Jacob Freytes murder should move Mamdani & Co. to get real on fighting NYC gangs but wont

Saturday night’s horrific fatal shooting of an innocent boy in The Bronx is a grim reminder that the city’s gains against crime aren’t remotely enough.The NYPD is doing its best, even racking up gains, but Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s movement despises the police, indeed imagines that policing is the true cause of violence in our communities.Jacob Freytes, age 12, had just gone to the bodega when he got killed in someone else’s fight.Cops suspect it was gang-related; they nabbed the alleged killer, William Ferrer — a career criminal with a lengthy rap sheet, much like the skels Mamdani chowed down with last month at Rikers, watching a World Cup match.A security video shows Ferrer brazenly draw a weapon from a pants pocket and shoot wildly at two men fighting in the street before savagely shooting Freytes in the chest; two other adult men were also hit.Back before the NYPD was forced to near-abandon stop-question-and-frisk tactics, a lot fewer gangbangers dared to carry so casually.

Is this progress?  Cops say that the victim’s Mount Eden neighborhood is home turf for the violent Trinitarios and Sev Side Pinni street gangs.(Members of the Trinitarios brutally hacked Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz, a 15-year-old NYPD Explorer, to death in a nearby ‘hood back in 2018.)On Sunday, the mayor hit the Bronx Dominican Day Parade on the Grand Concourse, but didn’t travel the few blocks to visit the shooting site; we guess his team saw no way to make a good TikTok or Instagram out of showing some outrage or sorrow.Just last month, Mamdani and the City Council collaborated on a final $126 billion budget that fails to increase the NYPD’s headcount — indeed, makes no provision for new recruitment to offset the exodus of veteran cops.

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