“We are failing our children”: rise of teenage gunmen and victims of gun violence in New York

Confirming the constant headlines, adolescent victims and perpetrators are increasingly protagonists in armed violence in New York, aggravated by impunity and anarchy.

The number of gunmen and their Underage victims have tripled in recent years in NYC, confirms a new memo from the NYPD, the nation’s largest police force.

The findings are part of a data analysis prepared by the New York Police Department which was recently distributed to other city agencies, and of which the New York Post obtained a copy.

Reveals that 12.7% of gunmen identified during the first eight months of 2022 were under 18 years, a significant jump from 9.2% in the same period of 2017. Compounding that finding, the proportion of teenagers injured or killed in shootings has also skyrocketed during that five-year period.

“It is very clear that we are failing our children,” said Richard Aborn , chairman of the Citizens Crime Commission, who has helped shape policing policy for several decades in New York.

Teens represented 10.9% of shooting victims in the five boroughs during the first eight months of 2022, according to the analysis, twice the rate of 5.7% reported in 2017.

Those under 13 years old have become much more likely to be victims of a shooting or to be named by police as suspected triggers as the number of incidents of gun violence increased in the five with given in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

There were 111 adolescent shooting victims during the first eight months of 2022, which is triple the 36 victims during the same period of 2017. The rise outpaces the overall rise in gun violence, which nearly doubled in 2022 compared to 2017. In total, the police have recorded 992 shootings with 1,206 victims in NYC so far this year 2022.

According to Aborn, the figures reinforce findings outlined in alarming new research showing that the average age that minors pick up an illegal weapon for the first time has dropped from an average of 16/17 years only 12/13.

In June 2018 happened one of the most brutal crimes in the history of New York, when fifteen-year-old Lesandro “Junior” Guzmán Feliz was ambushed and stabbed by gang members. In late 2019, college student Tessa Majors was stabbed by three minors when she was walking on Manhattan’s Morningside Park.

One of the most recent cases occurred at the end of August, when an alleged gang member from 13 was arrested on suspicion of shooting a NYCHA worker in the head “by mistake” who was enjoying his break in a park in the Bronx, surrounded by children .

Earlier this month a 15-year-old died after being shot in the stomach in a Brooklyn park minutes after leaving school. Days later, an armed teenager was electrocuted when he fell while fleeing from the police after a robbery in a subway car in the Bronx, and two of his accomplices arrested were minors. Yesterday, two minors were shot when gang members clashed on a playground in Queens, between parents and children.