Biden visiting NYC next week for meeting with Mayor Adams on gun violence
President Biden is meeting with Mayor Adams in the city next week to discuss strategies for curbing gun violence as New York continues to reel from a recent wave of deadly shootings.
The meeting, set to take place in Manhattan next Thursday, will focus on the Biden administration’s “comprehensive strategy to combat gun crime,” including a plan it rolled out last year allocating federal funds for a slate of crime-fighting initiatives, the White House said.
Adams, who unveiled his own plan earlier this week for addressing the city’s recent uptick in gun crime, said he’s looking forward to talk with Biden about “how we can work collaboratively to end the scourge of gun violence we are seeing on New York City streets.”
“Public safety is my administration’s highest priority, and we welcome the opportunity to display to President Biden how federal and local governments can coordinate and support each other in this fight to keep New Yorkers safe,” Adams said in a statement.
Biden’s anti-gun violence plan focuses heavily on using federal resources to beef up local police departments and hunt down gun traffickers who bring illegal weapons from southern states into large cities, including New York.
As a result of the plan, federal anti-gun trafficking strike forces were deployed to New York and four other major U.S. cities in July. The teams had confiscated 2,000 illegal weapons nationwide as of last month, according to data provided by the White House.
Biden’s New York visit comes on the heels of Adams releasing his own anti-gun violence plan.
The so-called “Blueprint to End Gun Violence” includes a string of NYPD actions, including the reinstatement of a controversial plainclothes police unit, as well as various proposals for increasing cooperation with federal and state authorities.
Adams’ plan received a ringing endorsement from Biden in a phone call on Monday night.
“He expressed his firm support for Mayor Adams’ efforts to combat gun violence and violent crime,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday.
Meanwhile, public defender services want Biden to visit troubled Rikers Island during the visit.
“We call on President Biden to visit Rikers Island and bear witness to the ongoing human rights violations against incarcerated New Yorkers,” the Legal Aid Society, The Bronx Defenders, Brooklyn Defender Services, New York County Defender Services, the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem and Queens Defenders wrote in a joint statement Wednesday.
The unveiling of Adams’ crime-fighting plan came in the wake of a horrific shooting in Harlem this past Friday that left two NYPD officers dead.
Adams was in the Bronx on Wednesday to participate in the dignified transfer of one of the slain officers, 27-year-old Wilbert Mora, who died Tuesday after clinging on to life for days. Mora’s partner, 22-year-old rookie cop Jason Rivera, died at the scene of the shooting on Friday.
The killing of the two young cops added to what was already a turbulent start to 2022, with shooting incidents across the city up by 16% so far this year as compared to the same time period in 2021, according to NYPD data.
Adams, a retired NYPD captain who was elected mayor on a promise to make the city safer, said earlier this week that Biden’s support will be integral for cracking down on gun violence.
“POTUS knows what it takes to keep our streets safe and his support will be invaluable in getting the job done,” Adams tweeted Tuesday.
