Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch claimed on Tuesday that the state’s controversial “Raise the Age” bill is to blame for the recent spike in youth crime in the Big Apple.
At a crime statistics briefing at City Hall, the top officer and Mayor Eric Adams stated that the number of children under the age of 18 who were caught in possession of a gun rose by a staggering 136% between 2018 and 2024.
Tisch reported that during the same time period, there was an 81% increase in the number of juvenile victims of gun violence and a 192% increase in the number of minor shooters.
Regarding the rise in juvenile criminality, Tisch declared, “I have seen enough,” and he blamed Albany’s soft-on-crime bill for raising the age of criminal liability to 18.
The precise figures associated with the percentage increases mentioned by the commissioner were not immediately available from the NYPD.
However, 36, or 14%, of the suspected shooters in the five boroughs thus far in 2025 have been younger than 18, she added.
Additionally, Tisch reported that 44 gunshot victims, or 14% of all shooting victims this year, were younger than 18.
She said that Raise the Age, which was enacted on April 10, 2017, by then-governor and current mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo, was the cause of the surge. It went into effect in October 2019.
The statute raised the minimum age at which a teen might be charged as an adult from 16 or 17 to 18.
“The idea behind this was one that we could all agree on: children should not be treated like adults in our criminal justice system,” Tisch stated.
“But when the age of criminal responsibility went up, the age of criminal suspects went down.”
The commissioner claims that in order to avoid severe repercussions, gangs and crews are increasingly enlisting younger and younger members who “carry the guns and commit the shootings, the robberies, and the assaults.”
“Seriously bad things come from a consequence-free environment, and right now juveniles who commit crimes in New York City are living in a virtually consequence-free environment,” she stated.
Tisch’s remarks were made a week after a 13-year-old child was found guilty of the murder of a 28-year-old Yonkers plumber’s apprentice who was shot dead while he was only meeting an out-of-town friend in the Bronx.
On May 27, the teenager brought himself in to be charged with second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter, and criminal use of a firearm in connection with the shooting death of bystander Daoud Marji on April 23 in broad daylight, according to police.
It was a component of the alarming pattern Tisch described, which suggests that children are increasingly both the perpetrators and the victims of gun violence.
According to police, a 14-year-old who had been given a gun by a 13-year-old fired a stray gunshot that killed 16-year-old Evette Jeffrey, who was riding her scooter close to a schoolyard earlier in May.
According to NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny, the unfortunate shooting on May 12 was the result of a feud between competing street gangs, Forest Over Everything and the new group Kreep On Davidson, which was based at the Davidson Houses housing complex in Morrisania.
“She was an innocent bystander who was simply trying to take cover behind the brick wall and was struck in the head by one of the rounds,” Kenny stated.
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“The victim, Evette Jeffrey, was not involved in this dispute.”
Tisch’s shocking remarks coincided with her and Adams’ announcement of a more encouraging crime trend: a decrease in shootings and homicides this year.
According to data, the Big Apple experienced the fewest shootings and homicides in history between January and May.
According to statistics, the city also established a record for the fewest shootings and homicides in May.
Since the start of 2025, the NYPD has seized over 2,200 illicit firearms from the streets, which the mayor and senior police officer also praised.
