#NYPD reached 25-year high in NYC gun busts last week

The NYPD made more gun busts last week than any other week in the last quarter-century, Commissioner Dermot Shea said Tuesday, a glimmer of hope as shootings continue to surge.

“We hit a 25-year high in gun arrests last week, the most gun arrests we’ve made in a week in 25 years,” the top cop told 1010 WINS.

Department stats show that 160 gun arrests were made between Aug. 31 and Sept. 6 — not only a 25-year high, but more than double the 72 such collars in the same period last year.

Shea also noted that gun arrests are up for the month, with 436 busts in the 28-day period ending Sept. 6, a 36.2-percent increase from the 320 recorded in the same period in 2019.

“That should put to bed … any talk of what cops are doing out there,” Shea said.

With shootings exploding over the summer to levels also unseen in decades, NYPD and city officials have been at a loss for an explanation that isn’t at odds with their own stats.

The Post has debunked claims that the mass releases of prisoners through state bail reform and coronavirus precautions are to blame, as well as assertions that COVID-related court closures are at fault.

In recent months, the department also suffered significant funding cuts, and the loss of its gun-hunting anti-crime unit, disbanded by Shea over a number of high-profile cases gone south.

And a recent Post analysis found that the yearly clearance rate for shootings — that is, cases in which at least one arrest has been made — has tanked to around 20 percent, from its historical range of 30-to-33 percent.

The gun bust stats show, Shea said, that, “cops are putting themselves on the line every day as they have been.”

They also show, however, that there are that many heat-packing perps on city streets for cops to arrest.

“The problem is there’s too many guns out there and there’s not enough consequences and once we get our heads wrapped around that, I think we’ll be in a better place,” he told 1010 WINS.

“We’ve been speaking about this now for months: Intelligence, using ShotSpotter, using our field intelligence team, using video, following up on social media, good police work, a little bit of all of this,” added Shea, explaining what contributed to the gun busts. “And really…too many people carrying guns. And that’s the bad piece.”