Governor Hochul Delivers Remarks at the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference

 

Governor Hochul: "You are at the front line out there to keep us from descending into chaos. And it's something that I think about a lot as Governor because we share the common objective: My number one responsibility as the Governor of New York is to protect New Yorkers. And that is also the same oath that all of you take to protect and to serve...We will be a better, stronger state when we find ways to bring together that common passion that drew you to your profession and drew me to mine, which is to simply serve others."

 I know a little bit about this business, having been married to a federal prosecutor for 30 years, and we always went to the Chiefs of Police of Erie County, Western New York events all the time. And I also, as a local official, had the privilege of hiring many of the members of our police force. I did the interviews. I helped find an incredible individual to lead our police department at the time, Carmen Kesner from the Town of Hamburg, who still remains a great friend. So, I have always felt close to this community and your leadership has always been needed but needed now more than ever because of the challenges that we all face.

And so, I thank Kevin for assuming the position of leadership in becoming President and Pat Fallon and Tim Parisi, the outgoing President as well. So, leadership matters. Before I do talk about some of my reflections, I do want to just acknowledge the collective pain that all of us feel as New Yorkers at the loss of one of our own.

I'll be at the funeral very soon. I think on Monday. Anthony Mazurkiewicz, father, 29-year veteran of the Rochester Police Force, who was just simply doing his job. And when you get that call, and all of you have experiences, that one of our own has gone down in the line of duty. It's a reminder of the fragility of life and the sacrifices that all of you are willing to make and your families are willing to make when you put on that uniform.

And as the chiefs, I know that's something you also feel deeply when you lose one of you own. So, I've been to far too many funerals of police officers across the State. And I will always continue to just call out, reject the violence. Those of you who are willing to sacrifice your lives to keep us safe deserve respect. You deserve our support, our vocal support. And that the era of denigrating our police has to be over. That we support you. We support you, 100 percent.

And that includes funding. We'll always be funding our police departments. And I'll get into that in a couple of minutes. So, I do also want to talk about just my opportunities to engage. It's a solemn occasion, but I try very hard in my eight years as Lieutenant Governor, now as Governor, to never miss gathering in Albany for the memorial service to honor those we lost.

And whether they're in active duty or people that ultimately succumbed to 9/11 illnesses, a lot of people went down there, and 20 years ago, stood shoulder to shoulder with people on the pile trying to recover the bodies of people we lost on that day. So, we're always dealing with that sense of emotion, but also the stress of the everyday job when you don't feel that there is support from a community. That has to be an extra burden, and I'm going to continue to work as your Governor to just remind everybody of how we do not have a civilized society without you.

You are at the front line out there to keep us from descending into chaos. And it's something that I think about a lot as Governor because we share the common objective: My number one responsibility as the Governor of New York is to protect New Yorkers. And that is also the same oath that all of you take to protect and to serve. So, we are aligned in our common objectives here, and we will be a better, stronger state when we find ways to bring together that common passion that drew you to your profession and drew me to mine, which is to simply serve others.

And I believe that there has been a shortcoming for years in terms of making sure that the voices of law enforcement are there when we're talking about policies that affect what you do every day. You have an important perspective that needs to be heard and needs to be shared. So, I've asked my team - I've said we're working on legislation. We're talking about red flag laws, for example, trying to strengthen them to protect society when we see threats that are already out there, that we can connect the dots more often, that we work with you to get your perspectives on what we should be doing. And that's going on right now. And I told my team to be reaching out to this organization to make sure you're at the table with us.

So, these are the simple things that we can do is to change people's attitudes and say, "We're on the same side here." And the more I can say that and reinforce that as Governor, I believe that we can make real progress toward mutual understanding between the people the communities that are supposed to protect and the communities themselves, and a trust has to be rebuilt.

I think that's going to go a long way. We're just working closely together on eradicating this spike in cases and spike in gun violence. And what we have to do is continue support. I mentioned funding. I have said no one will ever say the words defund the police in my presence. That is not going to go anywhere. You're not going to make friends with me if you say that. In fact, in my budget, I said, "We're going to show our commitment to making sure you have the resources to do what you need to do." So, our funding for local law enforcement agencies is now $393 million annually. That is our budget. We put that in. I said I wanted to see increases.

Also, our crime analysis centers. I do hope that you're engaged with this. I really wanted to stand these up and make sure that they're really an active resource for you as we share information. That's how we're solving crimes. That's how we're getting ahead of the bad guys. The ones who are out there plotting every day how to prey on our citizens. We have to analyze this and share data. And I believe that we can be doing more. We have 10 facilities across the state and we're working closely with over 350 law enforcement agencies. And those of you who are participating in the training, I do hope you're starting to see the benefit of this cooperation.

We also are going to continue fighting. Our budget just passed and some of these laws just went into effect to give the law enforcement more opportunities to have arrests for repeat offenders and property thefts and gun violence cases and hate crimes. All of those are now covered back under the law that had not been covered before. We also gave more authority for our judges to analyze the severity of an offense when they're making their decision. So, all these are not out there in the news, but that's exactly what we did in our budget. Just passed. Just went into effect a couple of weeks ago.

We are very concerned also about people with mental health problems that are posing threats to our law enforcement, as well as to our citizens. So, we have to address that head on. It got worse during the pandemic. Everybody knows it got worse during the pandemic, and now you are having to deal with this. I mean, members of your police departments, your police forces, are dealing with this problem more than they probably ever have in their lifetimes. And it's really having an effect, and we have a responsibility as government to help people get support and help and stop them from being a threat to society.

But also, we've had to make some changes to our own laws. It was so clear after we saw the massacre of 10 neighbors in my community of Buffalo. Literally 10 minutes from my home, that Tops Grocery Store, and I'm going back there again this weekend to just help this community heal. It was absolutely devastating. But after we came back from that and we assessed, connecting the dots, what went wrong in that scenario, we realized we needed to pass a number of laws and change some laws saying that 18-year-olds should not have their hands on AR-15s.

Because a short time later, an 18-year-old also went into Uvalde and destroyed the lives of 19 children. So, we changed the law to say, you at least have to be 21 years old. We think that is reasonable. It makes sense. It's going to help protect your members as well, but also closing some of the loopholes that were out there and we're now starting microstamping.

I believe that this is going to, it's going to take a little time to develop, but ultimately this will allow you, as you're trying to solve crimes, have a fingerprint on a bullet so you can trace it. It doesn't affect anybody's right to own a weapon, own a gun. You will always continue the legal permit process.

That's what we're going to focus on, making sure that that runs smoothly. I used to run the pistol permit office. I was the County Clerk. I issued all the pistol permits. So, I understand the process and the background checks that are involved. I also understand people's rights but being able to trace where a bullet originated is going to help all of you be able to do your jobs as well.

So, we're focused on that. Also, we're focusing on hate speech because so many times the intent of a mass killer is telegraphed to everybody on social media but no, one's been able to see that. And so, our State Police have stepped up with the monitoring. I've added more staff to that agency to focus on this, as well as having this, asking the Attorney General, to investigate the role of hate speech in people's activities, how they're becoming radicalized sitting in their house, being able to download videos of other mass shootings as we saw happen with the Buffalo shooter.

You know, he had already been watching the Christchurch Massacre over and over, as inspiration for his, you know, his radicalization. So that's what we're focusing on. Also trying to help identify and track ammunition is coming from. And I do want to give a shout out to the incredible leadership we saw in Buffalo at that time.

So, I want to just leave with you with a couple thoughts. We are making progress. This is a high priority of mine to make sure that we start eradicating gun violence, fighting crime, working together in teamwork. That's something that hasn't happened before. We have seen a decline in gun shootings and violence.

We really have. Down about eight percent statewide, down 12 percent in New York City. So, we're starting to turn the corner. You know, we're comparing our numbers with the last two years. We're also going way back into 2012. And we're seeing, you know, property crimes are down 28 percent, violent crime is down about four or five percent, but we still have challenges.

That is very impactful for all of us. We need that. We need that sense of security because fear is debilitating. When people are afraid to walk down the streets afraid of having their house broken into when they leave, fearful something's going to happen to their children. That is debilitating.

We all have a responsibility to try and eradicate that. Give people the sense of security they deserve as a New Yorker, someone living in our State. They're the people that we are collectively fighting for every single day. So, thank you. Thank you for what you do, and I'll continue to support you in every way I can. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.