Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez launched a new initiative Wednesday centered on taking on gun violence in his borough, with new units dedicated to taking on gun crimes and partnerships with community organizations to provide resources to young New Yorkers and gang members.

The "STOP VIOLENCE" initiative includes a new unit within his office targeting ghost guns, the hiring of five new assistant district attorneys to focus on gun violence, a new digital crime lab, and investments in outreach programs.

"Instead of using law enforcement and, sort of, the implicit threat that 'we're watching you, we're going to arrest you if you commit a crime,' we're using community-based resources," Gonzalez told Errol Louis on "Inside City Hall" Wednesday. "How about if we invest in you? How about if we give you job training, job skills, different wraparound services, can we change the likely outcome?"

His office plans to continue partnerships with local churches, violence interruptors, and other youth organizations to reach out to "at-risk individuals" to prevent further violence and provide a path to economic stability.

A digital crime lab - tackling evidence on smartphones and computers - and new units focused on gun violence will help reduce gun crimes otherwise, Gonzalez said. Shootings are down 20% in Brooklyn compared to the same period last year and homicides are down 15%, Gonzalez said.

"We subscribe to a belief that it's a really strong percentage of people who do shootings and violent crime," Gonzalez said. "So we've identified those people. We've worked with police to build historical cases and hold them accountable for past bad actions."

Gonzalez said a backlog of court cases left over from the pandemic has left some New Yorkers on Rikers Island or other city jail facilities for more than two years.

"For a year and a half, there was very little trial activity in the city. The courts were closed. So there were a number of people who have been incarcerated for more than two years," Gonzalez said. Progress is being made, he added, but the backlog remains. "We still have people in from 2019, 2020."

Gonzalez also discussed New York's gun laws, political criticism of progressive district attorneys, and the upcoming Supreme Court decision on a New York concealed carry law.

"We know the states with the weakest gun laws have the most gun violence," Gonzalez said, calling an unfavorable Supreme Court ruling a "genuine concern." "And we know that particularly Black and brown communities will pay the price for too many guns on the street.”