Mayor Adams Announces NYPD Anti-Crime Unit will soon Hit the Streets

By Yehudit Garmaise

Mayor Eric Adams’ long-promised Anti-Gun Unit will be hitting the streets soon, but he is not going to rush the process, he said at a press conference Thursday at City Hall. 

The mayor said he has “a couple of hundred” officers who have applied to work in the new unit.

After a rough month in which crime continued to surge, Adams was asked whether he could roll out the new Anti-Crime Unit any earlier, the mayor said, “We are not going to expedite this.

“[These officers] have to be trained. We are going to get it right.” 

The mayor reported that while new recruits are undergoing intensive training to participate in the new Anti-Crime Unit, a team of officers already serve in the Anti-Gun Unit. 

The Anti-Gun Unit cops are in uniform, but patrol in unmarked cars, and “they are taking a great deal of guns off the streets,” the mayor said. “They are doing an amazing job.”

The police officers who serve in the newly formed Anti-Crime Unit will wear what Mayor Adams called, “modified police uniforms.”

“Once they train properly, once they are vetted, and once we believe they are ready to hit the streets: we are going to turn them out and put them on the streets.”