Mayor Bill de Blasio: Yesterday, we had a powerful expression of peaceful protests all over New York City. People speaking up, calling for change, calling for a different approach to the work of this society – doing it peacefully, doing it passionately. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers coming out, working for a better city, a better nation. I want to thank everybody who has expressed their views peacefully, who has worked for change in this long, complex week in this city, in this nation. I can tell you it is making a huge difference.
It was peaceful throughout the day, the entire day in the entire city related to the protests. Again, tens of thousands of New Yorkers participating. There were four arrests and 24 summonses in the entire day. We've had five days in a row, thank God, where we see peaceful protests predominating an end to the property damage we saw earlier in the week, which has no place in this city. Because we got, each day, a better and better situation, more and more peaceful protesters coming out, better situation overall each day, fewer and fewer arrests, I made the decision to end the curfew. And honestly, I hope it's the last time we will ever need a curfew in New York City. So, the curfew has ended. Tomorrow something very, very important happens in the city, the beginning of phase one, the restart of the city, the restart of our economy, the restart of the people's livelihoods, and we should all feel that this is a moment that every New Yorker should celebrate as our achievement together, your achievement, because you did the hard work to fight back the coronavirus so we could get to phase one and tomorrow morning will be a very important day in the history of this city.
Now this week has been a very long week, a tough week in many ways, a powerful, meaningful week as well for sure, a week where people called for change, and change will happen. And we'll talk about that today, but I first want to talk about the week and the reality we faced. Again, a thank you to the tens of thousands of peaceful protesters, a thank you to the tens and thousands of members of the NYPD who protected that right to peaceful protest. Everyone worked hard. You can always talk about the exceptions and the problems and we will, but overall, it is important to say thank you to the men and women of the NYPD who worked to protect people's democratic rights and their safety.
Now, I had four fundamental ideas, fundamental standards that I've been holding throughout this week and we've had to make decisions based on many, many factors. Obviously paramount was protecting the right to peaceful protest and hearing the voices of our community calling for change. But the four things I was focused on as the leader of this city, as the steward of this city, was avoiding the loss of life across the board, avoiding serious injury to anyone and everyone involved, whether they be protester or police officer or anyone in this city, avoiding property damage, never allowing a repeat of what we saw so troublingly at the beginning of the week, and something I've talked about many times, making sure that the National Guard did not come into New York City, which I think would have caused much greater problems and much greater potential for misunderstanding and inadvertent violence. I made clear throughout the week that the NYPD was going to use a restrained approach. I know there are deep concerns about specific situations, and I respect that. But in this city, the NYPD did not use many of the approaches that were used in other cities. In this city, the NYPD avoided the use of some of the policing tactics, the more militarized policing tactics that we've seen around this country that I oppose and I think don't have any place in New York City. And again, it was crucial to keep out a military presence in the National Guard. And I'm happy to say that we all work together in this city to avoid that situation.
Now, the real work begins in this city. And to say to those who protested, ‘I hear you,’ is simply not enough. I do hear you. I feel it deeply. I literally heard the protest. I saw them. I went all over the city watching very, very up close, but hearing is just the beginning. There has to be action. So, people have to see deeds. They have to see change. First, we have to address the issue of officer accountability – 36,000 members of the police force, the vast majority of whom do the right thing every day, answer a noble calling, keep us safe, and a few who do the wrong thing – and those few have to experience consequences, and we have to see it. We have to feel it. We have to know it's real. It takes, in New York City, too long for there to be accountability for officers who do the wrong thing. That is something we can and must change. That is a tradition that must change. You are starting to see that change. It is not enough yet. I want to be clear, but you're starting to see it even in the first days of this protest. And it might have been the lost in the first days of this protest, the decision by Commissioner Shea to move on additional discipline, a discipline trial, for officers involved in that very troubling incident in the Lower East Side a few weeks ago, that trial will proceed shortly, but also the announcement by the Commissioner just a day or so ago regarding some of the incidents that happened this week.
And I want to make very clear. I'm going to talk about, very quickly, a few of the incidents, there are more under investigation. Each investigation will follow the facts and where discipline is needed, it will occur. Last Friday an officer in Brooklyn shoved a woman to the ground, shoved a protester to the ground in a very inappropriate fashion, in a dangerous fashion. That officer has been suspended without pay, further disciplinary action will commence. Last Saturday, an officer pulled down the face covering of a protester and sprayed pepper spray at them. That officer has been suspended without pay, further disciplinary action will commence. There was an NYPD supervisor, a senior level officer, who was supposed to be supervising the officer who pushed the woman to the ground and did not. That supervisor has been reassigned and further disciplinary action will commence. Those are three examples. There are more investigations underway, both within the NYPD and then the independent review being done by our Corporation Counsel and our Commissioner for Investigations, and, of course, the State Attorney General's review as well.
But most importantly, each and every incident that is brought to the attention of the NYPD and the Civilian Complaint Review Board will be investigated. I want to see where it is appropriate that there be disciplinary action that it happens swiftly. I want the public to see it, know it, and have confidence in the disciplinary process of the NYPD. That is one type of change we have to make, but there are much bigger, deeper reforms that have to happen beyond that. And this is directly related to the disparities that are so painfully evident in the city and the disparities that were made so clear by the coronavirus.
When we published the information, and this city was one of the ones to be most transparent and blunt about the fact that there were profound disparities in the coronavirus crisis, we said that we would do a number of things differently. One of the things I did was to name a task force of City government leaders, the Task Force on Racial Equity and Inclusion, to immediately determine steps that the City government must take to start addressing disparities right now. There are many bigger things we must do over the next 18 months of this administration, but my charge to this task force was, figure out what could happen right now and then in the next 18 months ahead, continue that work. You're going to hear from the leaders of the task force, everything that we're going to talk about today, the announcements we're making today directly related to their work. And then you'll be hearing much more from them in the next week or two on issues beyond policing, a whole set of specific changes that will be made to address disparities in terms of economics, health care, and other issues.
Now, let's start with the things we're going to do right away. And I want to be clear that in this administration, we have focused on young people. We focused on young people with initiatives like pre-K and 3-K. We focused on young people with afterschool for free for every middle school child. We focused on young people with beacon programs, cornerstone programs, so many initiatives to reach young people, and with close cooperation and partnership with the City Council to focus on summer youth employment, which has been roiled this year by the coronavirus. We need to do a lot more for our young people. At the time of my State of the City address in February, a time that seems a long time ago, we talked about adding support for our young people. We talked about Commissioner Shea’s new focus on NYPD officers working with young people to address their concerns and issues, to help them rather than simply deal with a problem after it's already begun, to address it at the beginning, at the root. I said in our State of the City speech, “Our young people don't need to be policed, they need to be reached.” And that is the spirit of the reforms we're going to talk about today and beyond.
Yesterday, I was in Southeast Queens at Deliverance Baptist Church in Cambria Heights. I had the opportunity to talk to community members, and I was very, very struck by a conversation, a lengthy conversation, with two young African American men, Paul and Benjamin. And they talked about their experience and they talked about their community and, yes, they want their community to be safe and yes, they understand the jobs of police officers are difficult, but they just wanted things to be different. They wanted a different attitude. They wanted a different respect. They wanted their personhood and their value to be seen and felt by every single police officer and by our society as a whole. And they are correct. That's what we must do. That is a good example of why when I turned to our task force and said, what should we do – and we talked over these last few days and we had a series of meetings – the task force said it was important to address, on a budget level, the need to focus more on our young people, the need to make a clear statement that our investments in our young people are our future. Policing matters for sure, but the investments in our youth are foundational. I further had lengthy conversations with the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus of the New York City Council. I want to thank the co-chairs of that caucus, Council Member Daneek Miller and Council Member Adrienne Adams. I was with Council Member Miller at that church in Cambria Heights yesterday. And it was a very moving experience.
And the Black, Latino, Asian Caucus has called repeatedly for reconsideration of priorities. Now we're about to go into a budget process over these next few weeks to make the final decisions on the City budget. But I want to make a statement of principle right now that based on the suggestions of the caucus, based on the work of the task force, that we will be moving funding from the NYPD to youth initiatives and social services. The details will be worked out in the budget process in the weeks ahead, but I want people to understand that we are committed to shifting resources to ensure that the focus is on our young people. And I also will affirm while doing that, we will only do it in a way that we are certain continues to ensure that this city will be safe.
Now, the second point, something we've talked about for a long time, we finally see action on, you know, for years I have said we could do so much more to create trust between community and police if we got support from Albany in changing State law to allow more transparency in the police disciplinary process, the 50-a law that has stood in the way of transparency. I've had three police commissioners, all three police commissioners have called for change in that law. There's always going to be differences on specific wording and specific ideas, but one thing that has been absolutely consistent, I felt it, my commissioners have felt it, that the current 50-a law is broken and stands in the way of improving trust between police and community. I'm waiting to see the final wording that has just been issued in Albany by the Legislature of the bill that they will review in the next few days. But based on what I've seen so far, I want to support that legislation clearly, and what the Legislature is looking to do, I hope they will do it as early as Monday or Tuesday, is take away the provisions in 50-a that held back transparency while still protecting the valid security, personal information of our police officers. That is the right direction. I commend the Legislature. I call on them to get this done this week. Let's make 50-a, as we knew it, a thing of the past so we can have transparency in our disciplinary process and give the public confidence.
Now, one of the things that our task force has talked about is the very important question of what the NYPD should be working on and what it shouldn't be working on, what type of enforcement is only the type of thing that fits the NYPD, obviously, when it comes to fighting crime, but then there's other types of enforcement that may not work in today's society the same way where we need to make bigger, real change. The task force is going to be working on this issue, going forward, working with the whole administration to determine which areas that change should come in. But one that we can announce today is in the area of street vendor enforcement. Street vendor enforcement should no longer be the responsibility of the NYPD. A civilian agency should handle that. And the street vendors, it's an area that New Yorkers feel passionately about, it is an example, what street vendors do, of so many people creating their own business, so many people trying to experience some version of that American dream that often feels elusive lately, but still is there. For so many people of color, for so many immigrants street vending is their opportunity to move forward. They should not have to engage the NYPD as they're trying to make their livelihoods. Civilian agencies can work on proper enforcement and that's what we'll do going forward.
Finally, one of the things the task force heard – and you'll hear from the First Lady and Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze in just a moment on their work and as well on the line with us, we have Deputy Mayor Thompson and the Executive Director of our task force, Administrator Grace Bonilla – one of the things they heard as they reached out to stakeholders and communities of color all over the city, was they heard people wanted to believe and know and feel that their voices were being heard. And so we will take an action in the NYPD at the patrol borough level, we will hire community ambassadors, people from the community, civilians, deeply steeped in their communities with the ability to bring the concerns of the community to the highest levels of NYPD, to bring back answers including on the status of disciplinary cases and changes in policing that need to be done to allow better policing, fairer policing, to make sure there's a truer deep connection between police and community. It compliments all we've done with neighborhood policing but it’s another step that we need to take.
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