#De Blasio slams The Post over NYPD data on city violence

The buck continues to stop everywhere but on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s desk.

Hizzoner once again attacked the messenger Thursday rather than address a new Post article that found firearms cases are going through the criminal justice system at the same rate as last year — refuting his claims that a coronavirus-related court shutdown is most responsible for this summer’s surge in shootings.

“I have not seen The Post article and I don’t always get accuracy from that publication,” de Blasio sniffed during a virtual City Hall press briefing when asked about the damning piece by a Wall Street Journal reporter.

In December 2019, there were 2,285 open gun cases in Gotham with 13 percent of suspects awaiting trial, according to the Post analysis based on NYPD and court data. In July 2020, the courts had 2,181 open firearms cases and 10 percent in lockup — or 104 fewer pending gun cases, the data shows.

There were also more gun and murder arraignments from April to June compared to October through December last year, with 819 over the three-month period this year compared to 642 last year, court data shows.

De Blasio tried to discredit those numbers — before realizing they came from his own police department.

“Anyone can try and manipulate a statistic,” he said.

When the Journal reporter pointed out the data was from the NYPD, de Blasio refused to back down.

“It’s a publication that historically has provided inaccurate information. It may be accurate statistics in this case, but I’m just not going to be gentle about the point that when there is a history of inaccuracy and an axe to grind it’s worth saying,” de Blasio fumed at The Post, rather than addressing the issue at hand.

“There is no one claiming the court system is functioning as normal. There’s just no one doing it,” de Blasio flailed.

While the state courts suspended grand juries and jury trials during the COVID-19 crisis because of social distancing regulations, judges continued to arraign defendants, hold hearings, and conference cases, according to a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration.

Both public defenders and the city’s five district attorneys agree that there’s been no slowdown in the prosecution of violent crimes.

So far de Blasio has not provided any evidence linking the city’s rising crime to a dysfunctional court system

“We’ll get you how many fewer cases and trials are happening,” he pledged Thursday. “It is just self evident the court system is not up and running the way it would normally be at this point of the year,” he said.

On Tuesday when asked about a Gotham Gazette article titled, “Little Support for De Blasio’s Claim that Court Shutdown is Driving Gun Violence Surge,” the mayor had a different kind of response. 

“I have not seen the article. I’ll make sure that my team looks at it carefully,” he said at the time.

The anti-Post rant came a day after the paper called into question whether the mayor simply has a different reality of what New York City and its citizens experience on a daily basis.