New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday that he is fulfilling a campaign promise and bringing back a new version of the once-controversial plainclothes anti-gun unit, as part of his blueprint to end gun violence.
The New York Police Department is expected to launch the new units, renamed neighborhood safety teams, within the next three weeks to enhance uniformed public safety teams. Hundreds of candidates have been identified. The plainclothes units will focus on the 30 precincts where 80% of violence occurs.
It’s an issue Adams, a former NYPD sergeant, campaigned on after shootings and violent crime spiked in the Big Apple when the original units were disbanded in 2020 under his predecessor Bill de Blasio.
“It’s time to take the politics out of policing and out of crime response and crime prevention,” Brantner-Smith said Monday, speaking to Fox News Digital before Adams’ press conference. “Remember, we got rid of this, the gun unit that the mayor is bringing back. That was eliminated for purely political reasons. Politics has no business being involved when we’re talking about people’s safety.”
“After we look at the last 20 months in the whole country, I think we can all now safely say, and we need to realize and be adults about it, that these pro-criminal policies not only are they not working,” Brantner-Smith said. “They are endangering people, especially people in urban areas. And if you look at this murder statistics, they’re especially endangering people of color.”