President Biden praised Mayor Adams’ crime-fighting agenda Thursday and unveiled a new federal initiative aimed at stemming a flow of illegal weapons from southern states that has contributed to the city’s recent spike in violence.
Marking his first visit to New York since Adams’ inauguration, Biden gave the mayor his seal of approval during a press conference at the NYPD’s downtown Manhattan headquarters, where they also received a classified briefing from the department’s joint gun violence task force.
“I want to help every major city follow New York’s lead,” said Biden, who was flanked by Adams, Gov. Hochul, Attorney General Merrick Garland, members of the state’s congressional delegation and various police officials.
Vowing to be Adams’ “partner,” Biden said his administration is embarking on a new crackdown on so-called “ghost guns,” homemade weapons that typically aren’t subject to background checks and lack traceable serial numbers.
A record number of the eerily-named guns were confiscated in the city last year, and Biden said the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are deploying teams of specially trained prosecutors and investigators to every district in the country to help local law enforcement track down the weapons and catch those who use them for crimes.
“If you commit a crime with a ghost gun, not only your state and local prosecutors are going to come after you, but expect federal charges and federal prosecution as well,” Biden said.
Like Adams, Biden has distanced himself from progressives in their party who have advocated for scaling down police departments in favor of finding alternative solutions for public safety.
Instead, Biden and Adams have pushed a muscular approach for addressing an uptick in violent crime in the U.S. during the pandemic, with the president dropping a sweeping anti-crime blueprint last summer that called on Congress to earmark $300 million for local police departments to hire more cops.
Adams, for his part, released his own public safety plan last month, replete with stipulations for beefing up the NYPD, including by reintroducing a modified version of the department’s controversial plainclothes units, which were disbanded in 2020 in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd.
“The answer is not to defund the police,” Biden said at Thursday’s event. “It is to give you the tools, the training, the funding, to be the partners, to be the protectors communities need.”
“We are not about defunding. We are about funding,” he added.
Adams, who often calls himself the “Biden of Brooklyn,” said the president’s proposals mirror his and vowed to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with him.
“The president is here because he knows what the American people want: Justice, safety and prosperity, and they deserve every bit of it. He wants to end the gun violence in our city and in our country,” said Adams, who served in the NYPD for over two decades before turning to politics.
Biden’s visit comes at a perilous time for the Big Apple.
Shootings overall in the city spiked by 31.6% last month as compared to January 2021, according to NYPD data.
Among last month’s shooting victims were six NYPD cops. Two of them, Officers Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora, died from their injuries after a gunman attacked them in a Harlem apartment where they were responding to a call of a domestic dispute.
Biden said he spoke to the families of the two slain officers and called them the personifications of “the who and what law enforcement ought to be.”
“Their loss for the city is also a loss for the nation,” he said.
©2022 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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Race obsessed Joe, by blaming the guns and ignoring the race of the people ignores the REAL fact that by banning the gun ownership of one certain race, 85-95% of the murders and attacks on their own people would disappear. The Problems dear Brutus are not in our stars, but in our politics. So let’s just nominate a woman of that race to oversee the Supreme judicial control of the race of people who commit most of the crimes and expect her to be totally unbiased?,,,knowing full well that one of the most dangerous people on the planet is an angry black woman behind the wheel of a car. Is car control and car manufacturers the next thing to be controlled and blamed by Joe and his race baiters for death in America? If those Democrats insist on following the science, then follow the government gathered statistics and the Democrats will succeed in putting a whole race back to where they began in Africa 450 years ago, no rights, to accountability, all profit when souls are sold for votes and bodies soon to follow. You ain’t no Lone Ranger Joe, and Adams as your partner is no Tonto. You and your party are the Butch Cavendish gang in disguise.
Didn’t you get the memo.. ITS The eeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllllll guns that jump up and randomly shoot folk. Not someone HOLDING and firing that gun…
“unveiled a new federal initiative aimed at stemming a flow of illegal weapons from southern states that has contributed to the city’s recent spike in violence.”
The majority of these illegal guns and drugs are coming across our U.S. OPEN southern border from Mexico. This treasonous, destructive socialist Democrat Party has done more damage to our country in the last year than anyone has ever done.
This treasonous, dishonest, corrupt, unethical, immoral, socialist Democrat Party has become our country’s most destructive and deadliest ENEMY!
PLUS everyone remembers operation FAST AND FURIOUS, where our govt, flat out GAVE WEAPONS AWAY to the cartels…
Inluminatuo , You wrote that right, the Democratic party will be just a unpleasent memory.
It is like talking to the side of a brick wall.
Mr Biden—I will challenge you to a scientific experiment: Going forward—in all of your meetings and public appearances, take a loaded gun with you and lay it on a table. At the end of the meeting/appearance, note how many people got shot. Repeat this experiment as often as you like and, each time, note the number of people who got shot.
Then explain to me how guns are the problem.
Aimless Joe would probably shoot himself in the foot. It’s not the color of the gun carrier, but the content of his character and the education and stability of his mind, and apparently the controllers of his party. Throwing more money at a party of criminals just enriches the criminals and enlarges the crimes.
Problem there is, you will never know when the gun will go with Joe holding it. He just may pull a Baldwin move.
HE can’t.. OR more importantly, he WON’T!
Do you mean to tell us that you haven’t seen that steady stream of guns heading up the road to those northern states? Old senile Joe must have been looking out his window one day and saw them as they passed through DC on the way up there. The liberals don’t seem to realize, or accept the fact, that guns by themselves don’t kill one single person, it always takes the person behind the gun to do that. God save us from from these loony democrats while we still have a United States of America.
AND If crooks didn’t get guns from the BLACK MARKET, not from lawful sellers, CROOKS generally wouldn’t hav guns
Oh no I bet the criminals are shaking in their shoes. What a pathetic demented old man. joe just take all guns from your taxpayer funded armed protection and show America how safe you feel! For that matter take all guns off capital hill and then you have a valid argument against guns.
I’ve had the same gun for over 40 years and it hasn’t shot at me yet!
Can’t convince a liberal that guns don’t decide to fire on their own and an automatic weapon does not mean literally automatic.
Hey Joe Criminal Traitor, what good does it do for police to arrest criminals, if they are not prosecuted? What good does it do for police to watch crimes taking place, if the police are blamed and prosecuted for arresting criminals, Joe Traitor Criminal?
Exactly. AND AS I keep saying, IF LAWS ARE NOT going to be Enforced by those who SWEAR TO UPHOLD OUR LAWS, why then do we NEED LEGISLATURES TO MAKE LAWS!
Us gun owners are used to these kinds of attacks…. Let’s Go Brandon! #FJB
joe biden the leader of the biden crime family could give a dam about anything or anyone let me repeat my self he cares about no one…BUT
JOE BIDEN AND THE FAMILY.
he cares nothing for america and he citizens who live here and pay taxes so the government can function or waste money.
the people in america who say the government will give it to me its free ….FOLKS NOTHING IS FREE.
when you say the government will pay for it, all that means is we are paying for it the govrnment does nothing except confiscate our money
they create nothing to sell or no service to sell they take from you and if youdo not pay up they will seek the dogs of the irs on you.
this goes on at every level of government.
I’ll ask my guns if they shot anybody today. They said no !! I had them locked up.