Joe Biden arrives in NYC to address surging gun violence with Eric Adams
President Joe Biden touted his plans to crack down on firearms trafficking and homemade “ghost guns” during a Big Apple visit Thursday — but didn’t address the pressing problem of the firepower that’s already in the hands of dangerous criminals.
One day after a funeral for the second of two NYPD cops gunned down last month, Biden met with Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul at One Police Plaza, where he delivered a rhetoric-heavy speech and said they were all on the same page when it comes to combating the surge in gun violence plaguing the city.
“Mayor Adams, you and I agree: The answer is not to abandon our streets. The answer is to come together — police in communities building trust and making us all safer,” Biden said.
“The answer is not to defund the police. It’s to give you the tools, the training, the funding, to be partners, to be protectors.”
But the president’s remarks were quickly dismissed as hot air by rank-and-file cops who said they didn’t hear anything that would actually help stem the shootings.
“Typical political mumbo-jumbo. They talk a good game, but they don’t help,” a Brooklyn detective told The Post.
“The guns are already here. We have to keep the people that we arrest with guns in jail. That is the only hope for innocent victims that get shot.”
A Staten Island cop agreed, saying ruefully, “I promise you, people will get shot this weekend.”
“They have to change the laws and allow us to do our job and lock people up. And then, they have to keep them in jail,” the cop said.
Another NYPD source also said that illegal, DIY ghost guns were “an easy target” for politicians seeking to deflect blame for increasing crime.
“They’re popping up no more than regularly manufactured guns,” the source said.
“So, if they all suddenly disappeared, it wouldn’t really make a difference. The only real negative is they’re harder for us to track.”
The NYPD wouldn’t say how many shootings have been tied to ghosts guns, but official statistics show that 225 of the homemade weapons were seized last year through Dec. 3 — a mere fraction of the total 6,292 firearms confiscated by cops.
Adams — who repeated his claim that he’s “the Biden of Brooklyn” — said he welcomed the president’s effort to crack down on gun trafficking and invoked the Jan. 21 slayings of cops Wilbert Wilbert and Jason Rivera after they responded to a domestic incident in Harlem.
“We’re going to break and destroy the Iron Pipeline that allows southern states in this country to produce weapons that end up on the streets and take the lives of our police officers Mora and Rivera,” Adams said.
Adams, a former NYPD captain who was elected in November after campaigning on a return to law and order, also said he and Biden saw eye-to-eye on the issue of public safety.
“The president is here because he knows what the American people want: Justice, safety, prosperity — and they deserve every bit of it,” he said.
“Our most important mission is protecting the people of this city and this country, making sure they have what they need to live their lives.”
Hizzoner added: “Yesterday, we gathered at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in mourning. Today, here at One Police Plaza — where I walked across that stage as a captain — we’re here in solidarity to deal with the issue of violence that has become pervasive in, not only New York City, but in the cities across America.”
The meeting at NYPD headquarters came shortly after the White House announced a slew of anti-crime measures, including the Justice Department’s new National Ghost Gun Enforcement Initiative.
Biden, who was accompanied by Attorney General Merrick Garland, flew into New York at about noon after their departure from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland was delayed more than an hour.
A group of protesters with a bullhorn and a sign with the derisive, anti-Biden message “Let’s Go Brandon” was waiting when they arrived at One Police Plaza just after 1 p.m.
Following the meeting there, Biden, Garland, Adams and Hochul headed to a public school in Queens to talk to “violence interrupters” about local efforts to combat gun violence.
During Biden’s flight to the city on Air Force One, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked why the president didn’t push up his trip so he could attend Mora’s Wednesday funeral “and show support for law enforcement.”
“We have been planning this trip in coordination with the mayor’s office,” Psaki said.
“We’ve invited a number of officials to attend the trip. He also is, as you know, going to the police headquarters to make clear his strong support for them.”
Psaki also said that Biden “has a long record of advocating for, supporting through funding, through speaking out, the role of local police, of national police and the important role they play in addressing crime and keeping communities safe.”
Just ahead of the visit, Republicans slammed the Biden-Adams meeting as nothing more than a “PR stunt.”
New York State Republican Party Chairman Nick Langworthy told a Republican National Committee conference call that the president’s trip “was designed to distract from the real problems at hand, which is the anti-police, pro-criminal policies perpetrated by the Democratic Party.”
City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli (R- Staten Island) also suggested Biden was trying to distance himself from progressive Democrats behind the defund police movements.
“When you see [Biden] with all the imagery of men and women of the NYPD behind him, you have to understand that that is the acknowledgment that the party’s past two years their position has been an abject failure, and they’re ashamed of it, and now they’re doing a 180,” Borelli said.
Additional reporting by Tina Moore, Kevin Sheehan and Sam Raskin
