The number of teens busted with guns in NYC has skyrocketed 19% this year, even as cops see some gains in the plague of youth violence, new data show.<\/p>\n
There have been 423 kids under age 18 arrested so far this year compared to 355 in the same period in 2025, NYPD data show. <\/p>\n
There were 76 juveniles shot so far this year, a 19% decrease compared to the same period in 2025 when 93 were shot. <\/p>\n
An undated photo of 14-year-old Malakai Adams, who was shot and killed at the Ocean Bay Apartments on Beach Channel Drive in Edgemere. Dennis A. Clark for NY Post<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s tally, 76, is down slightly from 2024, when 78 were shot, according to the data.<\/p>\n
The number of young shooters is down 11% this year, with 83 shooting another person so far this year compared to 93 during the same period of 2025, the data show. <\/p>\n
But the number of juveniles pulling the trigger is up 6% so far this year over two years ago, to 83 from 78, according to the data.<\/p>\n
Police attribute the problem to New York\u2019s 2017, soft-on-crime \u201cRaise the Age\u201d law, which mandated housing juvenile offenders separately from adult inmates in correctional facilities. <\/p>\n
That, coupled with laws that make some crime ineligible for cash bail, a judge will only send juveniles to the city\u2019s main detention centers for the most serious crimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been sending the message for years that you\u2019re not going to go to jail if you get caught with a loaded gun,\u201d said retired NYPD Assistant Commissioner of Youth Strategies Kevin O\u2019Connor. \u201cIt\u2019s not only the guns, it\u2019s the felony assaults with weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jackie Rowe-Adams, center, and other parents who lost children to gun violence hold a press conference outside P.S. 154 in Harlem in 2023. J.C. Rice<\/p>\n
A gun found in a 15-year-old\u2019s backpack at Martin Van Buren High School in Queens on Wednesday. Obtained by the New York Post<\/p>\n
Jackie Rowe-Adams, co-founder of Harlem Mothers and Fathers S.A.V.E., right, is seen during the Police Athletic League\u2019s Conversations with Kids on Thursday, Feb. 5. Michael Nagle for NY Post<\/p>\n
The NYPD has been using various strategies to fight youth crime, including setting up safety zones in the areas most heavily trafficked by students, the NYPD has said.<\/p>\n
The NYPD also assigns specialized Youth Coordination Officers, supervised by sergeants, to monitor crime trends around schools and neighborhoods and to connect young people with programs. <\/p>\n
The department also touts youth programs like Saturday Night Lights, a city-wide, youth sports program, and the Police Athletic League that runs youth initiatives.<\/p>\n
But the NYPD can only do so much <\/a>about the problem of juvenile crime, said New York Law School Professor Kirk Burkhalter, who served 20 years in the NYPD and retired as a first-grade detective.<\/p>\n \u201cSadly, this is nothing new,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A suspect wanted in connection with the murder of 14-year-old Malakai Adams in Queens was caught on surveillance video fleeing with the dead teen\u2019s scooter. dcpi<\/p>\n \u201cI remember being a cop in the 1980s and life was extremely cheap and most of the folks doing the life-taking in large urban areas were very young,\u201d he said, citing the crack epidemic as the driving force at the time.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s youth violence tends to explode over turf wars between crews in the city\u2019s neighborhoods and online threats and bragging among juveniles, experts have said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s pretty amazing that there\u2018s a segment of young people who are committing crimes that would be difficult to apprehend them for but for them putting the proceeds of those crimes \u2013 and holding an unlicensed firearm \u2013 on some type of social media, literally bragging about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A GoFundMe page is shown for Malakai Adams, who was one of 76 children shot so far this year in New York City. GoFundMe<\/p>\n The most the NYPD can do in the end is to make arrests, Burkhalter said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe police are literally keeping the top on the bottle,\u201d he said. \u201cThe only thing they can do is apprehend offenders once they\u2019ve committed a crime. There has to be a different approach.\u201d<\/p>\n