Mayor Bloomberg marked National Night Out yesterday evening with a whirlwind tour of the some of the city’s roughest police precincts.
The mayor used the event — a 29-year-old tradition started to foster better relationships between cops and the communities they serve — to tout lower crime numbers.
“The proof is in the numbers. Take a look crime here is down 36 percent from where it was in 2001,” he at a block party hosted by the 32nd Precinct in Harlem. “Since 2001, the NYPD had cut crime citywide by 32 percent and made this the safest big city in the nation.”
Bloomberg, who was joined by Manhattan DA Cy Vance, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, and Council Speaker Christine Quinn, also made an apparent reference to the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk program.
He said 20 recent graduates of the Police Academy will join the 32nd Precinct, and added, “We are not going to let anyone keep our police officers from doing their jobs fairly.”
Quinn touted a new $5 million grant to help community groups combat gun violence and help victims then brought up the tragic shooting of Lloyd Morgan Jr. in the Bronx last month.
“We don’t ever want to be in a room again with a coffin that small, that is our mission tonight and every night,” she said.
Kelly added that the community needs to work with police. “We rely on you, we rely on the community to help keep our city safe.”
Later, Bloomberg and Kelly visited the 113rd Precinct in Jamaica Queens, which hosted its own block party.
Again, they stressed that despite lower crime numbers over the past decade there is much work to be done.
“There are still too many guns, still too many people willing to use those guns,” Kelly said.
The night out against crime was marred with violence that evening.
Three people were shot last night in The Bronx, cops said.
A woman and two men were wounded on East 216th Street near Barnes Avenue in Williamsbridge around 11 p.m., cops said.
The woman and one man were shot in the chest and the other man was struck in the leg.
Ages on the victims were not immediately available.
The victims were rushed to Jacobi Hospital. Their injuries were not considered life threatening.
Three people were also wounded in Harlem about 2 a.m., authorities said.
A 20-year-old man was shot in the chest, and a 29-year-old woman was wounded in the leg about 2 a.m., according to cops and an FDNY spokesman. Another woman may have been grazed in the leg.
Police have two people in custody for the incident, authorities added.