Right before the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee “field hearing” on New York City crime in Lower Manhattan on Monday, Congress Member Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan) and Mayor Eric Adams blasted the proceedings as a “political stunt,” while pointing to what they characterized as the party’s failure to address gun violence nationally.
The hearing, titled “Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan,” is aimed at looking into what House Republicans said are Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “pro-crime, anti-victim policies,” as an apparent response to Bragg recently charging ex-President Donald Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Ohio Congress Member Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the U.S. Government, is pushing a narrative that Bragg has let crime spin out of control in the city due to his progressive ideology and focus on going after Trump.
Speaking at a news conference in the Lower Manhattan federal building where the hearing is being held Monday morning, Nadler said as the committee’s former chair he knows what a “real” oversight hearing looks like — and Monday’s proceeding won’t resemble it.
“This is not a serious exercise, this is a political stunt,” Nadler told reporters. “This hearing is being called for one reason and one reason only: to protect Donald Trump. Jim Jordan and his Republican accomplices are acting as an extension of the Trump defense team, trying to intimidate and deter the duly elected district attorney of Manhattan from doing the work his constituents elected him to do. They are using their public offices and the resources of our committee to protect their political patron — Donald Trump. That is an outrageous abuse of power.”
Hizzoner welcomed Jordan and the Republican committee members to the Big Apple, which he called the “safest big city in America.”
“The numbers are clear,” Adams said. “And when I first heard about this hearing, I thought Jim Jordan was coming here to sit down with the police commissioner to find out exactly what we have done to decrease shootings in double digits, decrease homicides in double digits, made our subway system safe, remove thousands of guns off our streets that have basically come here from the southern part of the country.”
The NYPD statistics Adams referenced show a 23% decline in shootings and a 17% drop in shooting victims for the first three months of this year, compared to the same period in 2022. Additionally, murders are down 12.7% for the first quarter of this year, compared to that stretch of time last year.
Meanwhile, Nadler pointed out, Jordan’s home state of Ohio has a homicide rate that’s 73% than New York City’s.
Instead of holding a hearing on crime in one of the nation’s safest cities, Adams said, Republicans should be tightening gun laws to reduce the over-proliferation of firearms that have fueled a slew of mass shootings in recent years. He pointed to a mass shooting at an Alabama birthday party on Saturday that left four people dead and 28 more injured.
Republicans almost unilaterally oppose any legislation that would place more restrictions on gun ownership, including an assault weapons ban.
“It’s the Republican Party that’s stopping sensible gun laws,” he said. “It’s the Republican Party that is preventing the proper support and ensuring that police agencies across this country is receiving the necessary support they deserve. It was the party that held up our [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] (ATF) appointment to show we could have a coordinated effort in leadership. It’s the party, the Republican Party, that’s preventing the proper sharing of information and data, so that we can ensure we can go after those who are putting and placing illegal guns on our street.”
David Pucino, deputy chief counsel at the Giffords Law Center, said 92% of guns used in crimes in New York come from out-of-state. Many of the state’s they flow into New York from are Republican-led jurisdictions with far looser gun laws.
Republicans have stood in the way of gun trafficking laws, Pucino said, which would greatly reduce gun crimes in New York.
“The problem of gun violence in New York is because of guns that come from elsewhere in America,” Pucino said. “New York is doing its part it has strong gun laws and those strong gun laws protect New York residents … Congressional Republicans have blocked every effort that could prevent gun trafficking, that could address gun trafficking, that could stop the flow of illegal guns from states with bad gun laws into states like New York with good gun laws. And until we do that, until we address the problem of illegal guns flowing into our Safer cities, we will not address the problem of gun violence. We will not address the problem of violent crime.”
