NYPD chief lauds force for record drop in July shootings

The record-low number of shootings in July was the most impressive statistic veteran NYPD Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael LiPetri has seen in his 33 years on the job, he told The Post.

“I told the police commissioner, ‘I think July was the most impressive shooting stat that, that really, the NYPD has had since the start of the CompStat era,’” he recalled Thursday.

There were 57 shootings in July — a 24 percent drop — despite the police department dealing with major events across the city — compared to 75 in the same month last year.

The number of shootings in the hot month hasn’t been lower anytime in recent history, said LiPetri, who joined the Force around the same time CompStat, a tool for tracking city shootings, was developed in 1994.

He credited to the NYPD’s strong focus on the department’s 73 violence reduction zones despite the “massive logistical demands” of the Sail 250 event and Fourth of July celebrations, the FIFA World Cup, and the Knicks NBA championship win and ticker-tape parade.

“All those officers in those violence reduction zones across the city were walking footposts, doing tough work,” LiPetri said.

The zones were created to focus on areas around “crime clusters” even when they cross into traditional precinct boundaries.

“They stayed in those zones seven days a week at the right times, even when we had everything else going on,” LePetri continued. “We did not touch our violence reduction zones, and we maintained that steady presence.”

This deployment strategy allowed detective squads and the Gun Violence Suppression Division to “continue their work unabated,” he said, leading to the successful takedown of several violent crews, including two in Queens.

“We are taking the violence drivers in New York City off the street,” LiPetri said. “We are really honing in on those trigger pullers, but also the individuals who get arrested with a firearm and have open cases or are part of a crew.”

A key to the decrease in shootings was daily coordination with the district attorneys’ offices to prioritize the prosecutions, “ensuring a focused, persistent response to the individuals driving the city’s gun violence,” he said.

He called the department’s targeted use of CompStat to help determine precisely where to put officers a game changer.

“We datamine and we datamine and we know where to put the cops,” he said. “But it’s not just that. They’re not just standing there. They’re actually engaging, and using their discretion and using precision policing, getting that intelligence.”