EAST HARLEM — The New Year's resolution for the 25th Precinct commander is to reduce gun violence.
There were eight more shootings in East Harlem last year than in 2014.
“Shootings are definitely our number one priority,” said Deputy Inspector Thomas Harnisch.
Last year’s numbers — 21 shootings incidents and 26 victims — marked a 60 percent increase in gun violence, he added.
The 25-year NYPD veteran and commanding officer of the precinct plans to combat gun violence with intelligence. The goal is to know where the shootings are going to happen before any guns are drawn.
“We are continually trying to identify the most violent people who live and hangout in the precinct,” Harnisch said.
They do this through a combination of confidential informants, monitoring social media accounts of known criminals, and coordinating with the Manhattan District Attorney and city Department of Correction.
All of the information helps identify patterns.
The majority of the shootings were either gang or drug related. About a third of them happened north of 125th Street between Fifth and Lexington avenues, he added.
Detectives are trained to look for signs of impending violence. For instance, crews will taunt each other through social media. Sometimes they will disrespect someone’s girlfriend or mother. Other taunts include taking a selfie in front of another group’s turf, the precinct commander said.
When the police notice a spike in activity they can reach out to community partners who work or go directly to someone’s parents asking them to keep an eye out, Harnisch said.
“We’ve gotten closer to our precinct and the precinct has gotten closer to the community,” said Rev. Dominick Reyes, an NYPD Chaplin and community partner with the 25th Precinct. “I believe the precinct is going a bit further in the community which is something that was needed.”
The precinct made significant progress in terms of strengthening community relationships in 2015. Initiatives that they launched in 2014, like a Thanksgiving dinner and a Holiday toy drive, nearly doubled in size last year, Reyes added.
In terms of reducing the number of shootings in the precinct, Reyes supports bringing back a controversial policy.
“I would say I really think that stop and frisk was really important,” he said. “I know people don’t like it and they feel it’s biased but I’m tired of seeing police officers be shot, I’m tired of seeing kids pulling out guns.”
Expanding the NYPD’s body camera pilot program — which is being used by a handful of officers in the 25th Precinct — would keep officers in check from misusing the program, he added.
Another part of the 2016 strategy is to take guns off the street.
So far this year officers have confiscated a shot gun from a man who was on parole for previous gun possession charges and a man who was walking down 125th Street with a handgun in his hand, Harnisch said.
Despite the progress, there have been setbacks. The same weekend officers confiscated the handgun, a man opened fire inside a Kennedy Fried Chicken on Third Avenue and sent one man to the hospital.
The NYPD shouldn’t be the only one addressing gun violence, said advocate Clark Pena, who works with both the 23rd and 25th Precincts.
“The city has to address the surrounding problems,” he said. “You have a huge economic disparity in East Harlem and if you look at most of these shootings they are coming from the PSA.”
If police are the only ones addressing the gun violence they will simply put a band aid on the issue and it will resurface after a couple of months, Pena said.
