NEW YORK — President Joe Biden called for more funding for law enforcement and anti-violence programs during a visit Thursday to New York City to grapple with increasing crime.

Mayor Eric Adams joined Biden, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Merrick Garland on a stop by police headquarters in lower Manhattan, where they planned to attend a meeting on gun violence strategies between local and federal law enforcement.

“Mayor Adams, you and I agree: The answer is not to abandon our streets,” Biden said at NYPD headquarters. “The answer is not to defund the police. It’s to give you the tools, the training, the funding to be partners, to be protectors.”

Adams, a retired NYPD captain, said he and Biden are in lockstep. “Mr. President, Eric Adams is reporting for duty and ready to serve,” he said.

Later Thursday, Biden and the rest of the group plan to visit a Queens public school to discuss community violence intervention programs with local leaders.

Biden has asked Congress for $300 million for local police departments and $200 million for community-based violence intervention programs.

“Congress needs to do its job to pass the budget,” Biden said.

The president’s trip follows the shooting death of two NYPD officers in Harlem, the latest in a series of headline-grabbing crimes.

Biden noted the cops were shot with a stolen Glock with a 40 round magazine, and called for a new ban on assault weapons. “It’s really a weapon of war,” he said. “I don’t see any rationale why there should be such a weapon able to be purchased.”

Adams has staked his mayoralty on reversing the surge in violent crime, and rolled out a plan that includes reviving a controversial NYPD anti-gun unit and rolling back some of New York’s bail and criminal justice reforms.

Biden, meanwhile, is fending off attacks from Republicans nationally who are zeroing in on public safety.

“The president is here because he knows what the American people want: justice, safety and prosperity. And they deserve every bit of it. And he wants to end gun violence in our city and in our country,” Adams said. “That’s what New Yorkers want too. That’s what I campaigned on, and that’s why you elected me as mayor of the City of New York.”

He called for a “9/11”-style response to the “domestic terror”of gun violence.

The president cited Adams’ comparison of violence to a sea fed by many rivers. “I put forward a plan to dam up some of those streams,” Biden said. “You can count on me to be a partner in that effort.”

Biden also called for repealing gun manufacturers’ protections against legal liability, which he called “outrageous.”

The president touted plans announced by the Department of Justice Thursday morning to launch a national ghost gun enforcement initiative. The program would train prosecutors to bring cases against people who use homemade or makeshift firearms that lack serial numbers to commit crimes.

DOJ is adding additional staff to its task forces that target gun trafficking through the “iron pipeline,” which funnels firearms from southern states to big cities like New York. They are also directing every U.S. Attorney’s Office across the country to prioritize prosecution of gun trafficking offenses.

Earlier Thursday, Adams called for $1.5 billion in new federal funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to pursue the source of illegal guns. The NYPD, he said, seizes guns in large numbers. “But they keep coming. We’re not turning off the tap,” he said on WCBS Newsradio 880.

He also called for greater coordination between local and federal law enforcement on guns.

Civil rights groups expressed concern that the partnership between Biden and Adams will swing too far in support of aggressive policing, even as Republicans continued to accuse the Democratic leaders of being soft on crime.

“What New York City does not need is more federal resources to needlessly supercharge the NYPD, which already has the biggest budget and head count of any police force in the nation, or to impose blanket surveillance that will run roughshod over civil liberties and target communities of color,” New York Civil Liberties Union head Donna Lieberman said in a statement Thursday.

“In addition, Mayor Adams must not use President Biden’s visit today to continue his baseless attacks on common-sense reforms to the state’s criminal legal system that have worked,” Lieberman said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted Biden was committed to striking a balance between public safety and fairness.

“He has never been an advocate for defunding the police,” she said in a question and answer session aboard Air Force 1. “He believes that both need to come hand in hand, that pursuing police reform… [and] effective, accountable community policing helps us fight crime and it also makes us safer.”

Laura Barrón-López and Deanna Garcia contributed to this report.