More NYPD anti-gun teams hit the streets, here's where

NEW YORK - Five more neighborhood safety teams are hitting the streets of New York City this week. 

The units, made up of five officers and a sergeant, are coming to the 23rd and 28th precincts in Manhattan, the 69th in Brooklyn, the 114th in Queens, and the 120th on Staten Island. Teams in other precincts hit the streets last week. They are modified versions of the controversial plainclothes anti-crime units that the city disbanded in 2020.

Mayor Eric Adams on Monday assured communities of color that these anti-gun teams are not the controversial plainclothes anti-crime unit, which was disbanded in 2020.

"There's a clear message — do it right, don't violate the liberties of people, but go after those guns and those who are the trigger pullers," Adams said.

He added that the anti-gun unit is already making a difference since its rollout last Monday. 

"In six days since we launched this program, we have made 31 arrests and 10 guns removed from our streets," Adams said. 

The Reverend Al Sharpton told Fox 5 News that he is watching and waiting to see what type of impact the teams will have on people of color.

"My concern is that we end up back in stop-and-frisk, which Eric Adams was opposed to himself," Sharpton said.

Indeed, John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor Greg Donaldson said getting a lot of guns off the streets means stopping a lot of people. Although communities of color, for the most part, want these specialized anti-gun units, Donaldson said, the mayor and NYPD need to make sure the officers are routinely retrained.

"They need to be called back in for training on the law, training on diversity, racial diversity," he said.

"These teams are there for gun violence," Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said. "They’re there for criminal activity. But they look like police officers. They are not in plainclothes. The uniform clearly states on the back, ‘NYPD Police.’"

The teams are hitting the streets in troubled crime-plagued precincts. In the 28th Precinct, for instance, police are searching for the man who tried to rape a woman late Friday night. Police say she is in critical condition.

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And in the 47th precinct in the Bronx, police continue to look for the suspect who shot and killed a man outside a Dunkin’ Donuts on Friday. The NYPD released video of a woman who the department calls a "person of interest."

So far this year, according to the most recent statistics available, shootings are up more than 10%.

An NYPD plainclothes unit was involved in the killing of Eric Garner in 2014. The officers were from Staten Island's 120th Precinct. The police killing sparked a nationwide social justice movement. 

RELATED: Woman in critical condition after Harlem rape attempt: NYPD

Violence interrupters on Staten Island, who work to deescalate violence and promote peace in their communities, say they will be closely watching when the neighborhood safety team rolls out in the 120th precinct. 

"We just want to make sure we don’t have another Eric Garner. We want to make sure that this isn’t being pre-packaged and rolled back out as the same thing under a different disguise. We are concerned, knowing what we went through years ago with stop and frisk" says Mike Perry, a violence interrupter under the True2Life Crisis Management System on Staten Island. 

"We just want to make sure that it’s something that doesn’t put us in the same position that we were in 15-20 years ago," says Malcolm Penn, a violence interrupter for True2Life.