#De Blasio offers no concrete answers to address surge in gun violence

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday offered no concrete answers to address the recent wave of shootings plaguing the Big Apple — as he dodged questions from every major city newspaper.

“[There’s] a lot we need to do to provide more and better options, particularly for young people in Harlem, in Upper Manhattan,” de Blasio told reporters during his daily City Hall press briefing.

“We’ll have more to say on that in the next few days, but a lot will be done preparing for this weekend to change the reality on the ground,” de Blasio said.

The non-specific comments come amid an ultra-violent uptick in New York that includes a grisly Fourth of July holiday weekend in which at least 49 people were shot — 11 fatally — mostly in upper Manhattan, and a violent June with 205 city shootings recorded, making it the bloodiest June in the Big Apple since 1996 when the NYPD logged 236 incidents.

During de Blasio’s roughly 45-minute briefing, he gave hardly any details on how he plans to combat the new wave of gun violence in the city.

The mayor also did not take questions from any major Big Apple newspapers like The Post — which ran the headline, “Bill, do something!” on its front page Tuesday — the New York Daily News, the New York Times or Newsday.

Instead, de Blasio said he had been on a Zoom video call with state Sen. Brian Benjamin (D-Manhattan) and 50-plus community activists and leaders to discuss the surge of crime and bloodshed.

“A very productive conversation on the things we need to do immediately, not just with policing but with community leadership — the leadership of clergy, community organizations, elected officials, Cure Violence movement — a host of ideas that are being worked on right now to get ahead of the situation for this coming weekend,” Hizzoner said.

It was not immediately clear if any members of the NYPD were part of that conversation but the key ideas flagged by the mayor appeared to work around, rather than with, the police department.

Those ideas, de Blasio said, included “a strategy that’s been used very effectively in the past by activists and community leaders, occupying the corners, occupying the blocks, a show of strength from members of the community to make clear violence isn’t acceptable.”

De Blasio added that city is also developing initiatives to provide more summer programming for young New Yorkers like “cultural and sports activities, family activities throughout the weekend.”

The mayor said NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, who once again was not part of his daily briefing with reporters, met with the local district attorneys and officials from the city’s court system to press them on when grand juries and trials may get underway again after they were halted due to the coronavirus pandemic.

There, too, de Blasio only promised, “more to say in the coming days.”

De Blasio continued to say that the coronavirus crisis and the partial shutdown of the courts across the Big Apple were among the reasons why crime is spiking.