Families Of NYPD Shooting Victims Oppose New Cop Guns

New York City NY

23 September, 2021

2:19 PM

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NEW YORK CITY — The families of 21 New Yorkers who were shot and killed by NYPD officers voiced strong opposition to plans to give cops easier-to-fire handguns. "This will not increase safety for New Yorkers or help the NYPD uphold the law," the Justice Committee family group wrote in a letter this week. "All it will do is make it easier for officers to play the role of judge, jury and executioner, as they did with our loved ones." The letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea follows plans first reported in the New York Daily News to give new police recruits guns with reduced trigger pulls. NYPD officials argued less pressure on triggers will improve accuracy — and noted cops missed half their shots in 26 shooting incidents last year, during which they fired 256 rounds, the Daily News reported. But the family group shot back with a grim retort. "The NYPD officers who murdered our loved ones had no problem firing guns with 12lb triggers with deadly accuracy," they wrote. "It speaks volumes about the priorities of your administration that, while millions of Americans were taking to the streets to demand police transparency, discipline, defunding, abolition, and an end to these racist murders by police, the NYPD was prioritizing buying guns that make it easier to kill New Yorkers," they continued. Putting easier-to-shoot guns in the hands of nervous rookies headed to low-income communities of color instead of investing money in those neighborhoods is "despicable," they wrote. The group demanded de Blasio and Shea scrap the gun plan. Read their letter here.