Mayor Adams announces deployment of a thousand more cops to Bronx in wake of mass shooting

Roni Jacobson, New York Daily News on Aug 28, 2025

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

NEW YORK — One thousand additional cops will be deployed to patrol criminal hotspots in the Bronx after multiple fatal shootings ripped through the borough in the last days of summer, Mayor Eric Adams declared at a Thursday news conference with city government heavyweights.

Adams and other officials announced the additional patrols on a basketball court at Haffen Park in Baychester, where a gang-related mass shooting at a basketball tournament and back-to-school give-away on Saturday left one man dead and four wounded, including a teen girl in critical condition with a bullet lodged behind her eye.

Jaceil Banks, 32, was killed while watching the basketball game and 17-year-old Anthonaya Campbell was left comatose when gunfire erupted around 7:30 p.m. More than 60 rounds of bullets were fired in the shooting, and police recovered six guns from the scene, Bronx Assistant Police Chief Benjamin Gurley said.

“The shooters are getting younger and younger, and the victims are getting younger and younger,” Adams said. “We can’t keep doing this.”

Two of the four shooters in the shooting at Haffen Park were minors, according to police. In addition to the two minors, police arrested Robert Royal, 25, and Daeven Reyes, 20. All four were charged with murder, attempted murder and gun possession, police said.

On Aug. 22, one day before the shooting at the basketball tournament, four teenagers between the ages of 13 and 15 were wounded when gunfire broke out around 4 p.m. on Tratman Ave. near St. Peters Ave. down the block from The Pearly Gates playground in Westchester Square.

In addition to flooding the zone with cops, “we’re going to reach out to the notable gang members, the shooters, the trigger pullers, and see if we can sit down around the table and talk about, how do we end this violence?” Adams said.

“We gather in this beautiful green space, this basketball court, a place that became a killing ground last Saturday,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said at the news conference. “We come here today to pray and to take back this park.

“In these final days of summer, in addition to the shooting that we had here, there were 10 people shot in other incidents as well,” Clark continued. “Here in the Bronx, we have four people shot on Monday, two fatally. There was a triple shooting yesterday where one person died. We cannot abide by this.”

Around 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday a man fatally shot the superintendent of his apartment building on College Ave. near E. 170th St. and wounded two others, according to police.

The Bronx has had more shootings so far this year than all of Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island combined. The Bronx also leads the city with 69 murders this year, a third of the 206 murders that have happened across the five boroughs.

Despite the violence, the Bronx has seen a 19% drop in shootings this year, compared with last year, when 220 people had been hit by gunfire by the close of August.