#NYPD commissioner Dermot Shea blames budget cuts for shootings spike

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said Monday that the City Council’s cuts to the NYPD’s budget have fueled Gotham’s recent spike in shootings.

His comments come after the city saw another bloody weekend — 29 shootings with 35 victims between Friday and Sunday, according to preliminary figures released by the NYPD.

When questioned on 1010 WINS about a push from Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and Bronx City Council Member Ritchie Torres for an investigation into a possible work slowdown by the department, the top cop said, “I certainly hope [the elected officials] understand what’s happening here.”

“It’s all about math,” Shea said. “When you cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the budget, we have literally taken thousands of officers off the street this summer. And it’s done at a time when we know violence is going to peak. So it wasn’t a surprise. We were transparent, we told people when these negotiations were going on that this was likely to happen.”

The City Council on July 1 passed the Big Apple’s $88.1 billion with hopes to solve the Big Apple’s $9 billion budget shortfall — in part by cutting NYPD spending by $1 billion.

Arrests have been down for much of the year, NYPD data shows. In May — weeks before the budget was passed — year-to-date arrests were down 22 percent, from 96,000 in 2019 to just under 67,000 in 2020. Data also shows shootings were rising before the budget was passed in late June.

Shea also blamed public policy.

“People are saying that arrests are down,” the top cop said. “Well, of course arrests are down, they’ve been designed to be down through policy for the last six to eight years, and now you have thousands of less cops on the street.”

“So it would be a miracle if arrests are up,” he added. “And any assertion that the men and women of this department are slowing down is just really shameful at this point.”

The deep cuts to the NYPD’s coffers came in response to demonstrations seeking to defund the department in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis.