Mayor Adams Anticipates Rise in Crime with Rise in Temperatures: Plans to Add More NSTs

 By Yehudit Garmaise

The hotter the temperatures outside, the more crime heats up, according to statistics compiled by the Bureau of Justice, which added that crime also tends to skyrocket during December.

In anticipation of a potential increase in crime during NYC’s hot summer months, Mayor Eric Adams pledged today to increase the number of the NYPD’s Neighborhood Safety Teams (NST) who are primarily tasked with removing illegal firearms from the streets and making arrests for any other illegal activities the police encounter.

“The summer months are difficult months, and we are concerned about them,” the mayor told PIX 11, in an interview in which he touted other crime-fighting efforts, such as the city’s expansion of summer youth jobs to 100,000 employment opportunities and pledged to “empower” the crisis management system, which “deploys teams of credible messengers who mediate conflicts on the street,” according to nyc.gov.

Adams’ pledge to continue to increase the presence of the NSTs citywide came after the NYPD reported last week that in March, major crimes have already spiked by 37% citywide.

Since Adams and NYPD Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell launched, on March 14, the uniformed, and more thoroughly trained NSTs to replace the plainclothes anti-crime unit that was disbanded in the summer of 2020 after many public displays of policing tactics that many called abusive, Adams and Sewell have repeatedly explained that they have learned from the mistakes of the past.

While Adams has promised that the NSTs will not engage in any of the “abusive” tactics sometimes used by the city’s previous anti-crime units, the mayor has been clear that the NSTs are “anti-gun units.”

Adams did not specify how many more NST units he would add this summer, but he did he say that he would “immediately redeploy” the overabundance of NYPD cops who are working at desks in offices, rather than patrolling the city and fighting crime.

“Too many police officers are doing civilian jobs.”

“I need [those cops on desk duty] back in the streets,” Mayor Adams said. “We need them to do the jobs New Yorkers hired them for.”

Photo Credit: Flickr