NYC Mayor Adams taps ‘gun violence czar’ ahead of expected summer shooting spike in the city

Mayor Adams plans to appoint a veteran violence interrupter activist as his “gun violence czar” Thursday as the city braces for the summer months, when shooting rates historically tend to surge.

Andre Mitchell — founder of Man Up!, a Brooklyn-based anti-violence group that has attracted scrutiny from city authorities in the past — confirmed to the Daily News that Adams would tap him for the post during an afternoon press conference at City Hall. The czar job will be in a voluntary capacity, Mitchell added.

“We respect each other’s expertise,” he said of Adams. “As we begin to head into the summer, with my background and the work that we do, the mayor decided that I would be the best person to help him reduce the violence during these difficult times.”

Man Up! is known for dispatching teams of violence interrupters to neighborhoods with high shooting rates to prevent tragedies before they strike, and Mitchell said that work will continue to be part of his remit as Adams’ czar.

In addition to coordinating violence interrupter teams, Mitchell said he will work on getting “every single agency in the city” involved in the battle against gun violence.

“The city government has a plethora of resources. We’re going to use every single resource we have,” Mitchell said, adding that another major focus will be deploying employment programs and other social resources to high crime areas.

“We must get those resources out there before crimes happen. We’re going to go into neighborhoods,” he added, listing off Brownsville and East New York in Brooklyn as being among the areas that will be targeted.

As reported by the news organization The City, the Department of Investigation accused Mitchell in 2019 of misusing public dollars earmarked for Man Up!’s anti-violence programs. Among the accusations were that Mitchell put family members on Man Up!’s payroll in violation of its contract with the city government.

While speaking to The News on Thursday morning, Mitchell vehemently denied the DOI accusations and said he has not discussed them with Adams.

“That is unsubstantiated. That is not true,” Mitchell said. “That has nothing to do with anything we’ve been doing for the past 18 years. We’ve been servicing these neighborhoods for 18 years.”

The appointment of Mitchell comes as the city’s reeling from a spate of recent high-profile shootings, including the unprovoked killing of a Goldman Sachs employee onboard a Q subway train last month. A staggering 23 people were also shot across the city over Memorial Day weekend, and NYPD officials fear the gun violence will only worsen over the summer months.

Adams has also said he’s concerned about the summer and claimed last month that crime in the city is historically high.

“In my professional career, I have never witnessed crime at this level,” Adams, who served as a transit cop in the 1980s, when crime rates were far higher than now, said in an appearance on Fox 5 on May 18.