NEW YORK – Saying if we could defeat COVID-19 we can defeat gun violence, Governor Cuomo, Tuesday, declared war on the scourge, which is particularly devastating to black and brown communities, he said.
The governor signed legislation declaring a disaster emergency on gun violence and announced a multi-pronged approach to put a lid on it.
“If you can beat COVID, you can beat gun violence, you can beat poverty, you can beat drug abuse; you can beat whatever you want to beat. We just have to want to do it,” he told an audience of community leaders at John Jay College in New York City.
The plan ranges from providing alternatives for young people to avoid street crime, like jobs and recreational activities; mapping and targeting high-crime areas; getting illegal guns off the streets; intervening with victims right at hospitals with interveners like with the SNUG program (SNUG spells GUNS backwards); community engagement; and building police-community relations.
The governor committed $138 million in state funds to the efforts.
State Assemblyman Jonathan Jacobson (D, Newburgh) supports the governor’s new initiatives.
“As I have often said, the guns used in local shootings are not manufactured in Newburgh or Poughkeepsie. We must combat gun violence by stopping the flow of illegal guns up the I-95 corridor. I am pleased that the governor is taking some first steps in this direction. We need to establish a multi-state, anti-gun trafficking task force to prevent these illegal guns from reaching our streets,” he said.
Republican Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro had a different take on Cuomo’s announcement. “Andrew Cuomo and the democrats in Albany have spent the past four years dismantling our criminal justice system, undermining public safety, and even threatening the well-being of alleged assailants.” Molinaro said. “To now blame the increase in violence on anyone but themselves is absurd and dishonest.”
In recent months, gun violence has been on the rise in this area in Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Kingston, Monticello, New Rochelle and Yonkers among other locations.
Many communities are already doing what the governor said. Poughkeepsie and Newburgh both have the SNUG program and local police departments to crime mapping to target crime-riddled areas.
