Mayor Eric Adams promises 'full mobilization plan' to tamp down Bronx gun violence spike

Josephine Stratman and Thomas Tracy, New York Daily News on Aug 27, 2025

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NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams vowed on Wednesday to crack down on the gun violence that has rampaged across the Bronx over the last week by focusing on street gang activity, which he believes is the root cause of some of the clashes.

“We’re going to put in place a full mobilization plan,” Adams said. “We’re seeing gangs and young shooters and recidivism. That’s a terrible equation.”

Adams’ comments come as the NYPD tries to put a handle on the explosion of gun violence in the borough, which included four people being shot, two fatally, in separate incidents on Tuesday.

As of Wednesday morning, there had been 182 shootings in the Bronx this year — 37% of the 480 shootings in the entire city, officials said.

The Bronx has had more shootings so far this year than all of Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island combined. It’s only rival is Brooklyn, which has had 171 shootings as of Wednesday.

The Bronx also leads the city with 69 murders this year, a third of the 206 murders that have happened across the five boroughs.

Despite the violence, the Bronx has seen a 19% drop in shootings this year, compared to last year, where 220 people had been hit by gunfire by the close of August.

The Bronx leads the city in gun arrests, with 667 arrests being made as of Wednesday. That number, however, represents a 19% drop from the 831 gun arrests made in the Bronx last year.

“We have to be proactive with this stuff, because these young people are getting more and more involved in gang behavior, and they are finding themselves having just an overproliferation of guns that are coming into our city,” said Adams, who over the last four years has ballyhooed his administration’s war on illegal firearms. “When you take 23,000 guns off the street and you’re still able to have access to guns, that’s a real national problem that must be addressed.

The gun violence continued early Wednesday when two men were shot, one critically, on College Ave. in Morrisania about 8:30 a.m. A person of interest in the shooting was in custody with charges pending.

“All that we’ve done to bring down the numbers in the Bronx, to see shootings like this back-to-back,” Adams said. “One of the incidents we believe it was an innocent bystander. It’s alarming.”

In that case, an Amazon deliveryman was hit in the ankle standing by his truck parked near E. Tremont and Bryant avenues in West Farms when a gunfight broke out at a liquor store down the block.

It’s believed that the two gunmen were aiming at someone else when a stray shot hit the 31-year-old.

On Friday afternoon, four teenagers between the ages of 13 and 15 were wounded in a shooting near a Bronx playground.

In that onslaught, gunfire broke out around 4 p.m. on Tratman Avenue near St. Peters Avenue, down the block from The Pearly Gates playground in Westchester Square. A 13-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl were each struck in their left leg, a 14-year-old boy was grazed in the foot by a bullet and a 15-year-old boy was clipped in both legs, according to police. Medics transported all four youngsters to Jacobi Medical Center in stable condition.

“There were are at least five shots,” said Victor Carrion, 61, who witnessed the onslaught. “People were running away. I saw the girl on the floor. She was crying. She’d been shot in the left leg, and she was bleeding heavily. The other kids who were shot ran down the street.”

On Saturday, a mass shooting erupted inside a Bronx park during a basketball tournament that left one man dead, a teen clinging to life and three others injured.

Around 50 rounds of bullets were fired about 7:25 p.m. at Haffen Park in Baychester, striking Jaceil Banks, 32, in the chest and leaving Anthonaya Campbell, 17, with a bullet lodged behind her eye.

Medics rushed both victims to Jacobi Medical Center, where Banks died and the teen is in critical condition.

Robert Royal, 25, as well as Daeven Reyes, 20, and a 16- and 17-year-old boy were nabbed in the park. All four were charged with murder, attempted murder and gun possession. The names of the two younger suspects were not publicly released.

The three other victims are expected to recover. A 30-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, both shot in the back, made it to Jacobi Medical Center by private means, cops said. A 42-year-old man went to Montefiore Hospital by private means.

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(With Rocco Parascandola)

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