Brooklyn Community Leaders Push For Increased Funding For Gun Buyback Programs
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - An effort to clean up the streets of Brooklyn is working, but some say more funding is critical to getting even more illegal guns off the streets.
Community leaders are banding together to encourage gun buyback programs across the borough.
1010 WINS' Carol D'Auria reports
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Anthony Newerls is the founder of the group Increase The Peace. He said four guns were turned in just this week. He even brought someone's illegal sawed-off rifle into an NYPD precinct in Brownsville.
Newerls was joined in handing over the gun by community advocate Tony Herbert and State Senator Eric Adams.
"They walk up to them and stated 'I wanna turn my gun in, can you turn it in for me? I'm afraid to walk into a precinct,'" Adams told 1010 WINS reporter Carol D'Auria.
A bag of ammunition was also recovered and turned into police.
Meantime in East New York, which borders the Brownsville neighborhood, two people were murdered with illegal guns Tuesday night.
"They got shot around the corner from one of the programs that was defunded," Herbert said.
Adams and another lawmaker are calling on Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to release $50 million to help fund gun buyback programs in high-crime areas.
Do you think these buyback programs work? Sound off in our comments section below.
