{"id":307475,"date":"2026-07-28T10:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T10:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/307475\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T10:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T10:31:09","slug":"jacob-freytes-murder-should-move-mamdani-co-to-get-real-on-fighting-nyc-gangs-but-wont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/307475\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacob Freytes’ murder should move Mamdani & Co. to get real on fighting NYC gangs \u2014 but won’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday night\u2019s horrific fatal shooting of an innocent boy in The Bronx<\/a> is a grim reminder that the city\u2019s gains against crime aren\u2019t remotely enough.<\/p>\n

The NYPD is doing its best, even racking up gains, but Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s movement despises the police, indeed imagines that policing is the true cause of violence in our communities.<\/p>\n

Jacob Freytes, age 12, had just gone to the bodega when he got killed in someone else\u2019s fight<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Cops suspect it was gang-related; they nabbed the alleged killer, William Ferrer<\/a> \u2014 a career criminal with a lengthy rap sheet, much like the skels Mamdani chowed down with last month at Rikers<\/a>, watching a World Cup match.<\/p>\n

A security video shows Ferrer brazenly draw a weapon from a pants pocket and shoot wildly at two men fighting in the street before savagely shooting Freytes in the chest; two other adult men were also hit.<\/p>\n

Back before the NYPD was forced to near-abandon stop-question-and-frisk tactics, a lot fewer gangbangers dared to carry so casually. Is this progress? \u00a0<\/p>\n

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Cops say that the victim\u2019s Mount Eden neighborhood is home turf for the violent Trinitarios and Sev Side Pinni street gangs. (Members of the Trinitarios brutally hacked Lesandro \u201cJunior\u201d Guzman-Feliz, a 15-year-old NYPD Explorer, to death in a nearby \u2018hood back in 2018.)<\/p>\n

On Sunday, the mayor hit the Bronx Dominican Day Parade on the Grand Concourse, but didn\u2019t travel the few blocks to visit the shooting site; we guess his team saw no way to make a good TikTok or Instagram out of showing some outrage or sorrow.<\/p>\n

Just last month, Mamdani and the City Council collaborated on a final $126 billion budget that fails to increase the NYPD\u2019s headcount<\/a> \u2014 indeed, makes no provision for new recruitment to offset the exodus of veteran cops.<\/p>\n

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Yes, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch this month announced that The Bronx led the city with an overall 12% reduction in index crime year-to-date, with shooting incidents down 16% in the second quarter and shooting victims dropping 17%.<\/p>\n

She has split the borough into two separate patrol commands, adding nearly 200 officers and dedicated specialized units, all in coordination with precision policing, targeted enforcement and gang takedowns.<\/p>\n

Yet the killing of young Jacob shows that much more needs doing: We\u2019d argue for an expansion of the gang database (which the mayor has said he\u2019d like to eliminate) and more sweeping gang takedowns (which progressives also hate).<\/p>\n

Get the guns and the gunmen off the streets; break the damn gangs and show kids what a loser life choice joining them really is.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not where progressives and Mamdani\u2019s socialists want to go: They\u2019re still planning to close Rikers without viable replacement jails, to \u201cend incarceration\u201d and defund the NYPD.<\/p>\n

The family, friends and neighbors of Jacob Freytes deserve more than Mamdani\u2019s empty platitudes; they deserve justice and action ending the culture of violence that grips too many city neighborhoods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturday night\u2019s horrific fatal shooting of an innocent boy in The Bronx is a grim reminder that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,303,304,4542,9,24,63,103,299,3980,129,131,130,82],"class_list":["post-307475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-crime","tag-editorial","tag-guns","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-nypd","tag-opinion","tag-shootings","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}