New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea tested positive for COVID-19, an NYPD spokesman told Fox News on Friday.
Deputy Commissioner Richard Esposito said Shea is “doing well” and “staying at home and running the police department remotely”.
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Police said 463 employees tested positive for the virus this month. The news comes days after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that police officers had received the green light to receive their first vaccination injection COVID-19, despite conflicts with Governor Andrew Cuomo, who had not yet approved the measure under state guidelines. .
The NYPD faced a difficult year in 2020, with radical cuts in the department’s workforce, despite an increase in crime that grew by 447 murders recorded until Tuesday, an increase of 41% over last year and the largest number since 2011. The number of people shot more than doubled last year’s total, peaking in 14 years.
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New York City, hit hard by the coronavirus, which devastated the city’s economy and killed a record number of people – becoming the nation’s epicenter in the first months of the pandemic – also struggled through excessive violence, looting and murders resulting from numerous Black Lives Matter protests after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Civil rights activists have had partial success in appeals to withdraw funding from the police, with de Blasio making $ 1 billion budget cuts at the behest of local lawmakers.
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“We are definitely coming out of this dark period,” Shea said at police headquarters on Tuesday. “The confluence of COVID in the protests throughout the debate about withdrawing funds from the police – I can’t imagine a darker period.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.