Shootings have increased slightly this year in New York City, and some who live in crime-plagued neighborhoods say they walk the streets in fear.
NYPD statistics show there have been 507 shootings as of June 8, compared with 448 for the same period last year, an increase of 13 percent.
In just the last 10 days, a man allegedly shot his own mother in Manhattan, three young people were shot in Bedford-Stuyvesant, including two teens, and a 16-year-old boy collapsed and died at a Cobble Hill police precinct after he walked there with a gunshot wound.
Last month, a 45-year-old man was shot in the head outside an elementary school in the Bronx by a gunman who pulled up in a U-Haul van.
The NYPD is quick to point out that murders are down by 15 percent, from 142 at this time last year to 120 this year.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said there will always be fluctuations in the numbers.
"Crime goes up, it goes down," he said. "It’s always gonna go up at some point in time, we’re always gonna have the ability to push it down. ... Always a concern that you have shooting victims. But the capability to identify who’s doing it, get them and prevent them from doing it again? I’m comfortable we have that capacity.”
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In one Bronx neighborhood where a teenager was shot in the back over the weekend and a bullet whizzed through a police officer's hat, resident Margaret Glover urged the police commissioner and mayor to visit.
"They need to come here and see for themselves," she said. "We are fearful of our lives. We have to live here. And this is the only place we can live because we're poor."
Another Bronx resident, Henry Santos, said gang members aren't deterred by a police observation tower that recently moved to 145th Street and Third Avenue.
"They have no remorse for anybody," he said. "They don't care what they do to people."
