Giuliani on NYC Mayor de Blasio: 'People are dying because of his incompetence'

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani slammed current Mayor Bill de Blasio for blaming the Big Apple’s uptick in gun violence on changes brought on as a result of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

"I know coronavirus is a very dangerous virus but I never heard it committing homicide. It doesn't shoot a gun,” Giuliani said Wednesday on FOX Business’ “Mornings with Maria.” “He’s basically taken what we’ve given him – the safest large city in America – and now we’re challenging Chicago as a killing field.”

Giuliani, a Republican, ran the city from 1994 to 2001 and now serves as President Trump’s personal attorney.

“People are dying because of his incompetence,” he added.

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New York City reported 205 shootings in the month of June, with 270 victims, compared to 89 shootings last year, according to police department statistics. Over the holiday weekend alone, there were 44 shooting and 11 murders. Chief of Crime Control Strategies William Lipetri said Monday that 97 percent of June's shooting victims were minorities, while all of July's shootings as of Sunday night were minorities.

As of July 5, the NYPD reported 197 murders so far this year, compared to 155 at the same time last year.

"Chicago's been there for years, and Chicago still has more murders and more shootings by a lot per capita than we do," he continued, before mentioning Atlanta, Philadelphia and Cleveland. He added: "All Democrat cities have this gigantic crime wave going on."

Chicago has counted 1,782 shooting victims this year, 550 more than during the same period last year.

During the holiday weekend alone, 17 people were fatally shot, including a 7-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy, and 70 more wounded. The weekend brought the number of homicides for 2020 to 353, which is 99 more than were recorded for the same period last year.

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Earlier this week, de Blasio attributed the rampant gun violence to slowdowns or shutdowns prompted by COVID-19.

“There’s not one cause for something like this, there’s a lot of different pieces,” the Democratic mayor said. “The court system’s not working, the economy’s not working, people have been pent up for months and months."

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Meanwhile, NYPD officials pointed their fingers at lawmakers and public officials who allowed the release of Rikers Island inmates in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic and just months after the implementation of a new bail reform law, which did away with cash bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent offenses, but did not eliminate the practice entirely in the state.

At a news conference later in the day Monday, NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan also stressed that there was no single reason for the uptick in violence, but had a much different argument.

"There are many reasons, and it starts with bail reform that began in January of this year. It goes on with the district attorneys' reluctance to prosecute quality-of-life crimes and some City Council members who don't want us to deal with quality of life at all," he said.

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"And, in March and April, we saw prisoners, many who were convicted prisoners and parolees, released from Rikers due to COVID ... On top of all this, the courts have been shut down and many individuals who are indicted by a grand jury on gun charges are not in jail but instead are free awaiting for the courts to open up. And, hundreds more criminals who have been arrested for possession of a gun have not yet been indicted by a grand jury because the courts are not in session. They, too, are not behind bars."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.