Jacob Freytes’ murder should move Mamdani & Co. to get real on fighting NYC gangs — but won’t
Saturday night’s horrific fatal shooting of an innocent boy in The Bronx is a grim reminder that the city’s gains against crime aren’t remotely enough.
The NYPD is doing its best, even racking up gains, but Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s movement despises the police, indeed imagines that policing is the true cause of violence in our communities.
Jacob Freytes, age 12, had just gone to the bodega when he got killed in someone else’s fight.
Cops suspect it was gang-related; they nabbed the alleged killer, William Ferrer — a career criminal with a lengthy rap sheet, much like the skels Mamdani chowed down with last month at Rikers, watching a World Cup match.
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.
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?
Cops say that the victim’s Mount Eden neighborhood is home turf for the violent Trinitarios and Sev Side Pinni street gangs. (Members of the Trinitarios brutally hacked Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz, a 15-year-old NYPD Explorer, to death in a nearby ‘hood back in 2018.)
On Sunday, the mayor hit the Bronx Dominican Day Parade on the Grand Concourse, but didn’t 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.
Just last month, Mamdani and the City Council collaborated on a final $126 billion budget that fails to increase the NYPD’s headcount — indeed, makes no provision for new recruitment to offset the exodus of veteran cops.
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%.
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.
Yet the killing of young Jacob shows that much more needs doing: We’d argue for an expansion of the gang database (which the mayor has said he’d like to eliminate) and more sweeping gang takedowns (which progressives also hate).
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.
That’s not where progressives and Mamdani’s socialists want to go: They’re still planning to close Rikers without viable replacement jails, to “end incarceration” and defund the NYPD.
The family, friends and neighbors of Jacob Freytes deserve more than Mamdani’s empty platitudes; they deserve justice and action ending the culture of violence that grips too many city neighborhoods.