The controversial unit’s return is part of an ambitious plan announced by Mayor Eric Adams to confront a growing crisis of gun violence.
Mayor Eric Adams, at a pivotal moment in his first weeks in office, announced an ambitious public safety plan on Monday to address a growing crisis of gun violence in New York City.
In a solemn speech just three days after a police officer was killed in Manhattan, Mr. Adams called for immediate changes to add police officers to city streets to remove guns, and for help from the courts and state lawmakers in the months ahead.
“We will not surrender our city to the violent few,” Mr. Adams said.
Mr. Adams’s plan included the restoration of a new modified plainclothes police unit, and called on state lawmakers to make a number of changes, including to New York’s bail law and to a law that altered how the state handles teenage defendants.
“I want to be clear: This is not just a plan for the future — it is a plan for right now,” the mayor said. “Gun violence is a public health crisis. There is no time to wait.”
Perhaps the most immediate change offered by Mr. Adams on Monday was the highly anticipated revamping of anti-crime police units that were disbanded in 2020 amid social-justice protests that erupted after the police killing of George Floyd.
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Police officials in New York City have identified hundreds of candidates to be assigned to the new units, called Neighborhood Safety Teams, which are expected to be introduced over the next three weeks in 30 precincts where, according to the mayor’s plan, 80 percent of violence occurs.
Mr. Adams said the plainclothes officers would be somehow identifiable to the public as police officers, and be equipped with body cameras.
Many of the issues that are helping to fuel the current spike in violent crime are complex — including how to treat New Yorkers with mental health problems and the omnipresence of guns — and will be difficult to fix quickly.
But Mr. Adams, a former police captain, has set high expectations, arguing during his campaign that he was the only leader capable of balancing safety and police reform and suggesting over the weekend that New Yorkers could see results within days.
The shooting death of Officer Jason Rivera on Friday, in an incident that left a second officer in critical condition, and a spate of other high-profile crimes, has raised alarm in the city over public safety and threatens to impede Mr. Adams’s pledge to make New York safer.
In a sign of the growing concerns over gun violence, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, said earlier in the day that he would prosecute gun crimes, including gun possession, aggressively.
Mr. Bragg’s remarks came after he received pushback for his adoption of lenient policies upon taking office. He had said during his campaign last year that he would avoid prosecuting people for gun possession unless they were actually involved in violent crime.
“If you’re walking around Manhattan with a gun, you’re going to be prosecuted and we’re going to hold you accountable in what I would say is the traditional sense,” Mr. Bragg said on Monday.
Mr. Adams has previously expressed concerns about changes to the bail law that were recently enacted, and on Monday he formally urged state lawmakers to allow judges to take dangerousness into account when deciding whether to detain a defendant, among other changes.
The plan includes a list of requests for state and federal officials that shows how many of the challenges Mr. Adams is facing are difficult for the city to tackle on its own. His predecessor, Bill de Blasio, repeatedly raised concerns about slowdowns in the courts during the pandemic, and Mr. Adams made a similar argument on Monday.
The mayor is facing challenges old and new. The flow of illegal guns into the city from other states has long limited the effectiveness of efforts to reduce gun violence, and the recent proliferation of so-called ghost guns, which lack serial numbers and cannot be traced, poses a growing threat.
Murders, shootings and some other types of violent crime have risen during the pandemic. In the past month, Mr. Adams has responded to the scenes of several: a woman pushed to her death at a Times Square subway station; a baby shot in the Bronx; a 19-year-old Burger King worker killed during a robbery in Manhattan. Police officers have also been wounded in shootings in the Bronx and East Harlem and on Staten Island.
But the shooting death on Friday of Officer Rivera — whose partner, Officer Wilbert Mora, was also gravely wounded — poses the greatest challenge to Mr. Adams early in his mayoralty. He has focused on bringing back the plainclothes unit, but many left-leaning Democrats have expressed concern over the unit’s tactics in the past.
A few hours before Mr. Adams’s speech, the city’s public advocate, Jumaane D. Williams, offered his own public safety recommendations, focusing on building on progressive policies that have been credited with helping the city reach record-low levels of gun violence before the pandemic.
Mr. Williams, a Democrat like Mr. Adams and a candidate for governor, sought to offer a different path from they mayor, one that placed a priority on empowering communities.
“We can build safer, stronger communities without relying on strategies which in the past have inflicted lasting harm,” Mr. Williams said. “This is not a time to lose the lessons that we have learned.”
Jonah E. Bromwich contributed reporting.
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