The number of children arrested with guns in the Big Apple has jumped 137% since 2018, marking the sixth straight year of increases, disturbing data obtained by The Post shows.
So far this year, 427 people under the age of 17 have been arrested with firearms, an increase of 7% compared to 397 in the same period in 2023.
But this is an alarming increase from pre-pandemic 2018, when 180 juveniles were arrested with firearms.
Detective Frank Gagnon of the New York City Police Department's Collaborative Police Division said, “We read every report that comes in at the police department level, and many children, whether they are victims or perpetrators, are on those reports.'' I saw it there,” he said. “The kids that are there, the kids that are on the field and the kids that are around because of it. It's terrible.”
The shocking statistics come as teenagers have become targets of mass shootings in recent days, with four people killed in separate shootings on four consecutive days last month.
“This is a really, really bad sign,” said Chauncey Parker, the city's new deputy mayor for public safety.
The murder victims included Clarence Jones, 16, who was shot to death in Harlem on October 24th. Malachi DeBerry, 15, was shot in the head the next day in Brownsville. Tearyon Mungo, 16, who was shot in the chest in Fort Greene on Oct. 26, and Tristan Sanders, 15, killed in Crown Heights on Oct. 27.
Police said they are doing everything they can to keep children away from guns, but are hampered by state “raise the age” laws that require minors caught with firearms to appear in family court.
Before the law changed, 16- and 17-year-olds were charged in criminal court and many were incarcerated on Rikers Island.
“There have been at least two cases that I know of where children have been arrested with four or five firearms,” said Kevin O'Connor, recently retired NYPD Deputy Director of the Youth Bureau. “They were just released, released, released.”
He said the family court judge was not even told how many gun collars the boy had previously worn.
“Raise the Age dismantled the system,” O'Connor said.
The city has launched “Saturday Night Lights,” a structured weekend sports program designed to get young people off the street, and the NYPD's Youth Community Center, which tries to catch troubled kids before they happen. They have relied on programs such as Officer to occupy young people's free time. they are arrested.
Gagnon is currently helping oversee the program, and explained that board members actively work with children before they land themselves in hot water.
“That could involve school safety personnel…school administrative staff to get involved to get a better picture of how they are doing in different settings and who they are with. It’s possible,” he said.
Gagnon and other officers also stood outside the school during dismissal to monitor whether teens were hanging out with gang members.
“No kid is going to go out and find an illegal gun,” he said. “Our goal was to find out where that influence was coming from and see if we could move them away from it and give them another path.”
The teenager, who was hanging out with gang members, posted a photo of himself with a gun on social media and told Gagnon he didn't know it was illegal to own a gun.
“He was like, 'Is it illegal to post that on the internet?'” Gagnon said the boy asked him. “I said, 'It's illegal to have that.' Posting it on the internet is just a terrible idea.”
Gagnon said the boy's symptoms improved after officers got his mother involved.
“This kid has never been arrested for anything,” Gagnon said. “It was very important to us that he not be arrested and not be involved with the kids that are causing so much gun violence.”
Police were less successful in another case involving a child who was arrested with a gun-wielding friend. The boy's parents were uncooperative, and the boy was eventually arrested for bringing a gun to school.
“That's the difficult part of our job as youth officers,” he says.
