What To Know Today
NEW from THE TRACE: Is NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ crime reduction strategy ignoring lessons of the past? Even with the city far safer than it was in the 1990s and early 2000s, critics say the mayor — who has prioritized public safety amid the pandemic shooting surge — is falling back on old so-called tough-on-crime strategies while neglecting other strategies that worked in the 2010s to give the city its second historic drop in crime. “It does sound very similar to the broken windows model,” says Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, referring to the controversial strategy – employed in the 1990s – that suggests low-level enforcement prevents more serious violence, but which fell predominantly on Black and brown New Yorkers. You can read Chip Brownlee’s piece here — the first in a three-part series on gun violence prevention in New York City that we’re publishing this week in partnership with The Guardian.
‘Getting very close:’ The latest on the Senate gun talks. The long weekend came and went and still there is no legislative text for a bipartisan agreement on new gun laws. As Chip Brownlee reported in a series of dispatches last week and in our Weekly newsletter (subscribe here), there are at least two aspects to the framework that senators were clashing over on how to make into law: funding for states to enact and improve red flag laws, and an effort to keep guns out of the hands of abusive dating partners. Lead GOP negotiator John Cornyn said Friday that negotiators were “getting very close.” The Reload’s Stephen Gutowski cites sources familiar with talks saying the final bill text could come in the next day.
Officers were armed and ready to storm the Uvalde classrooms. They didn’t have clear orders. That’s according to a Texas Tribune review of police transcripts and footage that state and federal investigators are looking into to understand why it took more than an hour from when the gunman first entered the school to when an officer killed him. The story recounts officers angrily wondering why they weren’t allowed to move in to neutralize the shooter. A surveillance image leading the story shows five armed officers with ballistic shields in the school who didn’t enter two connected classrooms where the shooter was holed up for another 46 minutes. “I can’t think of another incident in the United States where it appears so many missed opportunities occurred,” Katherine Schweit, an ex-FBI agent who co-authored the agency’s top research on mass shootings, told the Tribune.
Shootings in New York City and Washington, D.C. lead another violent weekend. Gunfire erupted during an outdoor gathering in Harlem just after midnight on Father’s Day, leaving one person dead and eight others injured. The dead person was Darius Lee, a 21-year-old standout basketball player at Houston Baptist University who was just named the university’s male student-athlete of the year. Yesterday, people set up a makeshift memorial outside Lee’s childhood home in the area. “We are in shock and cannot wrap our heads around this news,” his coach said in a statement. Hours later in Queens, a shooting outside a catering hall left one dead and two others injured. In Washington, D.C, a 15-year-old was fatally shot and three others, including a police officer, were wounded when someone opened fire at the Moechella music festival in the U Street neighborhood. The organizers of the event decried the violence, saying the event is “a symbol of Black culture in D.C. and is built on the foundation of peace.”
GOP U.S. Senate candidate in Missouri totes shotgun in ad asking voters to go “RINO Hunting.” Eric Greitens appeared in the video alongside other heavily armed men storming a house. “Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.” Greitens says in the violent ad calling out purportedly moderate Republicans — so-called Republicans in name only — who have been a frequent target of the Trump right wing. Greitens, the former governor of Missouri who resigned amid scandal in 2018, was recently accused of abuse by his ex-wife. She alleged that on three occasions in 2018, multiple people intervened to limit her then-husband’s access to guns after his threats.
The Trace turned 7 over the weekend. We launched on June 18, 2015, with a tiny staff, in the aftermath of the Charleston church shooting. We approached this beat with one point of view about the issue of gun violence that remains all too true today: there is too much of it. Thank you for being a loyal reader in the years since.
Data Point
At least 13 — the number of people who have been charged with illegal gun possession stemming from the U.S. Capitol insurrection, according to our updated analysis of arrest records and court documents. [The Trace]
