NEW YORK — After recent gun violence spikes in the city, the NYPD gave PIX11 News an exclusive look inside the NYPD’s Gun Violence Suppression Division.
From an undisclosed location, the unit is tracking cases and looking to take down the most violent criminals in the city.
The team is led by Inspector Jason Savino.
“We became cops for a reason, we will never stop or curtail,” Savino said.
The work of this elite unit is non-stop and some of their investigations come from shocking videos capturing gun violence.
So far this year alone, police have investigated 850 shooting incidents compared to 705 last year at the same time. This specialized unit spends hours tracking gangs, who they say are responsible for much of the gun violence we are seeing.
The unit stated work in 2014 with only about 30 officers. Now there are more than 200 officers working cases. From May to July of 2021 the unit took down five major gangs.
One of their first cases was taking down the GS9 crew which includes Rapper Bobby Schmurda.
Another disturbing trend is that the unit is seeing is multiple guns and multiple shooters at single locations.
Savino and his team are relentless in getting guns off the streets but they also need the public’s help and the court system to catch up and put offenders behind bars.
