NYPD expresses concern over number of ghost guns turning up at crime scenes
NEW YORK -- With gun crimes soaring and gun arrests declining, the NYPD says the crisis is being magnified by a huge increase in the number of ghost guns -- untraceable guns made with 3D printers -- that are turning up with increasing frequency at crime scenes.
A 30-year-old Brooklyn man is the latest to be arrested for making guns in the comfort of his home, but police officials trying to stem the tide of bloodshed in the Big Apple say that instead of shutting down the iron pipeline they have to shut down the plastic pipeline as well, and the plastic pipeline is a huge concern, CBS2's Marcia Kramer reported Wednesday.
"Today, people can sit at home in their living room, log on to their computer, access a piece of software, send a signal to their printer, and print out a machine gun that can kill people. That's a problem," said John Miller, the NYPD's deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism.
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Miller stood next to a table where the machine gun he was talking about was laid out with other guns, high-capacity magazines, and two 3D printers that were confiscated from Deonte Haynes, who police say manufactured the weapons at two apartments.
Miller said the guns, untraceable because they have no serial numbers, have been increasing problem as the NYPD tries to stem the tide of gun crimes that have terrified New Yorkers.
"In New York City in 2019, we recovered 47 ghost guns. In 2020, we recovered 150 ghost guns. In 2021, that number jumped up to 375. And so far in 2022, we have 85 compared to 20 last year. That's a 325% increase of seizures of ghost guns since last year," NYPD Chief of Intelligence Tom Galati said.
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This comes as the NYPD's latest crime stats how difficult gun crimes are to stop.
Last week alone, there was a 29 percent increase in the number of shooting victims -- 27 compared to 18 for the same period in 2021. At the same time, gun arrests fell more than 10 percent -- 94 last week, compared to 105 last year.
The untraceable ghost guns make it more difficult to arrest people because there are no records of where they were manufactured and who bought them.
"We are running into these at the point of manufacture in homes. We are seeing them at crime scenes. We're collecting shell casings from them. We know we're going to find more and this is going to keep going," Miller said.
Officials say the average cost to make a ghost gun is $500, and they are being sold on the street for $1,500 -- a 300 percent markup.
So who is buying them? Many gang members.
"What we saw over the past year was an alarming number of youths that in the past didn't know what these ghost guns were, now having a working knowledge of what they are," NYPD Deputy Inspector Courtney Nilan said.
All of this comes as Mayor Eric Adams new anti-gun units, called Neighborhood Safety Teams, are finally ready to hit the streets. Sources told Kramer about 490 cops will be deployed to 30 precincts throughout the city next week.