Let’s have many more days like that.”
However, the New York Post reported that Saturday saw a significant increase in shootings, noting:
New York City’s plague of gun crime continued this weekend — with 15 people shot in the same number of hours since midday Saturday, police sources told The Post.
The shootings — including a 21-year-old man left fighting for his life after being shot in the head while sitting in a car in Sheepshead Bay early Sunday — were more in one day than the whole of the same week last year, sources said.
They capped 43 shootings so far this week — more than triple last year’s tally of 13 for the same period, sources said.
Over the weekend, the number of people killed (1) or wounded (34) included at least a handful of victims who took slugs to the chest or head.
The weekend (July 10 thru July 12) shooting victims amounted to a rate of about 0.4 per 100,000 residents. In comparison, the number of people killed by the coronavirus during the same period came out to an estimated 0.13 per 100,000 residents, or about three times lower.
In sheer numbers, the 35 people shot (only one fatally) between Friday and Sunday were three times higher than the 11 (five confirmed, six probable) who died from COVID-19.
That suggests NYC residents had a higher chance of getting shot over the weekend than dying of COVID-19.
Some of the weekend shooting victims could succumb to their injuries, ultimately exceeding the number of coronavirus fatalities that occurred over the weekend.
The surge in violent crimes in NYC is reminiscent of previous decades when people avoided the Big Apple due to high levels of criminal activity.
It comes amid calls to “defund the police,” primarily voiced by Black Lives Matter supporters and their Democrat allies. Some of those calls have resonated among the city’s Democrat leaders and leftist supporters, including Mayor De Blasio.
Citing NYPD figures, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that, in comparison to the 28 shootings this past weekend, there were five shootings during the same period last year. That means the number of shootings last weekend increased more than 4-fold from the same period in 2019.
During the weekend, there were four confirmed COVID-19 deaths on Friday, zero on Saturday, and one on Sunday. Meanwhile, there were two probable fatalities on Friday, three on Saturday, and one on Sunday, for a total of five confirmed and six “probable” deaths over the weekend.
The New York Post highlighted some of the “blame game” for the rise in violent crimes promoted by some NYC leaders, noting:
Commissioner Dermot Shea has blamed bail reform and prisoner releases over the coronavirus pandemic for the alarming rise in gun crime, which has brought increased criticism for Mayor Bill de Blasio.
But a Post analysis of department data found that most people released under the criminal justice reforms or amid the pandemic had no known ties to the bloodshed — with criminal justice experts saying the cops should focus on the flow of illegal guns into the city instead of playing the “blame game.”
Other Democrat-run cities, like Chicago, are experiencing a spike in violence amid anti-police demonstrations and calls to defund law enforcement