I have spent decades on the streets of Harlem fighting gun violence so our kids can have the childhood they deserve, and fewer mothers have to bury their children. I’ve worked alongside law enforcement and community leaders to build real public safety solutions in our communities. That’s why I know what it looks like when a politician lies about public safety for political gain — and that is exactly what Bruce Blakeman is doing as he runs to bring Donald Trump’s agenda to our state.
Blakeman is running for governor of New York on a promise that he made Nassau County the safest county in America by hiring 600 new law enforcement officers. It sounds like a strong record. The problem? It simply isn’t true.
PolitiFact rated Blakeman’s claim “Mostly False,” because the reality is more damning, and the facts are straightforward: Nassau County earned its “safest county” designation before Blakeman ever took office, and there’s zero evidence of the 600 new officers he claimed to have hired.
In fact, the opposite is true: Nassau County actually employs fewer police officers today than when Blakeman took office. Under Blakeman’s watch, the most serious offenses, including murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and burglary, rose 28% from 2021 to 2024. Violent crime is up 18%. Property crime is up 29%.Most damning of all: Nassau’s murder rate has increased every single year since 2022, while the murder rate statewide has actually gone down. This is the record of the man who wants to lecture New Yorkers about how to keep people safe, ignoring the work those of us on the ground are actually doing.
If Blakeman’s record on public safety were strong, perhaps he wouldn’t need an armed MAGA militia full of unqualified civilians, including his own nephew and staff.
Handing badges to private citizens with minimal training and no accountability is straight out of the MAGA playbook. President Trump’s rapid-fire effort to hire ICE agents has led them to receive less training than almost any federal agency, and we have seen the results: Americans have died as Black and Brown communities have been terrorized by nationwide ICE raids.
I’ve dedicated my life to taking guns off our streets and fighting for the promise that we all deserve to be safer in our communities. As Blakeman tries to woo gun rights activists — even writing them an open letter of his support for rolling back New York’s gun safety laws, promising “this will not be a symbolic effort” — we all must stay engaged.
Those of us on the ground know the right’s way isn’t the solution. We have to lower the temperature, fund community violence intervention, and support law enforcement training to prevent tragedies before they happen. We can follow Gov. Kathy Hochul’s lead of taking more than 10,000 illegal guns off our streets, cracking down on ghost guns and homemade machine guns, and addressing the root causes of crime. That is the hard, unglamorous work that actually saves lives. I know because it is the work my organization has done for years, and will continue to do.
Bruce Blakeman wants to bring “Trump-style leadership to Albany” and is backing himself up with claims that simply aren’t true. In Harlem, we’ve done the work to make our communities safer. We’re not going to let him lie about it.
Jackie Rowe Adams is an anti-violence advocate based in Harlem, New York, and a mother who lost two sons to gun violence.
Seems like a hot topic. What specific changes are being proposed that could make things worse?