#Shootings will keep rising until the politicians admit their disastrous mistakes

Despite the wintry chill last month, the anti-police policies of recent years kept things pretty hot on the streets of Brooklyn, The Bronx and other crime-ridden parts of the city that continue to experience an epidemic of gun violence.

NYPD figures for February show a 26.5 percent drop in overall crime but a 75 percent jump in shootings for February 2021 over the same month last year. The NYPD made 400 gun arrests last month, up 63.9 percent from February 2020.

Since Commissioner Dermot Shea last summer pulled the plug on the plainclothes anti-crime units that had been central to the NYPD’s anti-gun efforts, the increase in gun busts suggests there’s a lot more guns on the street now.

Yes, the NYPD added 200 cameras and 12 square miles of shot-spotter coverage over the last year to help reduce police response time for shootings. But that’s about catching up after the fact. It plainly isn’t keeping perps from carrying and using their guns.

While the pandemic has ebbed and flowed, the surge in gun violence has been steady — with both the virus and the violence hitting the same communities hardest. Yet New York’s leaders are silent on the “racial inequity” resulting from higher crime.

Don’t expect this grim trend to reverse until lawmakers and prosecutors accept the folly of everything they’ve done to embolden career criminals.