BY Nayaba Arinde
Last week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced that 2025 was the “safest year ever for gun violence with the fewest shooting incidents and shooting victims in recorded history.”
Mamdani stated, “We need to see genuine public safety across the city, and that is something that is felt when New Yorkers can walk through their neighborhood without fear or without concern.” That happens, New York’s 111th mayor said, when people “see a City government that is addressing the fundamental concerns that actually underpins the misdemeanors and the minor crimes that we’re speaking of.”
Declines were recorded, Tisch maintained in shootings, transit/subway crime, murders, robberies, burglaries, grand larceny, retail theft, and auto theft. But, stationary and up were felony assault and domestic violence, respectively.
Tisch said that 2025 was a “Shooting incidents and shooting victims fell to their lowest levels in recorded history. The subway system had its safest year outside the pandemic era since 2009.”
“Where?! They said there were 4 homicides in the 73rd Precinct?” a disbelieving Brownsville resident asked Our Time President. “I had four on my block!”
But, Tisch insisted that last year, the City recorded 688 shooting incidents, the lowest number in the City’s history, she announced, 216 fewer than in 2024. However, the Police Commissioner admitted, “We have not turned the tide yet on youth violence.”
In 2025, she revealed that “14 percent of shooting victims were under the age of 18, an increase of five percentage points from 2024. And 18 percent of shooting perpetrators were also under the age of 18.”
Last autumn, Tisch said the NYPD implemented “school safety zones modeled after our violence reduction zones but designed specifically to keep kids safe…[by having officers by] commuter corridors, bus stops, and the route students take to and from school.”
She said that, “within these zones, overall crime was down 53 percent. And shooting incidents and shooting victims are down more than 75 percent.”
Perhaps influenced by the mantra of so many City Crisis Management System organizations, Tisch noted, “Addressing youth violence isn’t the work of one unit, one agency, or one solution. It requires all of us, families, schools, communities, elected officials, and law enforcement playing our part to keep young people safe.”
Numbers fluctuate, going down during 2017/18, then the pandemic happened, Jibreel Jalloh, activist, candidate for Assembly Member in District 59, told Our Time Press, but “Thanks to the Crisis Management System, the Violence Interrupters, and partners across government, we have seen a dip in this last year, and credit it to there. But, we know that to have an enduring reduction of crime, and to have true public safety, we need investments.”
The Founder of the “marginalized community” advocating Flossy Organization, South East Brooklynite Jalloh continued, “Where I am in Canarsie, we have been fighting for the building of a public community center, and we know that we need to have strong public infrastructure to have strong public safety. As tax revenues statewide have come in higher than expected, we need investment now.
As crime ebbs and flows, when we do face more challenging times, which we hope we don’t, we have the infrastructure there for law enforcement, for Violence Interrupters, for community organizations–to do the necessary work to keep the numbers low. Let’s not wait until we have to raise the alarm.”
Mamdani has repeated his focus on public safety.
In December the City Council introduced legislation to create a Department of Community Safety that will be tasked with promoting community safety, and providing emergency responses that support the preservation of public health, safety and welfare.
Addressing quality of life and crime in the community as a public health concern according to his campaign proposals, the 24/7 DCS would consolidate existing violence prevention offices under one roof and have a budget of $1.1 billion. DCS would coordinate across agencies and law enforcement and community volunteers “responding to emergencies, and conducting outreach in neighborhoods with high rates of violence.”
As for gun violence, Tisch stated, “Manhattan saw the steepest decline in shootings in 2025, down 38 percent year over year. The Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island each saw drops of roughly 25 percent or more. Brooklyn also saw a significant decline, with shootings down 15 percent below the previous benchmark set in 2024.”
The Commish said that Citywide, “murders declined 20 percent in 2025…On Staten Island, murders fell by more than 60 percent in 2025. Manhattan was down 33 percent. Brooklyn was down 24 percent. And the Bronx was down 18 percent.”
She said that “major crime on the subway system fell…shooting incidents…down a remarkable 63 percent.”
Director of the Black Law Enforcement Alliance, and Retired NYPD detective Marquez Claxton told Our Time Press, that, “Crime data should really be used to develop responsive law enforcement intervention strategies, and evaluated to determine proper resource allocation.
The wild card in all the crime numbers analysis is these random acts of stranger violence, and how untreated mental health ailments can lead to horrific, seemingly senseless injury or death. In NYC, the release of crime data for 7 major crime categories was never intended to serve as an overall crime barometer, but rather to provide a selective range of criminal offenses by which the police can be judged on general effectiveness.”
Claxton served as a police officer with former cop, and 110th mayor Eric Adams. Questioning by quoting poet Andrew Lang, the Brooklyn-born MSNBC correspondent added, “It is often quoted, rightfully suggesting to ‘use statistics as a drunk uses a lampost-for support, rather than illumination.’”
Mamdani’s office did not respond to an Our Time Press request for a response to those in the community who have said that they don’t feel any safer, particularly on the subway, despite the new statistics; or the 2 police involved shootings within a few hours last week, highlighting the very same point.
Last Thursday afternoon, 8th January, 2026, former cop Michael Lynch, 62, was reportedly shot and killed at Brooklyn Methodist New York Presbyterian hospital.
The NYPD said he was threatening to kill an elderly patient and a security guard, who he held in a room. After using a Taser, cops said they fired their weapons as he “advanced toward the officers” reportedly with a piece of a broken toilet seat. Later that same night, cops shot and killed a driver fleeing a car accident in the West Village, after he allegedly pulled a fake gun. The NYPD said the driver “drew what appeared to be a firearm and pointed it at the officers.” They hit him multiple times.
Mamdani said, “I will always emphasize when someone has been killed, the need for a thorough investigation as is our current process.”
When Mamdani chose to retain Mayor Adams’ holdover Jessica Tisch as Police Commissioner, he faced some pushback from police reform advocates who had demanded an NYPD overhaul in light of their constant charges of police brutality and harassment. Mamdani made it clear that he was in charge, “My police commissioner, just like my school’s chancellor, will report directly to me.”
