Kids pack heat in NYC: The number of teens arrested with guns increases for the sixth year in a row

The number of children arrested with guns in the Big Apple has skyrocketed 137% since 2018 and has increased for six years in a row, disturbing Post data shows.

So far this year, 427 youths under 17 have been caught with guns, compared to 397 during the same period in 2023, a 7% increase.

But it's a staggering increase compared to the year before the pandemic in 2018, when 180 teens were caught with guns.

“I read all the reports that come in at the county level and I see a lot of kids in them, whether they're victims or perpetrators,” said Detective Frank Gagnon of the NYPD's Collaborative Policing Unit. “The children there, the children on site, the children who are there for it. It’s terrible.”

The shocking figures come as teenagers have recently been the targets of gunfire, including four who were killed in separate shootings on four consecutive days last month.

“This is a really, really bad sign,” said Chauncey Parker, the city’s new deputy mayor for public safety.

The murder victims included Clarence Jones, 16, who was shot Oct. 24 in Harlem; Malachi Deberry, 15, who was shot in the head the next day in Brownsville; Taearion Mungo, 16, who was shot in the chest on Oct. 26 in Fort Greene, and 15-year-old Tristan Sanders, who was killed on Oct. 27 in Crown Heights.

Police said they are doing everything they can to keep children away from guns but are hampered by the state's “Raise the Age” law, which requires minors caught with guns to appear in family court.

Before the law was changed, 16- and 17-year-olds were tried in criminal court and many of them ended up in prison at Rikers Island.

“I know of at least two cases where there were four or five gun arrests involving children,” said Kevin O'Connor, the NYPD's recently retired deputy commissioner of juvenile services. “They were just released, released, released.”

Family court judges are not even told how many previous gun collars a juvenile has, he said.

“Raise the Age dismantled the system,” O’Connor said.

The city relies on programs that take advantage of teens' free time, such as Saturday Night Lights, which offers structured weekend sports programs for teens to get them off the streets.

Deputy Mayor for Strategic Initiatives Ana Almanzar pointed out that there were “around 100 programs across the city” on Saturday evening to ensure “that our youth have a place to go where they can engage in an activity “I can pursue and deal with the New City Police Department.” and learn to build a community with the NYPD.”

“And that's something that the mayor has really emphasized,” she said, “that we need to not only engage on the enforcement side, but we need to pay attention to the prevention side as well.”

Gagnon now helps oversee the program and says officers work proactively with children before they get into trouble.

“That could involve school safety agents … it could involve our school administrative staff to get a better idea of ​​how they behave in different environments or who they spend time with,” he said.

Gagnon and other police officers also stood outside schools during dismissal times to see if the teens were hanging out with gang members.

“No child just goes looking for an illegal weapon,” he said. “Our goal was to figure out where that influence is coming from and see if we can stop them and give them another path.”

A teenager who hung out with gang members posted photos of himself with a gun on social media and told Gagnon he didn't know owning a gun was illegal.

“He was like, 'Is it illegal to just post that on the internet?'” Gagnon said the teen asked him. “I said, ‘Having it is illegal. Putting it on the internet is just a terrible idea.'”

The teen got better after police got his mother involved, Gagnon said.

“The boy was never arrested for anything,” Gagnon said. “The fact that he was not arrested and no longer associates with the children who are responsible for a significant amount of gun violence was of great importance to us.”

Police were less successful in the case of another child who was arrested with a friend who had a gun. The boy's parents were uncooperative and the teen ended up bringing a gun to school and was arrested.

“That’s the difficult thing about our job as youth officers,” he said.