New York Mayor Eric Adams’ plan to tackle gun proliferation was endorsed on Monday by a coalition of more than 200 companies, including Pfizer and JP Morgan Chase, civic, religious, and world leaders. of education, art, and trade unions.
“Public security is the basis of a prosperous city,” they indicate in the letter in which they point out that the recent death in the shooting of police officers Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora and the increase in “senseless” attacks has increased the need to remove illegal weapons and increase the presence of agents in the streets “to function in a fair and efficient manner”.
The policemen Rivera, cremated last Friday, and Mora, whose remains will be buried on Wednesday, died after being shot when investigating a domestic dispute, with a weapon that is illegal in New York, and whoever shot it had a long criminal record.
The incident with the police, in the Harlem neighborhood, in a city where New Yorkers had already expressed their fear of going out into the streets, increased calls for a solution to the problem, caused according to the authorities by the flow of illegal weapons.
The letter follows the response to the crisis by Mayor Adams, a former police captain, who last week presented a comprehensive plan for security that includes checkpoints at bus and train stations that enter the city and resume the controversial unit of agents in civilian clothes, abolished in 2020, as well as mental health experts, among other actions.
“New York cannot recover from the devastating impacts of the pandemic without first restoring the sense of personal security that every resident, worker, visitor, and community of our city has a right to expect,” the letter of support for Adams plan further states. who was sworn in on January 1?
“The mayor has taken a courageous stand and we all share a responsibility to help him carry out his agenda,” say members of the coalition, which includes Richard Aborn, president of the Citizens Commission on Crime, Albert Bourla and Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of Pfizer and JPMorgan Chase, respectively.
Also to Laurence D. Fink, president, and executive director of the investment firm BlackRock, Peter Gelb, general director of the Metropolitan Opera, Robin Hayes, executive director of the airline JetBlue, former judge Jonathan Lippman or Jeff Shell, executive director of NBC Universal and David Solomon, Chairman, and CEO of Goldman Sachs, among others.
“Making New York a safer city is a prerequisite for prosperity and social justice and will help us get through the multiple crises we face,” Adams said in the statement releasing the letter.
“It will take all New Yorkers to help us move forward, and the support of this extraordinary coalition is an indication that we are on the right track,” he said.
The rise in firearms crimes led the governor, Kathy Hochul, to create a committee made up of nine states, led by New York, to seek an answer and solutions to the growing problem and which held its first meeting last week.
