Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, we had a tough night in New York City last night, undoubtedly. We saw things that we never want to see and that we want to make sure don’t happen in the future. I don’t want for a moment to minimize some of the challenges we faced and the underlying reality that for those who were there to peacefully protest, they were expressing an anger, a frustration about things that things that have not changed and need to change in this city and in this country. So, I want to begin at the beginning, there is a reason that peaceful protestors are protesting. There are changes we have to make. There are changes we will make in this city and we should make in this country. That, to me, is abundantly clear. There’s a whole different matter of some protestors who were there not to peacefully protest, not to work on constructive change, and who I think also don’t represent many of the communities of our city. But I’ll talk about that in a moment.
The first thing to talk about is the big picture. Last night, very difficult night, but thank God what we saw was that even though there were many, many engagements, many, many situations all over the city, at least based on the information we have right now, thank God no loss of life, no major injuries. Think about the countless different points around the city where something was happening, think about the thousands upon thousands of NYPD officers deployed to address the situation, to guard peaceful protest, but also to deal with any acts of violence, any attempt to attack people or attack the property of people in this city. And when you add up how many things were happening and how many places all over the city, it says something about New York City, it says something about the people of New York City, it says something about the NYPD, that thank God there was no loss of life, there were no major injuries. There was some real property damage, no doubt. It was contained and it was addressed consistently.
But when I look at the big picture here, a situation that was very complex, very difficult, and unlike anything honestly, we have seen in recent years – and this is something that bears real discussion and real analysis – these protests were different not because of the underlying issues. The underlying issues are profound and meaningful, again expressed by those who are peacefully protesting and seeking change. The x-factor here, of a different kind of small set of – I would call them not just protestors but people who came to do violence in a systematic, organized fashion. That is a different reality we need to grapple with. We did not see that in 2014 and 2015. We are seeing something new, and not just here in New York City but all over the country, and we have to recognize it and we have to address it.
So, what I saw last night and I was around different parts of Brooklyn, different parts of Manhattan in the course of the afternoon and the evening, I saw a very complex ever-changing situation. I spoke to elected officials throughout the day, spoke to our police leadership throughout the day, met in Brooklyn with Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Chief of Department Terry Monahan near one of the sites of one of the protests to talk about what was specifically happening there, what could be done better. Look, some things were done very much the right way in that we saw there was not, thank God, that loss of life or major injuries. And we saw tremendous restraint overall from the NYPD. There are always going to be some incidents we don’t like and I’m going to speak about that as well but when we composite the whole day, thousands upon thousands of officers in an ever-changing situation, I saw a lot of restraint under very, very difficult circumstances.
And I’m going to keep saying to anyone who is protesting for change, do not take your anger out at the individual officer in front of you, that man or woman who is simply trying to keep the peace. Work for change in our society, hold the elected officials accountable, vote – do all the things that can actually lead to change but don’t take your frustration out on a working man or woman in front of you who did not make the policies that you disagree with. That’s my view, strongly. And I saw a tremendous amount of restraint but I also saw things that needed to be done better, clearly. I saw some moments yesterday that were disturbing in terms of the ways police handled things and that need to be done better. We – many of us have seen the video involving two NYPD vehicles and a crowd of protestors. I didn’t like what I saw one bit, I did not want to ever see something like that, I don’t ever want to see it again. And clearly, we need to do a full investigation and look at the actions of those officers and see what was done and why it was done and what could be done differently.
But I also want to emphasize that situation was created by a group of protestors blocking and surrounding a police vehicle, a tactic that we had seen before in the last two days, a tactic that can be very, very dangerous to everyone involved and we’ve seen direct attacks on police officers including in their vehicles and we need a full and impartial investigation but we also need to be clear about the context. That was happening against the backdrop where police officers had been attacked before in the exact same situation. That was a situation that had to be resolved. It could not stay that way. But we need to understand more about it and if there’s discipline that needs to be [inaudible] out, there will be.
Now, it comes back to this point about why we are seeing a different kind of protest. It is a small number of people, it is well organized even though many of the people are associated with the anarchist movement and we often think of that as not an example of organization and hierarchy. In this case, we’ve got a lot of people who are organized. They plan together online, they have very explicit rules – and we’re going to make all of this information available today and in the days ahead. Some come from outside of the city, some are from inside the city. Some are from the neighborhoods where the protests take place, some are not. But what we do know is there is an explicit agenda of violence and it does not conform with the history of this city in which we have always honored nonviolent protests. This is a city – no place in America has honored protests more than New York City. No place in America has protected protests more than New York City. And we will continue to do so whatever someone’s views but it has to be nonviolent. We honor the tradition of civil disobedience. We honor the examples of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., of Gandhi, of so many people who showed that real change comes from peaceful protests.
One of the best examples, years ago in this city when we had the broken unconstitutional policy of stop-and-frisk, there was a peaceful, silent march down Fifth Avenue. Thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers practicing that tradition of Dr. King, demanding an end to stop-and-frisk. That was one of the pivotal moments in the battle against that broken policy. That policy was ended because of that protest and so many others that led to changes through the voting process and beyond. And now we don’t have that broken and unconstitutional policy anymore and we’re going to make a lot of other changes through peaceful democratic means. But folks who come to incite violence, we will not accept that. And it’s important to understand that there’s a lot of concern in the community. I’ve talked to many, many elected officials from the African American community yesterday.
And there’s a growing concern that some are attempting to speak in their name and for their community inappropriately and in a way that’s counterproductive. And I’ll tell you in the last few days we have seen some very moving, powerful statements and statements that tell us something that we need to understand. People are being in some ways blunter and more honest than perhaps ever before. And I have been trying to be very open about my own experience as an individual, what I know and what I don’t know as a white man in American addressing these issues and working with communities of color, acknowledging my own gaps in understanding, acknowledging my own privilege and recognizing that change has to come from communities and there has to be self-determination in that process.
One of the most powerful statements that I’ve seen in the last weeks came from the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus of the New York City Council. And I want to be clear, it is a statement that is very critical of the NYPD. And I may agree or disagree with any specific sentence or line in this statement but there is a piece of this statement that I think speaks so powerfully to what’s going on. I wanted to show it to everyone. I want to recommend that people read this. A majority of our City Council are African American, Latino, and Asian – and they have put together something we all need to hear. I’m going to quote from a piece of this statement. It says, “We do not condone violence against the police or the senseless destruction of property but the Police Department must acknowledge that those of its members who lack discipline and frequently do violence to us also endanger the lives of their own colleagues. The absence of any real accountability for the habitual killing of our people undoubtedly poses the greatest threat to public safety as do the agitators that have no claim to our struggle but stoked the fire before retreating to the safety of their privileged white enclaves. They would be wise to stay at home instead of inciting further acts of hostility toward our brothers and sisters. And to those individuals who are not of our community but genuinely want to be helpful towards advancing the cause, we appreciate your sentiments but ask that you not speak to experiences that you have never suffered. We got this.”
This is the view of the majority of our City Council and I think it’s something we all need to listen to because in the end real community leadership, leadership that has come up on communities – whether it’s elected officials, community leaders, activists, clergy, members of the Cure Violence Movement – these are the folks who are working every day for fundamental change but they know it must be peaceful. And those are the voices that must be heard in this city. So, with that said, I want to follow through on a statement I made yesterday that we look at the events of the last few days and understand that there are real issues that must be addressed. There are many things that I can tell you that I think were done right by the NYPD especially the level of restraint.
But there also were mistakes and there were individual actions that must be fully investigated and that must lead to accountability. And as I’ve said we need an independent review of what's happened in these days. So, I am appointing two individuals to lead that process and I’ve asked them to come up with very quick results on the initial evaluation of what happened in these days of protest by all players and to look at where accountability needs to be and then to look at some of the bigger issues that have been raised here as well. I have asked them to come back with initial findings in the next few weeks during the month of June. And after I speak and the Police Commissioner speaks, you’ll be hearing from both of them, our Corporation Counsel Jim Johnson and our Department of Investigation Commissioner Margaret Garnett.
Finally, we need to make big changes. I’m not going to list all of the things that have changed in this city over these last years beginning with the end of the broken policy of stop-and-frisk, beginning with the actions to fundamentally change policing including the neighborhood policing strategy, the settlement of the Central Park Five case – there are many, many things I can go into. I’m not going to do that list today because they were all the right things to do and the right direction but they were not enough and we all understand that we need to go farther. So, there are several things we need to work on immediately.
One, requires help from Albany. I was heartened to hear Governor Cuomo say yesterday that he would sign legislation repealing the 50-a bill, repealing the current law in New York State. That inhibits transparency when it comes to police discipline matters. I have said we need to repeal and replace, I want to be abundantly clear. There must be some provision in the law to protect the personal information – the home address, the type of information about an individual police officer that is about their safety and security. We need to be clear in any legislative change that issue is addressed fully. But the 50-a law as it stands now inhibits transparency and corrodes trust between police and community. The last three police commissioners of this city beginning with Bill Bratton and now up to Commissioner Shea, including Commissioner O’Neill, all have agreed with me that this current law does not work and it hurts their mission of building a deeper bond between police and community. If the Governor is ready to sign that, I commend him, I thank him – now, let’s work together with the Legislature to repeal the current law and address the legitimate issues of safety and security of our officers and move forward. If we can do that in the month of June, that would be, I think, a huge step forward for the people of this city.
Second, we need to do more to take our current approach to risk management, which identifies if there are officers who are not cut out for the police force. That work needs to be amplified, speeded up, intensified. We need to make sure that anybody who should not be a police officer is not a police officer. I know – and I’ve had this conversation with Commissioner Shea many times – that he is an exemplar of what good policing is. He started on the beat in 1991 in the South Bronx. He doesn’t want to see a single cop on the beat who doesn’t belong there. We need that system to work and work better and work faster and it needs to be visible to the people of this city.
And finally, I’ve heard from so many elected officials that there are some people in our police force who do not belong in the roles they are in. There are some people in positions of leadership in a community or some officers on the beat who just don’t fit the work needed in that community for whatever reason and unfortunately have a history of tensions with the community. We can’t have that. Not everyone fits every role. That’s true in the NYPD and that’s true in all of life. We need to do a better job of hearing the concerns of community leaders when they say someone is not working out in our community, in our precinct, and we need a change. And I pledged to work with the community leaders to make those changes in the weeks ahead.
So, we have a lot of work to do but I am very confident that we can get this done together. As I turn to Commissioner Shea, who I spoke to probably 50 times yesterday, literally, I want to thank him for his leadership. I want to thank Chief Monahan who was out there dealing with specific protests all over the city. This is incredibly difficult work and there will be critiques and there will be things that need to be investigated and there will need to be things improved and we expect to do better today than we did yesterday. But I want to commend the restraint that we saw overall from the NYPD, that is crucial to keeping the peace in this city and respecting the right to peacefully protest. That’s what the NYPD has done for years. That’s what they did yesterday. With that, I turn to Commissioner Dermot Shea.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, I’ll give a brief summary of yesterday’s events. What we saw across New York City from the Police Department perspective in policing some of the demonstrations, was similar to the two nights before. Yesterday began – which seems like a long time ago – with two protests in New York City. First was at the 120th Precinct on Staten Island. The second one was 125th Street up in Harlem. Both went overwhelmingly well. What we quickly identified though was a group within that used the 125th Street peaceful demonstration – I would liken it to hijacking a peaceful demonstration – and quickly began what turned out to be a long night for the men and women of this police department.
At the end of the night, to summarize, there were over 300 arrests made, closer to 350 primarily for minor offenses associated with the protest. There were over 30 members of the department, thankfully, none seriously – but over 30 injuries suffered. There was some property damage unfortunately. There was a religious institution that was damaged as well as some private and public property. If I could categorize it, where we saw most of the activity yesterday was centralized in one area of Brooklyn as well as southern Manhattan. I would categorize it probably below 23rd Street in and around Union Square, 14th Street.
We have a number of protests that are scheduled for today. We have an abundant number of men and women – I thank them for their service, their professionalism, as the Mayor said. And with my colleagues here, I welcome any outside look, to look at how the men and women of this department are holding up, trying to keep New Yorkers safe during this difficult time. And I also would add one more thank you to some of the elected officials that showed up, the Mayor mentioned, in Brooklyn as well as Manhattan to work with the police, work with the protestors, try to engage, try to make sure that these protests go on peacefully and not what we saw in a couple of incidents where they’re hijacked and property damage ensued. So, hopefully, it’s a safe day for New Yorkers. We’ll get through this. We’ll get through it like we get through anything. We’ll get through it together and I’ll wait for the questions to come afterwards.
Mayor: Thank you, Commissioner. And I want to emphasize that point. There were a lot of people out there trying to work to meditate to keep the peace. I want to thank all the elected officials who were out. There were a lot of clergy out. I want to thank members of the well-known God Squad in the Flatbush area who do such amazing work on the ground working with the community. There were members of the Cure Violence Movement out all over the city, community activists. You saw an outpouring of leaders who were working to keep the peace, to have it be peaceful protests and productive protests. Some of those leaders thought some things could have been handled differently. Some of those leaders have a strong critique of specific situations yesterday or the day before and broader critique of the NYPD but we all worked together for the peace of all New Yorkers. And I want to thank each and every one of them, even if we have moments where we don’t agree, I want to thank them for being out there to be peacemakers. And yes, New York City came through this as we always do and that is the strength of this city.
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