As shooting incidents rise citywide, newly compiled precinct-level data shows a growing tale of two cities, as gun violence escalates in much of the Bronx and upper Manhattan while declining across Brooklyn.

The data, collected from police reports by NY1, show that nearly every city precinct saw an increase in shooting incidents in 2020, the year the pandemic brought the city to a standstill, decimating some communities and interrupting access to crucial social services. 

Yet while the city’s total shootings grew slightly in 2021 — and continue to rise this year — some precincts saw swift reversals to the upward trend of violence.

The differing paths of these boroughs in the wake of the pandemic have myriad causes, according to law enforcement officers, academics, violence interrupters and activists. They say that contrasting approaches to law enforcement, different ideas on how to achieve public safety and aggravating factors like opioid abuse may be creating unique trendlines.

The stark diverging trends across these neighborhoods are coming into relief as the city begins a major crackdown on gun violence, part of a broad effort to improve sentiment around public safety. Mayor Eric Adams’ has revived, with some revisions, an NYPD unit that led stop-and-frisk policing, and which saw the department pay out millions in misconduct cases, even as he pushes preventative solutions like expanded summer youth employment.

This week, frustrated over continued violence, Adams also pressed the NYPD to revive “broken windows”-style policing, making more arrests over quality-of-life infractions. 

The moment has many questioning whether the city will strike a balance between policing and direct investment in health care, housing and social services in communities facing near-constant violence. 

“If all we ever do is call the police in, and we never invest in those other things, we’re just living in a police state,” said Jeffrey Butts, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “We sort of did that in the ’80s and ‘90s, and didn't get much back from it.”

Data on shootings diverge 

Precinct-level data illustrate how, even amidst a citywide spike in nearly every major crime category, even neighborhoods that saw similarly brutal spikes in gun violence are experiencing the tail effects of the pandemic-era crime wave differently. 

Brooklyn saw a sharp rise in shootings in 2020, only to see a drop of just over 20% in 2021. To date this year, shootings are down in the borough when compared with 2021, according to police data available on CompStat, even as they remain elevated over pre-pandemic years. 

Brownsville — policed by the 73rd precinct — saw the city’s highest per capita shooting rate in 2020, at nearly 98 shootings for every 10,000 people, according to precinct population estimates prepared for WNYC and based on U.S. Census data. Yet in 2021, shooting incidents dropped nearly 18%, a sizable change that nevertheless left the area the city’s worst-hit for gun violence last year. 

Next door, the 75th precinct, covering much of East New York, saw a 30% drop in shootings, from 102 to 71, from 2020 to 2021. Shootings there are down slightly year-to-date for 2022.

Out of 23 Brooklyn precincts, all but three saw shooting incidents decline or stay flat. Bushwick was a notable exception, seeing shootings go from 12 in 2020 to 28 in 2021.

In the Bronx, however, 2021 brought more than 30% more shooting incidents than even the prior year’s spike — with some of the worst-hit precincts seeing even greater jumps.

The 42nd precinct, which includes Claremont Village and Crotona Park, saw 2021 shootings climb by nearly 50%, to 69 shootings per 10,000 people — the second-highest per capita rate in the city last year. 

Only one precinct in the Bronx — the 46th precinct, which includes Morris Heights — saw a drop in shootings in 2021, down just under 7% compared with 2020. Shootings there year-to-date are up this year. 

In Manhattan, every precinct above 110th Street saw shootings either rise or stay flat, with Harlem and Washington Heights seeing some of the worst increases. 

Credit: Stephen Clarke/NY1

 

‘We need more options’

Observers have struggled to decipher why shooting trends differ between the boroughs. 

In general, the Bronx has long lagged behind other boroughs in key markers of health, wellbeing and socioeconomic standing, and was hit harder by the pandemic, said David Caba, the program director for Good Shepherd Services’ Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence program. Bronx Rises is a violence interruption program, also referred to as Cure Violence, which hires community members to try and prevent fights and shootings in real time by intervening in nascent feuds or by preventing retaliatory shootings. 

Caba also noted that I-95 — the highway that law enforcement has fingered as the “iron pipeline” through which guns illegally enter the city from southern states — runs directly through the Bronx. 

Opioid overdoses are also highest in the Bronx, according to the last city report on overdose deaths, from November 2021. Many shootings, even in the context of conflicts between groups of young people, can be connected to drugs, Caba said. 

“Those two worlds always had a symbiosis going on, but the marriage got even stronger when the isolation set in, when everyone started to scratch and claw for whatever it is that they can, just so they can survive,” Caba said. 

Chief Michael LiPetri, the head of crime control strategies at NYPD, said that the Bronx and northern Manhattan had indeed seen a recent rise in “narcotics-motivated shootings,” but that those were not related to overdoses.

“I do not see a correlation between overdose deaths and violence,” LiPetri said in an interview.

While Brooklyn also has Cure Violence programs, the borough sees a higher level of community participation in organizing efforts to reduce violence, according to James Brodick, the director of community development at the Center for Court Innovation, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that researches progressive approaches to criminal justice. Even residents there seem to feel stuck in the cycle of reactionary policing, instead of proactive investment in social needs.

Older people in the Bronx, Brodick said, “are very likely to say, ‘We need more policing.’ Whereas when I’m in Brooklyn, people say, ‘We need more options.’”

Researchers say that they are still working on understanding which Cure Violence programs actually work and why. With many such programs in the city, it is difficult to compare an area with a team to one without, and see whether the program has a measurable difference in violence. 

As the city added more Cure Violence programs in pre-pandemic years, gun violence and deaths declined, said Sheyla Delgado, the deputy director of analytics at John Jay’s Research and Evaluation Center.

“Can we say that is solely due to the appearance of these programs? Absolutely not,” Delgado said. “But they’re certainly a factor to consider.”

In Brooklyn, federal prosecutors credit several takedowns of crews of young people accused of criminal conspiracies as driving down violence across the borough’s northern precincts.

On Jan. 4, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez unveiled indictments of 17 members of a crew, aged 17 to 21 — his office’s fifth such “takedown” of a youth crew since the start of 2020. Gonzalez has said his office tries to balance community outreach with prosecutions to stem violence. 

A representative for Gonzalez declined an interview request.

“These investigations are complicated, they're challenging, but they're effective and they're necessary,” Gonzalez said in announcing the charges. “We’ll try to stop them from shooting, we'll try to prevent it. But if we can't prevent it, we will prosecute them.”

The Bronx has seen fewer high-profile mass indictments of street crews than Brooklyn, and in recent weeks its law enforcement efforts have come under intense criticism over a gun possession case. Judge Naita Semaj has accused both police and county prosecutors of giving misleading testimony and arguments over a case in which a local rapper and an officer were wounded when a stolen gun in the rapper’s pocket went off during an altercation with police. 

Patrice O'Shaughnessy, a representative for Bronx DA Darcel Clark, listed lack of cooperation with authorities as an impediment to preventing retaliatory shootings, as well as the impact of the pandemic. O’Shaughnessy declined an interview request for Clark. 

“While most Bronxites were resilient, for some the shift led to increased tension, desperation and frustration with loss of employment or dealing with the illness,” O’Shaughnessy said in an emailed statement. “Some took it into their own hands to settle scores.”

LiPetri noted that many of Brooklyn’s takedowns had begun as investigations before the pandemic, allowing law enforcement to move against several crews in a short space of time once the courts reopened. In the Bronx, he said, there were fewer ongoing investigations when the courts closed in 2020.

“We definitely tie some of the Brooklyn success – and I temper that, some of the Brooklyn success – to the takedowns,” LiPetri said. 

“That's not going to fix it for us”

Yet activists say they want to see law enforcement play a diminished role in increasing safety in vulnerable neighborhoods. 

While these areas are seeing different short-term trends in violence, they are dealing with the same root causes, said Keli Young, the civil rights campaign coordinator for VOCAL-NY. Across much of the Bronx and north Brooklyn, Young said, access to education, mental health care and other social services is insufficient. 

“It is important not to speculate around what is driving one issue in a community and not another, and really just look at the totality of what we’re seeing on a city level,” Young said. “Which is that we need to build safety in these neighborhoods, regardless of a momentary spike in gun violence.”

Caba said his organization is planning on doubling their staff across the three Bronx precincts where they place violence interrupters, and double from five to 10 the number of elementary schools in which they offer programming meant to steer children away from violence. 

Shanduke McPhatter, who leads the Brooklyn Cure Violence program G-MACC, said he is still waiting for more information from the city on increased funding. 

He expressed skepticism of law enforcement “takedowns” of youth street crews as a solution, even though he understands they have a job to do. He said his group had been working with the 17 people indicted by Gonzalez’s office in January, attempting to move them away from criminal activity without putting them through the criminal justice system. 

“We’re saying, based on experience, that's not going to fix it for us, that's not going to solve anything,” McPhatter said. 

As the NYPD prepares to launch the revamped anti-gun unit and the court system issues new rules to fast-track gun possession prosecutions, activists and violence interrupters are hoping that the city will leave room for their own approaches to violence reduction. 

LiPetri said that he agrees that social services and violence interruption have a large role to play in crime prevention, and that the department has “learned from some of our mistakes” in recreating the anti-gun squads, known as Neighborhood Safety Teams. The unit will include some officers who served in its plainclothes predecessor, he said.

“Each individual was vetted multiple times prior to becoming a Neighborhood Safety officer,” LiPetri said. “Multiple, multiple times, by multiple different levels in the NYPD, at the highest levels, to the local level. We picked the right individuals.”

LiPetri said the department will use community input to guide the anti-gun unit. 

“Without the community helping us, we cannot suppress crime,” he said.