With five months still left to go in the year 2020, the total number of shootings in New York City has already surpassed the yearly total of 2019, according to Fox News.
The yearly total thus far has reached 777 as of Saturday night, when a 24-year-old man was shot in the Bronx. There were 776 total shootings in the entirety of the year 2019. There have already been several more shootings in the city since Saturday, as reported by the NYPD.
Retired NYPD sergeant Joseph Giacalone, who is currently a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College, had a blunt assessment of the situation, saying “it only gets worse from here.” Giacalone further explained that “as the shootings continue, so will retaliation. It’s a vicious cycle that the NYPD worked hard to mitigate, but they are no longer able, and in some cases, willing to do.”
The NYPD was one of the hardest-hit police forces in the country by the rising far-left calls to defund America’s police. Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-N.Y.) ultimately caved to the mob by first ordering the abolition of the NYPD’s 600-officer strong anti-crime unit, then followed up by cutting $1 billion from the NYPD’s budget. Both moves resulted in a simultaneous increase in violence, as similarly seen in other big cities that have disbanded or severely reduced their police forces.