We recently looked at the results of New York City Mayor Eric Adams bringing back the special gun crimes task force of the NYPD, though these days the various units deployed around the city have the much friendlier name of Neighborhood Safety Teams. The Mayor reported that in just the first few weeks of operation, the NSTs had taken dozens of guns off the streets and made more than two dozen arrests. The vast majority of them had one thing in common. The suspects generally had prior convictions or arrests for similar crimes. So that’s some great news, right? Getting more shooters and illegal guns off the street was the stated objective and if they keep up this good work the city should see some measurable improvements. There’s just one problem, however. Of those 25 suspects arrested on gun charges, how many of them do you think are still behind bars? If you guessed “one,” give yourself a cookie. All the rest of them have been sprung. (NY Post)

The NYPD said the new Neighborhood Safety Teams made 25 gun arrests in their first three weeks since launching in March, but The Post was only able to obtain court records or information for 12 of the cases.

Of those 12, just one man remains behind bars — meaning 11 of the defendants are back on the street, including the four who were cut loose with no bail. The others had posted bail that was set in their respective cases.

One of the sprung includes Tyquise Bell, 23, who was allegedly nabbed by NST cops on March 30 in the Bronx after they spotted a 9mm Taurus pistol inside the lower leg of his pants, court records say.

Tyquise Bell had already been arrested on gun charges. When the police found him with an illegal 9mm tucked into his pants, he told them that he had “found it” a couple of days earlier and had never fired it. Nevertheless, when he arrived in court, the prosecutor agreed to spring him on supervised release.

Xayvion Rodgers, 19, and Robert Griffin, 19, were chased down and arrested with a loaded B6C Sarsilmaz 9mm pistol with a fully loaded 12-round magazine. Neither were eligible to legally purchase a firearm. They were charged with a felony firearms charge, making them eligible to at least have bail applied to them under the city’s recently revised guidelines. But Judge Phyllis Chu cut them loose on supervised release anyway.

Toward the end of March, Marcos Malvar, a felon, was arrested with both illegal drugs and a loaded, illegal .380 semiautomatic handgun. Oh, and he also allegedly choked out his girlfriend. He too was eligible to have bail applied to keep him behind bars. An assistant district attorney convinced Judge Laura Johnson to release him on his own recognizance.

The list goes on and you can read more of those stories at the link if you have the stomach for it. This is the exact concern I raised in my last article (linked above) about the early success of the new task force. No matter how solid the Mayor’s good intentions may be and no matter how excellent the work done by the officers in the NSTs, none of it is going to matter if the prosecutors and judges who are handed these cases don’t hold up their end of the bargain. How many of those 24 suspects would you wager had a fresh illegal handgun they “found” within one or two days of being sprung? How many of them have already committed new crimes but haven’t been apprehended yet?

It’s almost too depressing for words. We will need several more rounds of elections and possibly some recalls by the voters of New York City before any of these reforms really start hitting pay dirt. But those voters have recently shown that they are hungry for change, so perhaps they’ll come through. In the meantime, they’ll still want to stay out of the subways and not go out alone after dark. New York City remains far from being a safe place.