Emotional Mayor Adams asks for help stopping gun violence in NYC

NEW YORK - On the same day that police responded to three shootings within a few hours across multiple boroughs, Mayor Eric Adams delivered a tearful address.

"The story of Jayquan breaks my heart. His story tests my spirit and we must do better for young people like him. The same warning signs over and over again. The same abandonment, the same betrayal. And I saw the pattern. A clear profile emerged of someone who needed help and never got enough," he said in his 14-minute long speech. 

Adams pledged to stop gun violence at its roots as paid tribute to 18-year-old aspiring rapper Jayquan McKenley, who was gunned down outside a Bedford-Stuyvesant recording studio on Sunday.

He blamed the shooting on a broken system that continually fails black and brown New Yorkers.

"We are failing too many of our sons and daughters, especially in the neighborhoods we’ve overlooked and written off," Adams pointed out. 

McKenley grew up in the South Bronx, where Adams noted that fifty percent of children live below the poverty line.

It’s also a neighborhood with one of the highest unemployment rates and lowest graduation rates in the city.

"We must step up to save the children who have fallen through the cracks upstream. We must rescue them before they are swept away in the rivers of violence," Adams argued.

However, crime has plagued almost every neighborhood.

On Thursday alone, two men were shot in East Flatbush, Brooklyn.

Both men survived, but one of them remains in stable condition.

Gunshots were also reported on East 115th Street in East Harlem, though no injuries were reported in that incident.

"You pray when you leave your house and you pray when you get back, because you could get hit innocently," one New Yorker told Fox 5 News.

Adams is now calling on New Yorkers to help fight for systemic change by building housing, creating jobs and confronting racism.

He has tasked every city agency and department with finding better ways to help at-risk children.

"Our chancellor must find ways to get them in class and on track, our police officers must find ways to keep them safe and our justice system must work to make sure to keep them out of jail and ensure they have second chances," Adams explained.