NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton brushed off the city’s alarming spike in shootings Tuesday, saying, “Crime goes up, it goes down’’ — but police brass are scrambling behind the scenes to stem the bloodshed.
“They are trying to come up with ideas on how to extinguish the problem — they’ve come up with nothing solid,’’ a law-enforcement source told The Post.
“This started five or six weeks ago when shootings started going up and we were on the losing end each week. That’s when the alarm bells went off and the brass started panicking, saying, ‘We got to fix this problem.’
“Now, everyone is scrambling around trying to figure out what’s happening.”
NYPD statistics released Monday show the number of shootings across the city soared 43 percent in just the past month — with fewer guns coming off the streets.
Bratton insisted to reporters Tuesday, “If you look at this year’s stats so far compared to over the last 10 years, we are actually doing pretty good.”
But sources said NYPD higher-ups are actually in full panic mode over the uptick.
They’ve ordered precinct commanding officers or their deputies to work nights, especially on weekends and late Sunday afternoons, when there’s been an increase in crime, sources said.
There’s also a bigger push to find suspects wanted on warrants, particularly in housing projects, sources said.
Police brass have OK’d extra overtime to flood hot spots with more officers, sources said.
A source added that higher-ups are meeting once or twice weekly with Chief of Department Philip Banks to brainstorm over the best crime-fighting tactics.
Bratton has blamed some of the violence on a surge in gang activity, but the source said the NYPD can’t even seem to decide who’s a gang member and who isn’t.