Daquan David, 29, is charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon in the Feb. 26 death of Nazim Berry.

David asked Berry for a free Black & Mild at the bodega on Franklin St. near Lincoln Place in Crown Heights but the employee said no, cops said.

David left and then returned with a gun, allegedly shooting Berry, 37, in the head.

Cops found Berry outside the Amin Deli about 4:15 p.m.. Medics rushed him to Kings County Hospital but he could not be saved.

David’s arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court was pending Wednesday afternoon.

Detectives believe Troy’s link to the violent Drench street gang, emblazoned on his body in ink, led to his death last Thursday.

“Whether he was in a gang or affiliated, he was targeted,” the police source said. “We don’t know if the other gang was looking specifically for him or [just for] anyone in that gang, but this wasn’t a stray bullet shooting.”

Cops believe Troy may have been shot in retaliation for an earlier clash involving a rival street gang. Investigators are focusing their attention on a white Jeep seen fleeing the scene and were tracking the movements of the mystery vehicle both before and after the shooting.

At a vigil for the intermediate school student on Tuesday evening, Troy’s family again denied he had any gang connections.

“We don’t know anything about any tattoo,” Troy’s stepfather told the Daily News at the vigil outside Troy’s home on St. Marks Ave., where more than 100 mourners stood in the rain to remember the fallen teen. “If he had one, he must have hid it.”

Troy’s mother, Mary Culbertson, was inconsolable during the vigil.

“This hurts me,” she said, weeping. “This was my baby! This was my first son!”

Troy FaceTimed his mother moments after he was shot near the corner of New York Ave. and Bergen St., asking for help, cops said. He told her he was running toward the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, but he collapsed about two blocks from where he was hit. He was shot repeatedly in the chest and arm, cops said.

A dog walker found him bleeding in the street, cops said. Medics rushed him to Kings County Hospital, but he couldn’t be saved.

When police arrived at the scene, Troy’s frantic family was nearby, desperately searching for the mortally wounded child.

Cops recovered about six shell casings from the scene. No arrests have been made.

Culbertson told cops she didn’t know her son went to the game until he FaceTimed her from the arena about 9 p.m. He FaceTimed her again about an hour later from an Uber, according to cops.

His last call was at 10:36 p.m., telling Culbertson he had been shot, cops said.

“He was a 13-year-old boy,” Culbertson told The News on Monday. “He was a baby and that should’ve never happened to him or anyone else’s baby. He did not deserve that.”

Cops are scouring video to see what happened as Troy left the Barclays Center. They’re also trying to figure out who he went to the game with and where he was planning to go afterward.

“This homicide is extremely troubling,” Assistant Chief Jerry O’Sullivan of the NYPD Detective Bureau said Tuesday. “It bothered me personally. I have a son the same age and we’re not going to rest until this case is solved.”

“This is unacceptable,” he added. “It’s tragic. It’s disgusting.”

The Drench gang operates in Bedford-Stuyvesant and northern Brooklyn and is part of the drill rap scene. Earlier reports on Troy’s slaying misidentified the crew as the Trench gang.

“Drench gang leaves bodies in the street,” one rapper’s lyrics note.

Internal strife among the gang in 2022 led to gangbanger Dinikue Grant gunning down fellow street crew member Daquan Trantham on a basketball court in St. Andrew’s Playground at Atlantic and Kingston Aves. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, cops said. Grant was later arrested and charged with murder.

El Paso ex-con Hector Medina sent the lying former congressman text messages and a video last year purporting to be a man with a particular set of skills that could make Santos’ criminal charges vanish, Brooklyn federal prosecutors allege in a criminal complaint.

He also made a $1 million offer to an unnamed California actor convicted of multiple felonies in May. A source with knowledge of the situation identified the actor as Danny Masterson, who was convicted of raping two women.

Medina is also accused of similar offers to a musician arrested in June and an athlete’s relative who was busted in May.

Calling himself “Mike Soto,” Medina is accused of sending an unsolicited video message to Santos in July, while the Republican elected from a district including parts of Nassau County and Queens was still in Congress.

“You don’t know me but, I wanted you to see a face and trust me on what I’m about to tell you. I work with prosecutors and, uh, judges throughout the United States and I want to give you the opportunity to offer my services. I was contacted by some people to reach out to you and see if you wanted to cut a deal,” he said, according to the feds.

“Uh, this only stands for today. If you’re interested, I can get everything dropped, evidence that is on you removed, disappeared. Reach out to me if you’re interested. It’s simple yes or no. Thank you.”

He then sent Santos several text messages, asking him if he had the wrong number, then offering, “I can get all the charges dropped” and “All I need is for you or someone to wire 900k,” according to the feds

In a string of texts, he said, “Once this is done I’ll take care of the rest. I’m the real deal don’t let doubt come in the way of you getting this dismissed,” the feds allege.

In August, Medina persisted, according to the feds, sending more texts like, “I know you see my messages,” and recording another video, boasting, “I’m on your team. If you don’t want the help, at least connect me with people that do. Um, you know, I’m really good at what I do. I am a genius. I am a wizard when it comes to things like this.”

Santos, who lied about nearly every aspect of his life during his successful run for office in 2022, was ousted from the job in December. He faces multiple fraud and identity theft charges, including allegations he stole people’s identities and made unauthorized charges on campaign donors’ credit cards to buy designer clothes and pay personal debts.

The complaint doesn’t identify Santos by name, but rather as Individual-1. It explicitly describes him as New York’s 3rd Congressional District representative from Jan. 7 to Dec. 1.

In June, Medina sent messages to the California actor identified as Masterson and to Masterson’s then-spouse, said the feds.

The message allegedly said: “My name is Mike and I’m working with the people affiliated with your case. I can get the case thrown out or a reduced sentence very low but my people are asking for a $1 million dollar fee.”

When law enforcement came calling on Dec. 14, Medina admitted the scam, saying he searched the internet looking for people in trouble, and that he needed the cash to pay off more than $100,000 in gambling debts, according to the complaint.

Medina — who has a history of fraud and theft convictions in Texas, according to the feds — is charged with wire fraud and was expected to appear in federal court in El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday.

“I’m currently in my initial phases of my representation of Mr. Medina in this matter. Mr. Medina eagerly anticipates confronting the allegations against him through the formal legal process,” his lawyer Joseph Veith said Wednesday.

Medina’s case will be transferred to Brooklyn Federal Court at a later date.

Gov. Hochul is deploying 750 members of the Guard and 250 state and MTA police officers to subway stations to inspect passengers’ bags following a spate of violent incidents across the system.

“No one heading to their job or to visit family or to go to a doctor’s appointment should worry that the person sitting next to them possesses a deadly weapon,” Hochul said Wednesday beside MTA Chairman Janno Lieber in front of a giant system map at the MTA’s Rail Control Center.

“They shouldn’t worry about whether someone’s going to brandish a knife or a gun.”

The random checks will fall well short of the body scans and pat downs of airport-level security. Straphangers are already familiar with how this will work — cops at tables performing random bag checks have appeared at subway turnstiles from time to time in the 22 years since the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Transit officials said the state support would simply allow for more such spot checks throughout the system, and that the National Guard, MTA police or other state law enforcement won’t be patrolling the trains.

The additional law enforcement power is one of a slate of state actions Hochul hopes will reduce crime underground — a “five-point plan [to] rid our subways of violent offenders and protect all commuters and transit workers,” as she put it.

“I am sending a message to all New Yorkers — I will not stop working to keep you safe and restore your peace of mind whenever you walk through those turnstiles,” she said

Besides the bag checks, the five initiatives include a $20 million plan to beef up the number of clinical teams responding to people in mental distress on subways from two to 10 systemwide.

Another of Hochul’s five initiatives is her support for the MTA’s plan to install surveillance cameras inside conductor and train-operator cabs. That initiative is a direct response to the slashing of MTA conductor Alton Scott, who narrowly survived a random assault last week when he stuck his head out of his cab as his train stopped at a Brooklyn subway station.

“If a camera had been positioned in Alton Scott’s conductor cabin last Thursday, we probably would have already apprehended the person who slashed his neck,” Hochul said.

“Today I’m directing the MTA to install cameras in every single conductor cabin, as well as [on] platforms that face the cabins,” she added.

No platform-mounted camera caught Scott’s attacker last week either.

MTA officials have stated that the station had multiple working surveillance cameras, but none were pointed at the conductor’s mid-platform position when Scott’s late-night A train pulled into the Rockaway Ave. station in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Transit brass declined to comment Wednesday on how many other stations might need upgrades to their camera coverage, citing security concerns.

Transport Workers Union Local 100 has long opposed putting cameras in conductor and operator cabs, citing privacy concerns. The MTA said last week it will install the cameras anyway.

A Local 100 spokesman said Wednesday that the union will support the installation so long as the cameras are solely for safety purposes, and are not used to support disciplinary cases against union members.

Hochul’s fourth initiative is proposed legislation to ban anyone convicted of an assault on transit from the system for three years. Currently the law allows a ban only on those who are convicted of assaulting a transit worker.

Her fifth initiative is improved coordination between MTA officials and district attorneys and police. That initiative will include regular meetings to discuss subway crime, the first of which is scheduled for next week.

As part of that fifth initiative, Hochul said, the MTA will hire a new “criminal justice advocate to assist the victims of crime in the system,” and develop a system to “flag recidivist offenders” to district attorneys.

NYPD brass and MTA leaders blame the uptick in crime on repeat offenders.

“One percent of subway arrestees, according to the NYPD, are responsible for well over 20% of the crime,” MTA boss Lieber said. “We need to have a collaboration with the [district attorneys] so they have that full information.”

The NYPD is fighting a 15.5% jump in felony assaults at city subway stops and trains.

Police have counted 97 such assaults in the subway system this year as of Sunday, 13 more than in the same period of 2023.

Misdemeanor assaults — slaps, punches and other relatively minor attacks — are down 3.9% for the year, with 249 misdemeanor assaults as of Sunday, 10 fewer than the 259 that had occurred by this time last year.

NYPD brass has said grand larcenies — property theft and pickpocketing — are the main thing pushing crime rates up in the subway system. Those crimes are up 17.8%, from 163 reported incidents last year to 192 this year.

There have been three homicides on the transit system so far this year, up from one this time last year.

The most recent was two weeks ago, when a man was fatally shot two weeks ago while on board a southbound B train in the Bronx.

On Tuesday, police arrested a man for allegedly stabbing a passenger onboard an uptown A train in what cops described as a hate crime.

Arrests in the system are up 45% over last year, according to police, with 3,261 arrests so far as of Sunday, up from 2,243 last year.

Earlier Wednesday, Mayor Adams — who did not join Hochul at her announcement — said NYPD officers will also be increasing bag checks in the subway system.

Neither the mayor nor transit officials would say at which stations the ramped-up bag checks will take place. An Adams administration spokesperson said there will be 94 NYPD bag screening teams deployed to 136 stations each week.

“They’re going to be a seven-day-a-week operation,” NYPD Transit Chief Michael Kemper said in a Wednesday morning appearance with Adams on CBS New York.

Adams said the checks will be “random” and that the Police Department won’t engage in any “profiling.”

“People who don’t want their bags checked can turn around and not enter the system,” he said.

The governor’s plan to put National Guard soldiers in the subway system was met with alarm from civil libertarians.

“This plan is whiplash inducing. The city only recently trumpeted safety data,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

“These heavy-handed approaches will, like stop-and-frisk, be used to accost and profile Black and Brown New Yorkers, ripping a page straight out of the Giuliani playbook,” she said, comparing Hochul to the former Republican mayor.

Albert Fox Cahn, head of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, expressed specific concern about the use of the National Guard.

“We shouldn’t militarize the MTA when crime rates are falling and budgets are contracting,” he said in a statement.

“I fear how many New Yorkers will be wrongly arrested or hurt before we recognize that soldiers have no place on the streets of democracy.”

As first reported by the Daily News on Monday, the city has only received $49 million of that money because federal authorities say the Adams administration isn’t filing the right paperwork to secure the rest. One Biden administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid, even said Adams’ team hasn’t “stepped up to the plate” when it comes to putting the right application paperwork together for the remainder of the aid, which was allocated last year by Congress.

Asked why his administration’s struggling to furnish the right documentation, Adams sought Tuesday afternoon to flip the script back on the feds by noting the outstanding $107 million is small potatoes when compared with the $4 billion the city has spent so far on providing housing and services for migrants.

“Why don’t you go back to that person who stated we haven’t stepped to the plate, and say: ‘Have you guys stepped up to the plate and helping them with this $4 billion, securing the border, allowing people to have work authorization, make sure we have a decompression strategy?'” said Adams, who has for over a year lamented what he sees as a lack of migrant crisis help from the Biden administration. “Ask them: Have they stepped up to the plate? New Yorkers have stepped up to the plate.”

To offset migrant spending, Adams has in recent months enacted steep city budget cuts. The cuts have resulted in various service reductions, including the elimination of Sunday hours at all public libraries.

After the mayor’s briefing, a White House official told The News that the Biden administration wants to provide New York City with more financial help to alleviate the migrant-related fiscal burden, noting it supported the creation of a new $1.4 billion fund that’d reimburse cities across the U.S. for migrant costs. However, House Republicans have blocked that allocation.

“Of course, we would love to do more,” the White House official said.

Jacques Jiha, Adams’ budget director, first revealed during a Council hearing Monday that the city has only received $49 million in migrant aid from the feds to date. In his testimony, Jiha said the city hasn’t been able to access the rest of the aid due to “stringent” eligibility requirements that make it “very difficult” to apply.

Neither Adams nor multiple top advisers who joined him for Tuesday’s briefing at City Hall would provide more details on what specifically in the requirements are tripping up their application.

“We’ll look into it and circle back to you,” Fabien Levy, Adams’ deputy mayor for communications, said when asked for specifics.

Sheena Wright, Adams’ first deputy mayor, suggested a finger should ultimately be pointed at the feds, not the mayor’s team.

“We know how to submit paperwork,” she said. “So I think the question is for them: Why haven’t these funds been released?”

Among other requirements, municipalities applying for the aid must provide names, dates of birth and so-called alien registration numbers for migrants who stand to benefit from the financial support, according to guidance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The FEMA guidance also says spending on hotels cannot exceed 5% of the total amount of aid requested by any given municipality, a wrinkle that could pose a problem for the city, which is housing thousands of new arrivals in hotels.

According to Biden administration officials, FEMA dispatched a team to New York last week to help Adams’ office with resolving aid application snags.

However, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’ chief adviser, claimed it’s “not true” a FEMA team came to New York when asked about the matter during Tuesday’s briefing.

“Why don’t they come and say, ‘Listen, this is what you need to provide,'” Lewis-Martin said. “If we give people paperwork to fill out and they cannot get it done, please assist them.”

Asked about Lewis-Martin’s comments, the White House official reiterated that the FEMA team was in New York last week and provided on-the-ground application support. The official said the administration would contact Lewis-Martin about the matter.

A City Hall spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment on whether Lewis-Martin misspoke.

The latest clash between the mayor’s team and the Biden administration comes as more than 60,000 migrants remain housed in city shelters. Though he says he still supports Biden’s reelection bid, the mayor has been vocally frustrated for months with what he sees as a lack of migrant crisis help from the Democratic president, including declaring last year the commander-in-chief had “failed” New York City.

The outstanding federal migrant aid issue came up during a budget hearing held in the City Council on Tuesday, when Manuel Castro, Adams’ Immigration Affairs commissioner, testified that the city is banking on receiving the full $156 million from the feds this year.

Castro’s comment prompted Brooklyn Councilwoman Alexa Aviles, a progressive Democrat, to note that the city has received less than a third of the outlay so far.

“There are some operational issues to address there,” she said.

The woman, whose name is being withheld by The News, filed a so-called “notice of claim” in Manhattan Supreme Court in November saying she intended to sue the mayor for $5 million over allegations that he subjected her to “sexual assault, battery and employment discrimination” while they both worked for the city Transit Police Department in 1993.

Since that brief filing, the woman and her attorney have declined to provide more details about her accusations. Adams, meantime, has vehemently denied the accusations, and his attorneys said as recently as a few weeks ago that he had yet to be served with her claim, a formality required to kick off any court proceeding.

However, on Tuesday afternoon, Sylvia Hinds-Radix, Adams’ corporation counsel who leads the city Law Department, filed papers in Manhattan Supreme Court demanding that the woman provide “the complaint in this action” within 20 days.

The filing from Hinds-Radix indicates the initial claim has finally been served, as the Law Department otherwise wouldn’t be able to demand a full complaint.

Megan Goddard, the woman’s attorney, did not return a request for comment Tuesday, and neither did a spokesman for the mayor. A Law Department spokesman declined to comment.

In addition to Adams, the woman named the NYPD and the Guardians Association as defendants in her initial claim. The Guardians is a Black police officers’ fraternal organization that the mayor used to head in the 1990s.

Adams confirmed in November that he expected the Law Department to represent him in any case brought by the complainant.

The woman filed her claim under the Adult Survivors Act, a state law that opened a one-year window in 2022 for victims of sexual misconduct to sue their assailants even if the statute of limitations on the claim had expired. Adams’ accuser filed her notice of claim on Nov. 22, 2023, one day before the one-year window closed.

Korey Johnson, 45, pointed his Jeep Grand Cherokee at 47-year-old Donald Roberts like a rocket, slamming the SUV into the fleeing cyclist and crushing him against a row of parked cars on Sept. 3, 2019.

Johnson saw Roberts breaking into the Jeep on Broadway near Ellery St. in Bushwick, then hopped into the vehicle to pursue Roberts as he biked off, according to prosecutors.

He deliberately sped toward Roberts through oncoming traffic, and intentionally struck him, prosecutors said. Johnson, who was initially charged with murder, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in Brooklyn Supreme Court last month.

“This defendant’s extreme reaction when he allegedly witnessed a relatively minor, nonviolent crime cost a man his life,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said Tuesday. “Rather than reporting the incident to police, the defendant deliberately chased the victim in his car, striking and killing him, while endangering everyone else on the road.”

In an interview at the Brooklyn House of Detention shortly after his arrest, Johnson said he didn’t plan to kill Roberts, and said the Jeep’s brakes and steering wheel weren’t working, blaming the dead man for possibly damaging the vehicle when he rummaged through it.

“All I wanted to do was catch him, tackle him, not let him get away,” the Ocean Hill resident said at the time. “I just wanted to get close to him.”

He said that Roberts lunged at him with a screwdriver, and slashed a friend he was with before trying to flee.

“I feel terrible,” he added. “Somebody died. It was not my intention to hurt anyone.”

Johnson and his victim both had lengthy rap sheets.

“He was my son and he was a good son,” the victim’s mother, Evelyn Roberts, 69, told the Daily News in 2019. “I know he did things he wasn’t supposed to do, but my son was a human being.”

The suspects, who live in Queens and Brooklyn, were busted on charges of importing and selling illegal merchandise.

The U.S. bars the import of a number of food items from China, including duck blood and duck and goose intestines, but that didn’t prevent the suspects from setting up several shipments in 2022 and 2023, according to court filings.

The intestines are often served in hot pot dishes, while duck blood products are added to dishes like vermicelli soup.

The goods would come in through the Port of Long Beach in California, and the suspects would often then ship them on domestic flights to Kennedy Airport. From there, they’d be taken to a walk-in freezer in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, the feds allege.

One shipping container that arrived in Long Beach was falsely labeled “1,966 cartons of pet grooming tool pet nail clippers,” and in some cases, the contraband intestines were hidden under packaged rattlesnakes, the feds allege.

A federal food safety investigator searched the walk-in freezer in November 2022, and found 79 cartons with 1,800 pounds of illegal goose intestines and 960 pounds of illegal duck intestines, the feds allege.

In June, the United States Department of Agriculture raided the garage of Chu Feng Food Wholesale, which belongs to one of the suspects, and found 6,496 pounds of illegal goose, duck, pork and beef merchandise worth about $147,300, the feds allege.

The suspects — wholesalers Hangming Fang and Shangqing Ou, and transporters Ming Huang Chen, Runhua Hou, Hangting Lin and Minghao Lin — were arraigned in Brooklyn Federal Court on Tuesday afternoon. Fang was ordered placed under house arrest until Monday, when he’ll present a bail package; the other five were released on bond.

“He was a 13-year-old boy,” Troy Gill’s mother, Mary Culbertson, said through tears on Monday night. “He was a baby and that should’ve never happened to him or anyone else’s baby. He did not deserve that.”

Troy was walking alone near the corner of New York Ave. and Bergen Ave. in Crown Heights around 10:40 p.m. Thursday when a gunman fired off shots, hitting the boy repeatedly in the chest and arm, according to police.

Right afterwards, the young victim called his mother for help and told her he was running toward the nearby Brooklyn Children’s Museum, cops said.

Troy collapsed two blocks from where he was shot. Medics soon discovered the mortally wounded teen on the pavement and rushed him to Kings County Hospital, but he could not be saved.

“There are no words,” said Troy’s stepfather, Joseph Ward. “Parents shouldn’t have to bury their kids. It’s a nightmare.”

Detectives investigating the slaying linked the teen to the Trench Crew, a Bedford-Stuyvesant and northern Brooklyn street gang, though the boy’s involvement with the group wasn’t immediately disclosed.

Troy’s mother adamantly denied any suggestion he was involved in a gang.

“He was not in a gang,” said Cubertson, 41. “He was a great boy.”

Ward echoed the sentiment, insisting he wants “to change the narrative for Troy.”

“He loved to dance,” said Ward, 47. “He did James Brown and Michael Jackson impressions.”

The boy’s heartbroken mother Troy as a friend to everyone.

“When I say everybody, it doesn’t matter who you were, where you were — he was your friend,” she said through tears. “I feel like that’s almost the reason why this happened, because somebody felt that he shouldn’t be friends with one person because they didn’t like that person.”

Troy was killed just shy of his 14th birthday, according to his stepfather.

“He had a big personality and he was too big to be here,” said Culbertson. “He’s gone but his spirit is here and he will always live on through all of us.”

Troy lived with his mother, stepfather and two siblings in their Crown Heights apartment, where dozens gathered to remember the youth Monday evening.

“This is real,” said Ward, motioning toward a large makeshift memorial. “It’s a sad reminder but a reminder that he was loved.

“He was tiny but mighty,” the man added. “The earth was his turf.”

Police are still working to track down the gunman who killed Troy.

“If financial conditions improve and the economy remains strong, we will work with the Council, as we always do, to look at priorities of the Council and the administration and then see what can be fully or partially restored,” Jacques Jiha, who heads Adams’ Office of Management and Budget, said during an hourslong Council hearing.

Jiha made that comment after Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) specifically asked him about undoing a $24 million cut that the mayor subjected the city’s three public library systems to in November that forced them to eliminate Sunday hours at all their branches.

Jiha declined to make any specific commitments, though.

“I cannot commit at this point in time that we are going to restore X, Y and Z,” the budget director testified.

The hearing, held to examine the mayor’s $109.4 billion preliminary budget proposal released in January, marked the official starting point of months of negotiations between the mayor’s office and the Council before they must come to an agreement on a city financial plan before the July 1 start of the 2025 fiscal year. In coming weeks, heads from nearly all city agencies will appear before the Council to testify about their budgetary needs.

Ahead of Monday’s hearing, the Council released a new revenue projection, first reported by the Daily News, that projects the city to be on track to rake in $3.3 billion more in income, property, sales and business taxes over the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years than what’s predicted by Jiha’s office.

Council Democrats repeatedly argued in the hearing that their rosier revenue projections should allow the mayor to undo many of the budget cuts he pushed through in November and January on the auspice that the city needed to offset migrant crisis spending and accommodate Jiha’s lower tax revenue forecast.

“With higher than expected revenues in this fiscal year and a durable, resilient economy, I believe our city has the flexibility to reverse many cuts that have been made,” Speaker Adams said at Monday’s hearing.

Jiha did not say he’s ready to accept the Council’s new revenue estimate. He did tell Council members he’s “hoping that your forecast is right,” though.

Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan, a Democrat who is chairman of the Finance Committee, suggested after the hearing that he was optimistic.

“If both sides of City Hall can walk into the room with the same shared set of objective data, we will be fine,” Brannan said when asked if he’s hopeful about getting some of Mayor Adams’ cuts reversed. “Hardworking New Yorkers deserve nothing less.”

The mayor already undid some budget cuts in January, including at the NYPD, the FDNY and the Sanitation Department. He said he was able to do so because he had ordered his administration to drastically reduce the amount of money being spent on housing and services for newly arrived migrants.

In Monday’s hearing, Jiha said a key element of managing migrant spending is driving down the number of migrants in city shelters. The administration’s primary vehicle for reducing the census is its controversial 30- and 60-day policies, which limit how long migrants, including families with children, can stay consecutively in shelters.

“If we don’t bring down the population, I don’t know how we’re going to sustain this in the long run,” Jiha told Council members.