MAYOR'S GUN VIOLENCE PREVENTION ANNOUNCEMENT

 

First Deputy Mayor Wright and I just cannot say enough about the number of conversations Governor and I have had together on this issue. We started out everything from dealing with transit safety to just so many other issues and just being a real partner and AG James for just looking at everything from the types of guns, going after the gun manufacturers. Just really damning all of these rivers. I say it over and over again, there are many rivers that feed of the sea of violence. And the partners you see here today from the Attorney General, the Governor, amazing DAs in both the Bronx and Manhattan and Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens, taking down gun crews and what they're doing, finding the right balance of how do we go after proactively dealing with the guns.

And this is something that Public Advocate Williams has talked about for years. I remember during the days of being a council person and then being a borough president, even going back as far as being a state senator talking about the many issues that impact gun violence and how do we have a proactive approach to it. But you can look at government, this is our job. Our job is to do this, but it is not A.T. Mitchell's job. 

He is not elected or hired by government. And the number of days that I have responded to crime scenes shootings throughout this city, sat in hospitals, watched the men and women of the crisis management system respond. They don't have bulletproof vests, they don't have helicopters, they don't have the artillery that the law enforcement community currently possess, but they've been doing the job. A.T. you are just a symbol of the entire crisis management operation on the frontline every day and I cannot thank you enough for over almost 40 years of friendship watching you do this work in a real way, saving lives. Thank you so much for it.

And many are here, these crisis management men and women are here. And they were not new to me. I've known them for so many years and they looked towards this administration and say, "We can just hold on long enough for Eric to be the mayor because he gets it."

So our time has arrived, our time has arrived, and now we have to get something done. There's a small window of opportunity to bring the level of aggressiveness that we need, intervention and prevention. We've been doing the intervention and what was needed, and I said over and over again, public safety's a prerequisite to prosperity. Public safety and justice is a prerequisite to prosperity. It is what I campaigned on, it is what I promised and what I committed to the people of this city. And you're seeing the results. Homicides are down. Shootings are down. We are hearing on those extreme recidivist individuals through July 29 shootings in New York City have declined compared to the same period last year. And just think about this number for a moment. Since taking office, we have removed 11,000 guns off our streets, 11,000 guns. The removal of those guns, we cannot do it effectively or correctly if we didn't have the right partnership with our district attorneys, and all that they had to go through on dealing with the new changes of laws. They stood up and they still handled the cases appropriately. With the partnership of our partners in Albany, both in the Senate and Assembly and the leadership of the governor.

Our actions has contributed to New York City being the safest big city in America. Sometimes those random acts of violence like we witnessed over the weekend, it sort of takes away from the correct narrative. New York City is the safest big city in America and we need to be clear on that. And I think that we need to keep letting people know that over and over again. This is a direct result of what we're doing. We know what's work. That's why the work of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force led by Deputy Mayor Wright with all the stuff you have on your plate, Sheena, you just dug into this and delivered a qualitative product. Listen, I knew what I was doing. Job well done. Job well done.

And so we're making a historical step that I believe is going to cascade throughout the entire country. With this new Blueprint for Community Safety we're not just talking about it, we're spending about it also. We are going to allocate $481 [485] million to this plan that would double down on public safety efforts, invest in our most impacted communities. The map is clear. You do an analysis of the map. You see high gun violence. You're also going to see high unemployment. You're going to see dropout rates high. You're going to see mental health issues high. You do an overlay in a GPS mapping system of this and you will see the same problems are isolated and concentrated in the same community. And this is what Chancellor Banks has been talking about over and over again that if we don't start really being more proactive, we are going to be in a constant perpetual cycle of being reactive. And that is not what this administration is about. We're an upstream mindset so that we could prevent people from falling in the river that we don't have to pull out of the river downstream.

We're going to activate every level of city government because it's a holistic approach and we're going to prioritize prevention based approaches to public safety. It is the result of a cross agency collaboration that brought together our teams from 20 city agencies specializing in public safety, healthcare, workforce development, education and more. The way to deal with these issues is to approach it in a holistic way and partner with our amazing former commissioner, Commissioner Sewell, and now picking up the reins of the current Commissioner Eddie Caban, we're going to continue these partnerships in a real way. And continue with our state partnerships. And again, I just want to emphasize the role that the governor and attorney general has played with our partners both in the Senate and Assembly, both those leaders, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins. This is our way of saying this is an all hands on deck moment.

First Deputy Mayor Wright is correct. The people, everyday people sitting in the meetings having good solutions, sharing them with us, we cannot thank them enough for coming to meetings over and over again as we put this plan into place. Time and time again, community members advocated for their needs and proposed these real solutions because they know better than anyone. That ending gun violence requires more than enforcement, more than policing far much more. It requires attention and investment. That is why this blueprint is on a community development approach that focuses on preventive measures and long-term strategies. We sought out to answer a key question over and over again that we heard, “How can we stop the violence before it happens on our streets?” 18, the number of youth town halls we did across the city with young people, I was blown away. People often want to define this for young people, every town hall, two things came up over and over again. Public safety, better relationship with police and dealing with mental health. Over and over again all the town halls we did with these young people, they were more forward-thinking than anyone else. And I did not hear one town hall that they stated they wanted their school safety agents out of their schools.

So I don't know who other folks are talking for, but those young people had a relationship with their school safety agents and they wanted them in their school. They don't want to be abused. They want to be treated with this respect and dignity that they deserve. And that's what this plan is all about. We sought out answers and we got the answers. We looked at housing, employment benefit access, community vitality, trauma-informed care, how many times we hear that A.T.? Trauma-informed care over and over again. In early interventions to protect our youth our city must start intervening earlier and focus on positive youth development before it is too late. That means increased investment and support for our young people, like $22.5 million towards the Department of Youth Community Development’s Work, Learn and Grow Program that offers year round employment opportunity.

And it's about jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs. That's why we're doing the hiring halls. But we also are investing $6.6 million for job training for our out of school and out of work youth. 18 to 24, the countless number of young people who are not in school, they're not working, they're not in training, they're doing nothing at all. Someone must throw them a lifeline and tell them there's a better road and a better opportunity and that's what we're doing. We're going to increase access to jobs training and career opportunities and the important work being done by our CMS providers and our violence interrupters who can mediate conflict before they erupt into gun violence. I see your sister out there in Harlem all the time doing this on the front line, responding to jobs.

And thanks to the funding from our partners in Albany and the philanthropic sector, we are taking these groups work to the next level, increasing wraparound service for at-risk youth. We see them, we see the profile, we know what happened, learning disabilities, mental health issues, dropped out of school, a foster care system. We know the pattern. So why are we waiting in allowing them to pick up a gun instead of giving them an opportunity and picking them up in the process. And giving providers operational support so they can worry less about paperwork and more about saving lives.

All of these require more than just investment, it requires trust. That's why we must rebuild community and police relationships from the ground up. And this is such an important role that Commissioner Mark Stewart and our Commissioner Eddie Caban is doing, what Commissioner Stewart is doing in the community affairs, he has redefined the Community Affairs Unit to build those relationships between police and community. And that relationship is not severed all over the city, some communities embrace their police because of their interactions, others fear their police. We're going to dismantle that wall and we're going to allow our community and police to work in operation. That is what this police department is doing under the leadership of Commissioner Caban and the Community Affairs Commissioner Mark Stewart. These efforts will begin with neighborhoods in Brooklyn in the 73 and the 77 Precincts and in the Bronx in the 40, 42, 44 and 47 Precincts and it would expand to other neighborhoods across the city over time. We must dam every river that leads to the sea of violence.

My blueprint, a lot of work, a lot of effort went into this document. My life's work went into this. I know the importance of this. I know what it represents to far too many. If you have never gone to a crime scene, if you have never stopped in a hospital and talked to a mother who experienced violence or a dad, if you've never really heard the cries, you cannot do this work in the bleachers. You can't be a detached spectator. You have to get on the full feel of dealing with this on the frontline. There's never been a mayor in the history of this city that brings more information in this area and have been on the frontline as much as I have. And so when I first became mayor, people were asking, "Why do you go to the crime scenes? Why do you sit in the hospital? Why do you speak?" Because if you don't have a clear understanding of what this is impacting, if you're not the DA or Darcel or Eric Gonzalez that go to these scenes and speak to the loved ones and the family members, you can't sit in the ivory tower. You can't be so detached in the sterilized environment of city hall. The dirt and grime is on the street and I see it. I saw it. And it empowered me to bring together my administration. We have to start the process of ending this violence.

I'm just blessed at this moment, the intersectionality of the governor, of the AG, of groups of DAs, of community activists, we've all come together with all of our agencies and we are going to do the best we can. Is it going to be perfect? Hell no. We're perfectly imperfect. But goddamn we're dedicated and we are going to fight this head on. Thank you.