Memorial Day weekend in the Big Apple saw the fewest number of shootings of any holiday since such data were first recorded 32 years ago, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Tuesday.
There were seven incidents of gun violence in New York City from Friday through Monday – breaking the previous record of 10 set in 2013, according to the department.
“We had the safest Memorial day weekend in terms of gun violence that New York City has ever seen,” Tisch said on Fox 5’s “Good Day New York.”
“We have more cops out there than ever before – 1,500 additional cops this summer, and we were also very precise about the locations where we deployed our cops – looking at historical data about where the gun violence has occurred.”
Tisch explained that the department’s summer plan, which began on May 5, shifted deployments to focus on problem areas with a history of violent outbreaks — with shootings in these hotspots down nearly 60%.
“Given the results we’ve had over the first weeks of the program, and especially this weekend, we think that for this first go, we picked the locations correctly,” she noted.
The city saw two gunfire incidents Friday, one Saturday, and four Monday — as Gotham marked its first shooting-free Sunday during a Memorial Day weekend in 32 years, the department said.
The previous record was three shootings reported in 2004, 2013, and 2017.
There were 17 gun-related incidents recorded over the long holiday last year — with five shootings on Saturday, and four shooting each on Friday, Sunday and Monday.
This year, data showed seven people were impacted by the acts of gun violence — a sharp drop from the staggering 21 shooting victims reported over the patriotic weekend in 2024.
“I think that the department has a lot of very rich data that we can mind and we can use to inform our operations,” Tisch said, touting the department’s data and analytic team.
“One of the things I really enjoyed about this job, which is a difficult job, is getting to work with those talented data analysts to see how they pick where they’re going to deploy the cops. And I’m very pleased that it’s worked so far as well as it has.”
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