New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday welcomed the recent drop in crime but cautioned that many New Yorkers still feel crime remains high. At the same time, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch warned that crime committed by children remained at worrisome levels.
Shootings and homicides decreased 53.9% and 41.4% respectively last month, with Memorial Day Sunday having no shooting across all five boroughs, an achievement made for the first time in 32 years, the mayor said during his weekly Tuesday press briefing.
“We've had the lowest number of shootings and homicides in recorded history in the city. I just want that to linger out there for a moment, because you have people running around saying the city's out of control,” he said.
As the mayor held up a small handgun to demonstrate the simple and compact frame, he said "the feeling of crime must match the success of bringing down crime."
Commissioner Tisch said challenges remained, especially with crime committed by children.
From 2018 to 2024, the number of children under the age of 18 arrested with a gun increased by 136% in New York City. Over the same time, shooters under age 18 went up by 92%, and young shooting victims increased 81%, she said. So far this year, 36, or 14% of shooters in the city or persons of interest in a shooting were under the age of 18, Tisch added. And 44, also 14% of shooting victims were under 18.
"I have seen enough," she said. “Children should not be treated like adults in our criminal justice system. But when the age of criminal responsibility went up, the age of criminal suspects went down."
Meanwhile, Adams touched on the recent arrest of Dylan Lopez Contreras, a teen from the Bronx who was detained in May while showing up to his immigration court date. City Hall filed an amicus brief on Monday to free Contreras from custody at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Pennsylvania.
In the brief, the city condemned Contreras' arrest; at the press conference, the mayor did not denounce the Trump Administration or ICE for their handling of the situation.
“We would, will not, and we have not collaborated with ICE on any civil enforcement. And so I don't want people to be deterred from going to court. Because if you deter people from following out the process, then you can create a level of people being fearful of our court system,” said Adams, who suggested individuals going to immigration court should refer to their lawyer for advice.
“Someone is going to court, they should sit down with their counsel and be guided by their counsel on what actions they should take,” he said.
In his first major interview since his campaign launch, former Governor Andrew Cuomo told the New York Times that if given the decision again, he would not have resigned despite political pressure, a route best exemplified by Adams’s handling of his indictment case.
“When people were telling me to step down, I said, no, I'm going to step up. Hard times make strong people,” said Adams.
With only three weeks left until the Democratic primary election on June 24, the mayor will not attend the first televised Democratic debate on Wednesday, as he is running on two independent ballot lines called ‘Safe Streets, Affordable City’ and ‘EndAntiSemitism’.
“They are running for my office. I'm running the city. So let them, with all of their aspirations and what they're going to do with [the] complex job of being mayor, only one of them will come out as the nominee,” said Adams.
