Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you so much because some things you have to just pray for and one of them, I believe, is peace. And as I'm standing here in this park with my allies for public safety, from the DA to the Bronx borough president, to our clergy, to our crisis management team members, AT Mitchell, Iesha Sekou, Jackie Rowe-Adams, and just so many names that we have stood side by side on this issue and fighting against the overproliferation of gun violence.
And that battle did not start when I started running for office. I find it despicable to hold up the life of a grandmother and use it as a campaign prop, particularly when the laws that you passed have put in place the overproliferation of this violence on our streets. We have been clear on ending violence in our city.
And it has not truly been acknowledged what the crisis management team, what they have been doing. Retaliatory shootings are one of the most important parts of ending gun violence. Those who can end the retaliatory shootings play such a role. And the men and women who are behind us and to the left of me and to the right of me, they go to the hospitals, they speak to the family members, they speak to the victims, and really talk them down from the retaliatory action that may take place after a shooting.
We cannot thank them enough on the art and science of just really caring and being on the streets to ensure we can stop these retaliatory shootings. The shooters are getting younger, and the victims are getting younger. And when I stand with the DA’s in this city to hear when they do gang takedowns, and you look at the ages—15, 16, 17-year-olds—who are finding it more tolerable to carry guns and end disputes with bullets.
The number of shells that were found here at this park is—only God stopped more people from losing their lives. And I spoke with the mother of one of the victims today, and that conversation of having to talk to parents and having to now go communicate with a grandmother, a family member who we lost yesterday to a shooting, unintended target, intended shooters hitting unintended target.
And when bullets fly because of gang disputes, it doesn't stop and pause and say, okay, this is not a rival gang member, or this is a rival gang member. It takes the life. It takes the life of an innocent person. And that's why we're here today, because there's so much we want to do. And we know it's not just policing.
Public safety is a combination of the entire criminal justice system and then the supporters of that system. That is what public safety is. And it is about preventing and reacting. That is the two components of it. And our prevention is making sure what Commissioner Howard is doing at DYCD and ensuring we do 100,000 Summer Youth jobs, Summer Rising, universal after-school program.
And just the other day, our CDL license to teach those who are formerly incarcerated to get a CDL license, so they can drive a tractor-trailer and not drive violence, and not being on a repeated cycle of incarceration. That is our focus and our goal.
And we know that in the Bronx, Chief Gurley has been putting the manpower out and committed to the hot spots. We have 1,000 new officers in the Bronx. And we're going to ensure that they are in the hot spots. We're going to get on the—be on the ground to talk with and partner with our crisis management team, so they can identify some of the gang rivalries.
We're going to reach out to the notable gang members, the shooters, the trigger-pullers, and see if we can sit down around the table and talk about how we end this violence. They consider themselves ops. They consider themselves to be fighting over turf.
We want to get them behind the scene and talk this violence to a conclusion. We can't keep doing this. We can't keep doing this. When you sit in the hospitals night after night, when you're making phone calls to family members, when you're visiting those law enforcement officers, like officer, now Detective Islam, this is not political.
It's personal. I'm not here just after the bullets fly. I'm here to continuously bring peace to our streets. That's the role and obligation of the mayor. And so, in two days, when you have five shooting victims. A 32-year-old father, a member of our community dies. A young girl is in the hospital now. When you have a grandmother who's just out enjoying the city [gets] shot in the head and killed because rival members are shooting at each other.
When you keep hearing these stories, it really overshadows the work that these organizations and groups have done. It overshadows the success that they have accomplished. But I know what you do. I know what you do, and I know what you have done. And I know the body counts would be so much higher if you were not on the ground.
You don't have a bulletproof vest. You don't have a gun. All you have is your commitment and dedication to save lives. And so I want to tell you thank you. And I know what you do every day in the process. And so now I want to turn it over to AT Mitchell—I'm sorry—Bronx DA and our Bronx BP.
And I want to thank both of you for always being on the ground dealing with this issue, you know, over and over again. I cannot thank you enough for what you're doing. Turn it over to AT Mitchell.
AT Mitchell-Mann, Founder and CEO, Man Up! Inc.: Good afternoon, everyone. I was talking to the DA and the BP, and it seems like I have a permanency here in the Bronx. We've been here two days in a row, and I really want to just thank them both. And I want to thank all of the elected officials here of this great borough.
The law enforcement branches, I want to thank all of the crisis management system organizations here in the Bronx that's really on the ground, working alongside our partners to do the work. Because when I come to the Bronx, I love your borough. Your borough is a beautiful, beautiful borough, one of the best boroughs in the city.
But I hate meeting like this. When we come over the bridge from Brooklyn, where we're from, we are coming to come and stand in support of you all, as we have over the years, because of something like this happening under our watch.
I just want to concur, and I want to also publicly thank the mayor. This mayor—I've worked in this work under four mayors, and this mayor, by far, has done more and been on the job of this issue than any other mayor in the history of New York. And I'm one that's been around long enough in this work that can attest to that.
And no one has come close to being as committed to reducing gun violence than this mayor and his administration and all of the work that they have been doing for these last three-plus years. So thank you mayor. Thank you for giving the crisis management system the acknowledgment that we so desperately ask for at times like this, because he's correct.
What you don't see is the work that these brave men and women are doing. When everybody else is asleep, they have access to places that nobody else can go. They have a relationship with people that others do not have. And just for the record, our message is just the same.
It's the same as my colleagues in law enforcement, as my colleagues in government. All of our messages are the same. We don't stand for senseless violence. We denounce gun violence in any form of any fashion. We do not agree that picking up a gun, no matter what the circumstances are, is the legitimate or the right way to go about solving your issue. It only makes matters worse.
And so we work really hard to make sure that we get to them before they even pick up a gun. But we always tell them that if they still decide to make that poor decision, take it from us. Some of us have been there and done that.
And we know that it doesn't work out, and we know that it doesn't pay. But if they still decide to let that bullet leave that chamber, then there's little that we can do. We can't help you at that point. You're going to possibly need a lawyer. You're going to possibly need a doctor. You're going to possibly need someone of clergy to pray over you.
So we try to let them know the full consequences of their actions before they even commit it. But again, I want to say that the work that we all have been doing collectively is working. We are sorry, and we send our condolences to the families, to the victims of violence, to the mothers and the fathers who lost their loved ones.
But just trust and believe we are working overtime to prevent the next shooting from happening. And so we appreciate the opportunity to work alongside you all. We all have different lanes. We all don't do the same things. We don't do what the police do. We can't do what our DA does.
But we have a lane, and we are definitely living up to our role and our responsibility. And so I'm actually just elated that we are able to get together like this. But again, I can't wait till we have a barbecue under some good circumstances. I want to pass it over to the DA of the Bronx, DA Clark.
Darcel Clark, District Attorney, Bronx County: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and everyone gathered here today. In this beautiful green space, this basketball court, a place that became a killing ground last Saturday. We come here today to pray and to take back this park where some sixty bullets were fired last week. [This] leaves one man dead and a young girl hanging on for dear life right now in Jacobi Hospital, hanging on by a thread, and three others who were wounded.
And my heart goes out to those families, all of them. But I'm tired of saying my heart and my thoughts and prayers go out to these families. We got to do more than that. We're also standing here to take the Bronx back from these trigger pullers who are plaguing our streets right now, firing shots in broad daylight, in parks, near schools, even near my courthouse. It's happening.
And in these final days of summer, in addition to the shooting that we had here, there were ten people shot in other incidents as well here in the Bronx. We had four people shot on Monday, two fatally. There was a triple shooting yesterday, where one person died. We cannot abide by this. And it's not just the Bronx.
That grandmother in Harlem, my heart goes out to her as well and her family. And the shooters and the victims increasingly are teenagers, and they're becoming younger and younger. Two boys, ages 16, and two 20-year-olds have been charged in Saturday's shooting here. We have five guns recovered on this basketball court, in this park, from that one shooting.
The gun culture has to be demonized. We have to—it has to be denigrated, and it has to be demoralized. It can't be glamorized anymore. There's no glamor in this at all. And we have to do more to stop the flow of these guns coming here into the Bronx. Let's talk about that, not just the symptoms, but the problem that is causing it. And that's these guns.
We don't have any gunmakers here in the Bronx.Yanely, you know that. Your daughter died right here in the Bronx from gunfire, a 16-year-old girl. And I'm calling on my federal partners to help with this. We need the laws changed. We need the U.S. attorney to help us with the prosecution of some of these gun cases.
And so, my concentration is not just on getting justice for the victims, because that's always going to be my goal, to make sure I do that. But now it's not only just the killings, the homicides or the nonfatal shootings. That's one part of the case. But the other case now is the gun.
We have to start looking at the gun, and we have to start holding those responsible for putting those guns in the hands of the young people, AT, that you all are standing with. We have to do more to get to them. So this senseless violence is happening all across our nation.
We know a man killed two babies praying in church school yesterday in Minnesota. You know, seventeen other children were hurt. All of this is horrific. It's got to stop. And here in the Bronx, you know, we have our own mass shootings, right? It's one day at a time. It's a couple every day, or it's a mass shooting like [what] happened here last Saturday.
So whether it's incrementally or mass shooting, it has got to stop. So Mr. Mayor, I look forward to your mobilization of resources that you've promised the Bronx now so that we can stop this violence. I'm looking forward to that, to help protect Bronxites. I welcome more police here. Chief Gurley is doing a great job, in my opinion.
But I also welcome more programming and resources to prevent our young people from getting in trouble in the first place. From being the victims as well as the offenders of this gun violence. And I'm begging the community, I'm begging you, everybody that can hear me, I'm begging you to get involved.
If you know something about these guns, you've got to tell us about it. If you know something about these shootings, you've got to tell us about it, because it's not snitching. Okay, that's the first thing. It's not snitching. It's saving lives. It's saving lives, Ms. Jackie. You know that.
And so we've got to do more in order to do that. Every time one of those shooters gets away because we don't get to solve that case, that means another person may die. That may mean you or me may be the person who our skin hits—a bullet hits our skin.
So we can't do it anymore. We've got to stop it. We've got to do it now. So I welcome any help that we could get to prevent this gun [inaudible] from continuing to happen. We cannot go on underserving and undersaving the Bronx any longer.
Thank you. I get to introduce the borough president now. My sister in all things that we're doing here in the Bronx, countywide, Vanessa L. Gibson, borough president of the Bronx.
Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson: Peace. Good afternoon, family. And thank you all for being here today here in Haffen Park. I am Bronx Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson, and this is day two of being here in Haffen Park. Last night we were here with Pastor Jay Gooding, clergy and NYPD and elected officials, and we came together in the spirit of community, and we prayed, because we need healing in this land.
We need healing in the Bronx and healing in the City of New York. But we know that prayer without works is dead. And so we know that with every prayer has to be a level of action. And what we saw last Saturday, with five people shot and injured, one fatally, one critically injured, is a call to action and attention.
We need a new outcome, family. We can never normalize the plague of gun violence. It is happening far too often in safe spaces, as our parks and playgrounds and schools are. And so we want to make sure that the entire community here in Baychester knows that we are here and we are not going to stop until we rid our communities of illegal guns and weapons.
Because let's be clear, it's not just guns. On August 5, 14-year-old Angel Mendoza was at Williamsbridge Oval Park, and he was fatally stabbed. And his parents live with a permanent pain, far too much pain, far too much trauma happening in our community. And the saddest part of it all, as it has been said, is that the victims and the suspects are getting younger and younger and younger.
They look the same, and more than likely, they come from the same neighborhoods. We cannot accept this violence. I don't care where you live, in the Valley, in Eastchester, in Co-op, it doesn't matter. We are all one borough. And we have to make sure that we do our part to reach out to families, to parents that are in need, that are crying out for assistance.
We heard from a mother yesterday, and she was angry, cursed us out. But you know what? I don't take it personal, because if I was in her shoes and lost my son, I would be angry, too. And so I take that anger. I take that frustration as borough president, because we take this personal. These are our children, these are our babies, and these are our streets.
We cannot allow the minority to come into our parks and playgrounds with the intention to injure, shoot and kill at a basketball game, giving out school supplies. It is unacceptable. And so we have been here too many times, shooting responses, candlelight vigils.
We are tired of the vigils. We are tired of the funerals. We want to be at graduations and job fairs and career fairs and ribbon-cuttings of community centers and recreation centers. That's [where] I want to be at. I want to love our young people and let them know that nothing is impossible, that you can come from our community and still be successful.
All of the hip-hop pioneers and leaders that stand at my side, that come from the Bronx and come from the city, that have similar stories, but yet a different outcome. And so we have to be that different outcome. I want to thank our mayor, Eric Adams, for always showing up. He is outside, just like we're outside.
We are walking these blocks, we are walking these streets, and we are letting families know that we are here. But guess what? For all the work we've done, all the announcements, all the achievements that we can talk about, it's still not enough. If parents do not know about programs like Compass, SONYC, Summer Youth, Saturday Night Lights, Beacon, Cornerstone, if they don't know about CMS, then our work is not done.
So we have to keep educating. We have to keep doing more outreach into our communities, so we can take a hold of our young people, so that 12-year-olds don't take that gun from the 18-year-old, because he goes through juvenile family court, whereas the 18-year-old goes through criminal court.
We have to stay five steps ahead of folks, y'all. We cannot ever, ever stand by on the sidelines and allow our communities to live in destruction. But there are brighter days ahead, folks. As heavy as my heart is, I still believe. I still believe in our community. I still believe in our people, in our young people, in our community.
Because I have seen the resilience and the strength of this borough. I have seen us make something out of nothing. I have seen us turn pain into purpose, and our storm into strength. I've seen people knock us down in the Bronx, and we've been able to show the world what we can do. But we are not doing this work alone. Everyone has a responsibility.
You don't need a title in front of your name to call 911, to call 311, to call the precinct, to call the community board, [or to] call the elected officials. All hands on deck, folks, from Baychester all across our borough. And so this is a call to action.
In a few days, guess what's happening? Labor Day weekend. More people in the park, in the playground, barbecuing, picnicking, everything. We have to make sure that we are ready. But we also have to make sure that our communities are safe, because next week, a million public school children go to school.
Parents need to make sure their children are safe when they leave the house for school in the morning. And we have to reassure our people that we are here during the good times and the challenging times. So I want to thank our mayor again, my brother AT Mitchell, [and] all the CMS groups.
You all are doing God's work every single day. We often say, blessed are the peacemakers, for they are called children of God. We are children of God, and God is doing a mighty thing in our lives. And this is not even Sunday, but this is my word for the day. Because every day, as borough president, I am getting those calls, just like the DA, just like Chief Gurley, just like Inspector Ashraf in the 47, the precinct council, the clergy council.
We are always on, because there's always something happening. But I am here to tell you that all hope is not lost, folks. Mobilization plan, all hands on deck, collaboration. We need it all. We want it all. Just as I ask for new police officers, I ask for more recreation. I ask for more jobs. I don't think that it is just the NYPD's job to keep us safe.
But this is the team. This is the village, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, precinct by precinct. What I love about CMS is that my brothers and sisters, like Street Corner Resources, LIFE Camp, SAVE East Harlem, they come to the Bronx to help us, with Guns Down Life Up, SUV, BRAG. We are all one family. And I love that.
And we're going to stay in the streets until our work is done. So for right now, after what we've seen, why is it acceptable that the Bronx leads the city in shootings and homicides? Over 30 percent of the shootings in the City of New York are attributed to the Bronx. But we're not 30 percent of the city's population. That's unacceptable.
Something is happening. And until we get a different result, our work is not done. So just like that mom from yesterday, we are angry, we're pissed off, and we're frustrated. But guess what? We are still going to keep working. When we say Guns Down Life Up, we mean it. When we say Save Our Streets, we mean it, for our sons and our daughters, so that children can grow up safe.
We'll be back here this weekend in Haffen Park. We're not going to let anyone take us away from our community. We'll be back. And we're going to stay out here, from here to Williamsburg, every other place. So I want to say thank you all. Thank you for caring and stepping up. You have a partner in the borough president, whether it's money we're putting in for security cameras for the NYPD or sanitation, because I believe clean streets are safe streets.
So you know I'm out here cleaning streets, too. Because it matters. Clean streets are safe streets. If our streets are not clean, they're not safe, and vice versa. So this is an all-hands-on-deck, interagency coordination. So I want to thank again all of the elected officials. Not everyone could join the district attorney, Darcel Clark, and I today.
But I want to acknowledge here in the Valley, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, Congressman Ritchie Torres, Senator Jamaal Bailey, and Councilmember Kevin Riley. We talk all the time about what more we can do. And we are not going to give up on our children. That's my message today.
Don't give up on our young people. Don't give up on our children. Don't give up on our future. Don't give up on our promise. And with that, I want to call up and recognize our leader, our commanding officer of Patrol Borough Bronx.
I think I speak to him multiple times every single day, because as the leader of twelve precincts, we are on the ground getting resources and mobilizing and making sure that our communities are safe. I want to acknowledge Assistant Chief Benjamin Gurley.
Assistant Chief Benjamin Gurley, Patrol Borough Bronx, Police Department: Good afternoon. This is my third day addressing gun violence in the borough of the Bronx. Looking at the numbers, the numbers don't tell the story. I see numbers that are decreasing, but I'm also seeing people get shot in areas that we don't normally see shootings.
I'm seeing people get shot at eight in the morning, ten in the morning, two in the afternoon, shot for robberies, shot over social media, shot over small disputes. I'm seeing 13-year-old girls carrying guns. I'm seeing 12-year-old boys as shooters carrying guns. There were actually six guns recovered here that day, 63 shell casings that day.
I had a shooting in the 45 precinct, all teenagers being victims, [where the] shooter [was a] 17 years old [on] Saturday. And let's not forget our older adults just the other day with a triple shooting and a homicide. We’ve taken 635 guns, and that number has went up since the past two days off the streets of the Bronx year-to-date.
We have a reduction of 41 shootings, we have a reduction of 63 victims, but you wouldn't be able to tell. You can't tell. I always ask our older adults and our leaders in the community, please talk to the youth. Please invest in the youth. You need to know what's going on in your young people's lives, regardless of what your title is, regardless of who you are.
If you love or care for that young person, please talk to them, because some of the stuff that I'm seeing, when we talk about motives in these shootings, it doesn't add up. It does not add up. There is no purpose. And I say there's carnage on both ends of the gun. The trigger puller, lifelong bad decision. The person that gets hit with the bullet may end their life, or they might have a lifelong handicap.
I don't think young people understand what the consequences are. And these conversations need to happen, and I'm sorry, it needs to start at home. It needs to start on the block. And all of our leaders out there have a reason, a big reason, and a responsibility to talk to our young people to get the guns put down.
Now, youth violence is down in the Bronx. You can't tell, because youth violence in terms of shooting is up. So youth crime is down, but they're still out there shooting, our victims and our perpetrators, younger and younger, over nothing. So get involved, please.
Take a look at what's going on in your young people's lives. Please, I do not want to keep putting young people in jail for gun charges, murders, nonfatal shootings, stabbings. And it runs the gamut. It runs the gamut of violence. Please. Thank you. Have a good night.
Mayor Adams: Thank you. And as was mentioned, I really want to thank sister Yanely, who's here, showing a beautiful photo of her daughter, because sometimes when we hear about these cases and stats, we forget that we're talking about real human beings with a promising future and career.
As Jackie Rowe-Adams, who lost several of her loved ones' children to gun violence and so many more. These are real lives, real stories that we're talking about. So we'll open to a few questions before we go out and walk the community.
Question: DA, you had mentioned the mobilization that the mayor promised. If you could get more specific about what those resources were that the mayor made?
Mayor Adams: We have 1,000. I indicated that when I was speaking. A thousand more officers that are being deployed up here to go after the hot spots and go after the areas where we call precision policing. A thousand more officers.
Many of those officers, particularly during this weekend, normally were down at the West Indian Day Parade, but we are zero focus on the Bronx, because of what we're seeing. A thousand more officers.
Question: Are these officers, are they going to be out here patrolling? What are these officers going to be doing?
Mayor Adams: On foot patrol. And every officer, when they leave that academy, they're trained with the skills they need to carry out their jobs. And one thing about the New York City Police Department, you stop being a rookie when you leave [from] graduation.
You now are going to do the job. You're going to respond to shots fired, just as a seasoned officer. You're going to go to burglaries, homicides. You're going to do first aid when it's needed. The same thing a 20-year vet would do is [the same as what] a 20-minute vet that leaves their Police Academy [would do]. That's the way it's done.
Question: There will be a thousand new officers, additional officers that will be patrolling the Bronx?
Mayor Adams: We have been focusing on the Bronx. We have a thousand more officers. I'm not sure how many times I've got to say it, but a thousand more officers are going to be deployed in the Bronx to assist Chief Gurley and assist other personnel.
We've actually looked all over the city, and whenever we can get an able-bodied officer, we've gotten officers from behind the desk to be out this weekend. And we want to make sure we have the right deployment to deal with this violence.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: If one of my colleagues wants to talk about it, but what I'm going to do, I'm going to speak with the crisis management team. And there are several professional groups and organizations that do mediation. We want to bring them in. But [specifically], I'm going to see if I can convince some of the gang members to come and sit down.
It could be at Gracie Mansion, or it could be here. We need to get around the table and engage in the conversation. As AT Mitchell just stated, and Chief Gurley just indicated, they need to understand the ramification of their action and what is their violence, [and] what is actually being done.
And that is part of what we're going to attempt to do in the next few days. Now, some would say they don't want to come inside. If they don't want to come inside, then they're going to have to deal with the consequences that come with their actions.
But those who would like to, the mayor wants to sit down and have a conversation with them. I did it as borough president, and I can do it as mayor as well.
Question: And, mayor, this is the crime stats from 47th precinct, the week ending 8/24, before these incidents. Now, there are 2,253 crimes so far in 2024, up 12.03 percent from last year, which means last year there were 3,123 crimes.
Now, the whole borough of Staten Island doesn't even match that, and they have four police precincts. Can we get more police precincts here in the Bronx, because there are three other precincts with more than 3,000 crimes?
Mayor Adams: Yeah, and there's a whole process, as you know, on how precincts are decided, based on geographics. And there is a plan in the future [on] how we're going to reshape the Bronx and what we need to do here. There is a plan that we are looking at now.
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