#Dermot Shea defends relationship with Mayor de Blasio amid NYC shooting surge

The dissolution of the NYPD’s anti-crime unit did not lead to the dramatic rise in city shootings, Commissioner Dermot Shea said Monday, as the top cop — who recently blasted the city’s lawmakers as “cowards” — defended his relationship with Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Shea reassigned the unit’s roughly 600 members in June because it was the source of a “disproportionate” number of shootings and use-of-force complaints — and some critics have since tied the rise in shootings to the unit’s demise.

But the cops were reassigned and are still working, Shea said on NY Monday morning.

“You know, there were several hundred [anti-crime] officers that were transferred to detective squads. The rest of those officers are out there, they’re in the same communities, they’re still out there working, and saying that the anti-crime unit is why the shootings are happening right now I think is missing the point,” Shea said.

City shooting numbers have been rising all year, but they skyrocketed when warmer weather hit, sending the total number of incidents in just the first seven months of the year barreling past the total for all of 2019.

Shea instead blamed the criminal-justice system.

“We need people to have consequences for carrying guns, we need people to have consequences when they commit crimes,” he added. “And when you look at the populations of Rikers Island, of state prisons, and many other factors right now, I would point to those as significantly more impactful than transferring anti-crime members.”

Brass and pols have attributed shootings to state bail reforms that have fewer people jailed awaiting trial, but the NYPD’s data does not support the thesis.

Meanwhile, the commissioner told NY1 he “get[s] along very well with the mayor” — less than two weeks after calling city pols “cowards” when they reduced NYPD funding and made it criminal for cops to use already-banned chokeholds.

“Do we see eye to eye on every single issue?” Shea said of himself and Hizzoner. “No, and I don’t think that’s normal for someone to expect that. But we get along on the most important issue of all: keeping New Yorkers safe and how do we do it fairly. And we are lockstep on that.”

De Blasio has said the statement “wasn’t constructive” but nonetheless defended Shea.

The comments at the closed-door meeting were not directed at de Blasio, NYPD spokeswoman Devora Kaye told the Times, though she declined to say who he was admonishing.