On Thursday morning, a few steps from the spot where Ms. Johnson was killed, Julio Cruz discovered police were towing his car. He said police told him a bullet from the shooting may still be inside the vehicle and that they needed to investigate. “The time they need is the time they need,” said Cruz, 62. “I hope they find something about this case.” A single police patrol guarded the small tent that had no rope, which was next to a playground and a green area on the hillside. There was a dark red streak of blood on the sidewalk. After rising earlier in the pandemic, New York City shooting rates have begun to decline, but remain above pre-pandemic levels. As of Sunday, there had been 624 shootings in the city this year, compared to 710 in the same period in 2021. This is a drop of 12 percent, but it is still about 28 percent more than at the same point in 2019. Even in the midst of the recent fall, the obsession with gun violence — especially in poor and working-class neighborhoods with large black and Latino populations — has increased pressure on Adams to act. Rates of domestic violence in the city have also risen since the pandemic began. The numbers follow a worrying national trend, when the early days of Covid forced people to stay home, a phenomenon some experts suggest has made it difficult for women to report or escape criminals. In 2019, the Police Department submitted 87,512 reports of domestic violence. in 2021 it was 89,032. In the 19th District, where the killings took place, rates have fallen slightly over the same period, by about 3 percent. In New York, the impact of domestic violence has historically been disproportionate to blacks and Hispanics. Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Sean Piccoli, Matthew Sedacca and Téa Kvetenadze contributed to the petition. Kirsten Noyes contributed to the research.
