Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch: Good morning, everyone. 2025 was a historic year for the NYPD and for the City of New York. Shooting incidents and shooting victims fell to their lowest levels in recorded history. The subway system had its safest year outside the pandemic era since 2009. Transit robberies fell to their lowest point ever, even when you include the Pandemic era, and retail theft was down a whopping 14 percent. Together, these numbers describe an agency that is firing on all cylinders, driven by the extraordinary work of the men and women of the NYPD.
I want to be clear: these are not incremental gains—they're historic outcomes. Before I get into the data, I want to thank Governor Hochul for being here with us today. Her presence is a symbol of the true partner that she has been to this department, committed to the mission, supportive of the cops, and focused on the results. When federal funding for our counterterrorism programs came under threat, she fought to protect it. She invested in public safety across the city, and those investments have helped produce so many of the 2025 results that we will cover today.
I also want to thank Mayor Mamdani, to whom I report directly, and with whom I am developing a close and productive working relationship. I look forward to working with him to continue to drive down crime in 2026. Now, let's get into the 2025 crime numbers starting with shootings. In 2025, New York City recorded 688 shooting incidents, the lowest number in the City's history. That didn't just break the previous record set in 2018; it shattered it, with 66 fewer shootings than that benchmark year.
Compared to 2024, shooting incidents fell by 216 citywide. That is a 24 percent reduction. They fell 36 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025, and in the month of December, shootings fell 43 percent with just 35 shooting incidents citywide. That is the lowest number of shootings ever in any month of the year, beating the previous record of 36 shooting incidents set in February of 2018. We see the headlines and we hear the pundits talk about crime being out of control in our city. These numbers tell a very different story.
To put all of this into perspective, in 2025 we halved Chicago's more than 1,400 shooting incidents, despite having roughly three times the population. And we halved Philadelphia's shooting total as well, despite having more than five times the population. This underscores just how far New York City has pushed gun violence down at a scale unlike any other city in the country. And it puts this moment into historical context. For decades, people have pointed to the early 1990s as the moment New York City turned the corner on gun violence—years that had been studied and written about.
What is striking is that the drop in shootings from 2024 to 2025 was of a similar magnitude. Given all of this, it should come as no surprise that the number of people shot in New York City also fell to historic lows in 2025 with 856 shooting victims citywide. That is 41 fewer people shot than the previous record year of 2018. Compared to 2024, shooting victims declined by 247 citywide, a 22 percent reduction. That progress accelerated at the end of the year.
In the fourth quarter, shooting victims fell by more than 34 percent, with December posting the lowest victim totals ever recorded for that month. And compared to 2021, 1,021 fewer people were shot in New York City in 2025. Those historic reductions in shooting incidents and victims weren't confined to a single part of the city. They were reflected across all five boroughs. Manhattan saw the steepest decline in shootings in 2025, down 38 percent year over year. The Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island each saw drops of roughly 25 percent or more. Brooklyn also saw a significant decline, with shootings down 15 percent below the previous benchmark set in 2024.
Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island each had the lowest number of shooting incidents for any year in recorded history. Now let's get into the full crime picture. Major crime in 2025 was down 3 percent citywide with reductions in all five boroughs, including a nearly 4 percent decline in public housing. Make no mistake about it. These reductions are the product of our precision policing strategy, putting an unprecedented number of cops on the streets and in the neighborhoods, driving violence, including thousands of additional officers on foot posts and conducting targeted takedowns of the most violent gangs operating in our city.
Last year alone, our Detective Bureau carried out 70 takedowns, resulting in the arrest of 390 gang members. You can see the impact of our zone strategy most clearly in the places that have historically experienced the most violent crime and where we have maintained permanent precision policing zones. Take the 25 Precinct, which includes the 125th Street Corridor. Major crime there dropped by 21 percent. Or the 110 and the 115 Precincts, which cover Roosevelt Avenue, where major crime fell 24 percent.
Now, let's go through the seven major crime categories. Citywide, murders declined 20 percent in 2025, with 77 fewer people murdered than 2024. And the declines deepened at the end of the year. In December, murders fell to 15 citywide, down nearly 38 percent from 2024. Alongside those reductions, our Detective Bureau has maintained a murder clearance rate of 69 percent in 2025. That citywide decline was driven by significant borough reductions.
On Staten Island, murders fell by more than 60 percent in 2025. Manhattan was down 33 percent. Brooklyn was down 24 percent. And the Bronx was down 18 percent. Robbery declined nearly 10 percent citywide in 2025, a reduction of more than 1,600 incidents year over year. In 2025, burglaries fell nearly 4 percent citywide. That decline accelerated at the end of the year, down more than 15 percent in December and 10 percent in the fourth quarter. Grand larceny declined nearly 2 percent citywide in 2025.
While this category remains one of the city's most persistent challenges, the full year numbers show continued progress as well. Auto theft declined 5 percent citywide in 2025, with a nearly 8 percent drop in the fourth quarter compared to 2024. That late-year decline reflects early progress from our work with auto manufacturers, including targeted efforts with companies like Honda, to address vulnerabilities and disrupt theft patterns before vehicles are stolen.
Felony assault remained virtually flat for the year. The overall picture on felony assaults is shaped by two important dynamics. First, assaults on public sector employees, which include police officers, increased by roughly 25 percent last year, a serious and unacceptable trend that reflects the risks our officers continue to face in the line of duty. Second, domestic violence continues to drive a significant share of felony assaults, accounting for nearly 40 percent of these crimes citywide. The NYPD made fundamental changes at the end of last year to how these domestic violence cases are handled.
In October, we created the Domestic Violence Unit within the Detective Bureau, a survivor-centered, trauma-informed approach that places specialized investigators in every precinct. It ensures continuity from complaint through prosecution, and it brings consistency and accountability to cases that demand it. Citywide, rapes were up 16 percent, largely due to a state law that went into effect in September 2024, which rightfully broadened the legal definition of rape to capture the full range of these crimes. Within that increase, domestic violence-related rapes rose by 25 percent and now account for roughly half of all reported rape cases citywide. That's why domestic violence cases including sexual violence are now being handled through the NYPD's domestic violence unit with the focused attention that they require.
I am looking forward to that starting to pay dividends in 2026. And progress extended into our transit system. 2025 was the safest year on our subways outside of the pandemic years since 2009. For six consecutive months, major crime on the subway system fell, contributing to a 4 percent drop over the course of the year. Transit robberies reached their lowest levels ever in 2025, even when you include the pandemic years, down 12 percent compared to 2024.
And for the year, shooting incidents on our subways were down a remarkable 63 percent. Put simply, in a system that serves around 4 million riders on an average weekday, there were fewer than six major crimes per day. These results don't make the transit system safer—they make it feel safer too. A recent poll conducted by the MTA found that nearly seven out of ten subway riders say they feel safe using the system. That is an increase of 12 percentage points from the beginning of the year. That shift reflects what riders are seeing. More officers on trains and platforms, and a consistent focus on maintaining order where transit crime most often occurs. And none of this happens without partnership.
The progress that we have made in the subway system was supported by the sustained commitment of Governor Hochul, whose investment in transit safety has strengthened our ability to deploy officers where they matter most and sustain these gains over time. Beyond the transit system, we applied that same disciplined data-driven strategy to crimes that directly affect daily life including retail theft. Retail theft is a recidivist-driven crime that spiked in the early 2020s, and communities across the city felt the impact in very real ways from everyday items like toothpaste being locked behind cases to local businesses struggling to stay open.
We heard that concern clearly from residents, workers, and store owners. In 2025, we responded with focus and with urgency. Retail theft declined by 14 percent citywide. That turnaround followed a clear strategy. We identified the patterns driving retail theft, we concentrated resources at high-propensity locations during peak hours, and we shifted from pass-through enforcement to sustained investigation. As a result, nearly half of all retail theft complaints resulted in an arrest, the highest rate since 2019.
While we have made historic gains generally fighting violent crime, we have not turned the tide yet on youth violence. In 2025, 14 percent of shooting victims were under the age of 18, an increase of five percentage points from 2024. And 18 percent of shooting perpetrators were also under the age of 18. These are the highest percentages that we've ever seen for both measures since we began tracking this data in 2018. That reality demanded a change in approach.
That is why this fall we implemented school safety zones modeled after our violence reduction zones but designed specifically to keep kids safe. These zones focus on the places where young people are most likely to fall victim to a crime, commuter corridors, bus stops, and the route students take to and from school. And the early results are significant. Since September, within these zones, overall crime was down 53 percent. And shooting incidents and shooting victims are down more than 75 percent.
We also changed our strategy with school safety agents, including deployments in and around schools. And the results there were striking, too. School-related enforcement is down 21 percent, and school-related crime is down 22 percent. Addressing youth violence isn't the work of one unit, one agency, or one solution. It requires all of us, families, schools, communities, elected officials, and law enforcement playing our part to keep young people safe. The same is true when it comes to transportation safety.
You often hear transportation safety discussed in the context of other agencies, and they deserve so much credit. I want to brag for a moment about the NYPD's role. Traffic fatalities reached historic lows last year, falling 19 percent from 2024 and to the lowest total ever recorded in New York City's history. That progress is the result of focused enforcement, particularly against the behaviors that put lives at risk, including drunk and impaired driving. Through sustained DWI enforcement and targeted deployments, NYPD officers are taking dangerous drivers off the road. Last year, DWI arrests were up 15 percent compared to 2024.
Safety in our streets depends not only on enforcement, but on our own judgment. In February, the NYPD updated its vehicle pursuit policy to limit pursuits to the most serious and dangerous crimes. The impact was immediate. Last year, vehicle pursuits dropped by more than 60 percent compared to 2024. Just as important, the risks associated with pursuits declined sharply as well. Fatalities fell by more than 80 percent, collisions dropped by nearly 50 percent, and injuries were cut almost in half.
Next, quality of life. Since April, our quality of life teams have been responding to the daily issues eroding people's sense of safety, specifically as they reported through the 311 system. That work is happening against a backdrop of sharply increased demand. Since 2019, 311 calls have increased by 104 percent. Even with that surge, citywide response times for chronic quality of life issues improved by an average of 22 minutes in 2025. Service times dropped by more than 14 percent and contact resolutions through 311 increased by more than 16 percent.
In 2025, hate crimes declined 12 percent citywide. Antisemitic incidents also declined down 3 percent year over year, but they still accounted for 330 cases, representing 57 percent of all hate crimes reported in New York City, despite Jewish New Yorkers making up roughly 10 percent of the City's population. These numbers remain far too high and antisemitism continues to be the most persistent hate threat that we face. The NYPD will continue to confront hate crimes aggressively and protect every community targeted because of who they are.
The results that I have just described are extraordinary on their own. They're even more extraordinary when you reflect on where this department stood just a year ago. A crisis of leadership, a department plagued by scandal at the top, and public confidence deeply shaken. And yet, through it all, the men and women of the NYPD kept doing the work New Yorkers depend on. They met the standard, they upheld their responsibilities, and they delivered remarkable results that speak for themselves. That kind of work matters, and people noticed.
In 2025, the NYPD hired more than 4,000 officers across four academy classes, making this the largest hiring year on record, and bringing us virtually to the department's authorized headcount. That kind of growth does not happen by chance. It happens when a profession earns the confidence of the City that it serves, and when people see this work as something worth stepping forward for. And despite what critics say, this year the NYPD did not experience an unexpected or extreme wave of departures.
Retirements were exactly as we projected at the beginning of the year. Resignations before pension eligibility are down more than 40 percent since 2022, and in 2025, we outpaced attrition by more than 800 officers. Our officers are the ones doing this work on the streets, but the direction of this department is set by its extraordinary leadership. I want New Yorkers to know that they are served by an incredible executive staff at the NYPD, including highly skilled civilian leaders and thoughtful and honorable uniformed chiefs led by our chief of department, Chief LiPetri, our crime strategist extraordinaire.
As someone who has been in and around the NYPD for 18 years, I can say without hesitation that this is the finest group of policing professionals that I have been privileged to work with. The historic reductions we've shared today did not happen by chance. They are the product of a department that confronts reality as it is, identifying the challenges in front of us, developing strategies to meet them, and executing those strategies with discipline and with precision. That approach is deliberate.
It is precision policing, a data-driven, scalpel approach that focuses effort where they matter most. It means putting officers where crime is actually happening, when it is happening, and staying there long enough to make systemic change. But all of this is only possible because of the men and women of the NYPD. It shows up in the decisions that they make on the streets, in investigations carried to their conclusion, and in the quiet consistency required to hold the line across a city this large and this complex. I want to be clear.
As the year turns, our crime-fighting posture remains unchanged. The standard we set for ourselves remains high and the commitment to support the men and women who do this work remains absolute. With that, I will now turn it over to Mayor Mamdani. Thank you.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani: Good morning, everyone. It is a privilege to be here with you at One Police Plaza and to be surrounded by so many committed public servants here in the NYPD. I want to thank Commissioner Tisch for her leadership and Governor Hochul for her steadfast partnership with the City. I will not repeat the incredible statistics that the commissioner just shared, but I do want to echo the human story that they tell. Because as impressive as these numbers are, we know that they capture something tangible. The lives New Yorkers live. The ways that our neighbors interact with our city.
And the countless hours of unseen hard work by the men and women in this room and beyond it that have delivered this progress. When we say that murder went down by over 20 percent from last year, that is anything but abstract. Each of those percentage points adds up to dining room tables without an empty seat. Lives free from the dark cloud of grief. Children that grow up with a parent at home. When we talk about the safest year on subways absent the pandemic years since 2009, we are talking about a City that is and feels safe to explore.
Where a young New Yorker from Inwood isn't afraid to ride a train to meet her friends in Flushing. Where a senior citizen on the Upper West Side isn't reluctant to get on the subway to see a grandchild in Bushwick. These numbers, whether they represent fewer robberies or fewer victims of gun violence, mean a more vibrant, joyful city. It's measured in restaurants and bodegas that keep their doors open later, families that don't hurry home as soon as the light begins to fade from the sky. But make no mistake, none of this arrives by accident.
Each of these markers of achievement is a testament to a Police Department that cares about this city and works with this city to remake this city. Thank you to those who are here at One Police Plaza and to those across our five boroughs for the work that you all do in making today possible. As we lead together, I want to see these numbers continue to drop, to continue to nurture the partnership between the NYPD and the communities across the city, and to empower our police force to focus on the serious crimes that they signed up to tackle.
We are going to mend the frayed social safety net that fails so many of our neighbors, tackle the mental health crisis that causes so much pain, and continue to deliver public safety across our five boroughs. I want to say thank you again to everyone who worked so hard to bring us this day, and thank you for all of the work we will continue to do to lead together over the years to come. And with that, I will pass it over to our partner, our governor, Kathy Hochul.
Governor Kathy Hochul: Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for reminding us of the humanity that is involved here when our men and women in uniform go out and save lives and prevent crimes and solve crimes. There are real people whose lives are not shattered. There's families not spending the holidays in the emergency room waiting for hopefully some positive news or the continuation of therapy that's required, mental health and physical therapy when people are victims of crime.
So yes there's a very human story behind these numbers that we don't want to have lost but these numbers are nothing short of extraordinary. I want to thank Commissioner Tisch for providing the leadership that this department has needed and the executive team that responds to that leadership so forcefully so successfully and all the people who are out there on our streets and in our subways in our neighborhoods who now feel that sense of pride again of being a member of the NYPD. That is a direct tribute to you, your philosophy, your way you're empowering others to do what they know how to do and I thank all of you for that.
And so, we can talk about the numbers again. I'm not going to repeat them all. But I do want to say, these reductions in crime that we're talking about today, and we are, again, as a football fan, we are not spiking the football, because we always know that something could change. But today is a milestone, something we could not have foreseen, I believe, four years ago when I first became governor. We are in the depths of a crime crisis throughout the nation, not just New York, not just New York City, but across the nation.
But we were besieged by crime. Shootings had doubled in just a couple of years. Repeat offenders were routinely being sprung free out to commit crimes again. Thieves were ransacking our local businesses with impunity and people just felt so unsafe. And it wasn't just our residents. The word was out among people who might visit from other states and other countries: "Oh it's a dangerous place. Don't go there." That's what we [were] entering just a few four short years ago.
So, I also made a vow. I would take this on directly with resources and with commitment and I decided we needed to do a better job of aligning our State and City crime fighting efforts because we had been operating as independent actors but with the same objectives. It did not make sense to me. So I said we'll do everything in my power to restore safety and order to our communities. And we got to work, even statewide. I launched the first in the nation Interstate Gun Task Force. There are now 12 states, and working with the NYPD in New York, that share information that track the iron pipeline, the flow of guns coming into our state, Whether they're up 95 or up 80, 81 from Pennsylvania, gun shows to our streets in the Bronx and in Syracuse. So we focused on this.
Also, we had not properly invested in fighting crime. In my term as governor, we've invested $3 billion across the State, but significant numbers here in the City of New York, to assist because it's asking a lot for localities to be able to use the latest crime technologies. We've invested in drone technology and license plate readers and all the other avenues that are expensive for locals to do. But the State steps in and we say we can help you with that, and I've been proud to announce that all over the State of New York. We also had addressed our criminal justice system and had common sense legal reforms.
Stronger bail laws to keep repeat offenders off the streets. We now have stronger discovery laws to keep criminals from walking free, literally on minor technicalities. We had a situation where 90 percent of domestic violence cases were being eliminated. That people make their case, they come and tell their horrible story to someone and repeat the anxiety and the pain. And they're tossed out by a judge on technicalities because of the way our law was written. No more is that the case.
Stronger red flag laws. Strongest in the nation. And I'm really proud of that because when you can identify that someone's making threats to a fellow classmate or showing signs that they could do harm to themselves or others, we now as a society have to take action. Not just law enforcement, but teachers and other people in the community. They come forward and we find out if there are guns available, and if yes, we will remove them from that individual. That is how we're preventing crimes.
As I mentioned, we've equipped [the] police with the best technology, more officers on the subway. What a difference this has made. I can't tell you how many people, and I walk the streets of New York every day, people come up to me and I don't worry about my daughter getting on the subway to go to school anymore because I know the efforts that you and the city have made. And it was resources. It was money to support the overtime that was necessary.
And in a short time, the National Guard, just to calm things down when the crimes were going up. But now the NYPD, the Transit Police, [the] MTA, are doing such an incredible job. So we've seized more guns, we've launched specialized units, and it's starting to pay off. And I'm not going through all the data, she's stood here a long time, and she might need some more water soon. But I stand here with a heart full of gratitude, and I'm going to be using my next years in office, starting with our State of the State next week, to talk about our enhanced crime fighting strategies. And how we're also going to protect places of worship.
We're going to change the law to protect places of worship, and we're going to talk about that next week. Tomorrow I'll be announcing our plan to confront the 3D-printed ghost guns. This has been a real challenge for us, not just in the City, but across the State. It's the fastest growing firearm safety threat in the entire country. So the point is, no matter how far we've come, we'll remain vigilant, unrelenting in our mission to keep New Yorkers safe. And we'll continue to prove that a partnership, a partnership like the likes of which we've not seen before, is also the key to that success.
You can count on me on being that partner that's going to protect you, provide the resources you need to change the laws that need to be changed, and make sure that you have everything you need to do the incredible work that you do. So I'm here to say thank you to the NYPD, from our commissioner on down, to the executive team, but certainly the people on the street that I always say hello to when I'm walking by, and just say thank you, because these are tough, tough jobs.
We should never forget that. And I thank our mayor for having the wisdom to continue this leadership because the numbers are showing that when you put a strategy together, have the team to execute, put the resources behind it, we can keep New Yorkers safer. And that's what it's all about. Thank you very much.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Police Commissioner Tisch: Our crime-fighting strategy in New York City is working now. I am never satisfied with the status quo. Just because it's the status quo, we're always going to look for ways to sharpen and refine. But I think it's very clear that our approach in particular to violent crime in New York City and to subway crime in New York City has led to historic results. I don't have any changes on the top of my head that I can think of at this time.
Mayor Mamdani: And I will add that there is much that these statistics cover, the incredible work that we've spoken about today. And I will also tell you that as the Mayor of this City, in just the last two days, I have been on site for two, five-alarm fires: one in the Bronx and one in Queens. And I also know that the work of the NYPD extends to being first responders in those moments as well, in ensuring that we are taking care of New Yorkers and delivering public safety in a wide variety of ways. So these are numbers and accomplishments to be celebrated, and as the commissioner said, they're also ones to be built on, because we will not rest until we make this the safest city it can be.
Police Commissioner Tisch: So, I have worked now, you're my fourth mayor—yeah, third or fourth mayor, third mayor, and every mayor has a different style and I have worked with each one of them quite productively. The mayor and I will continue to meet on issues, meet on crime-fighting strategies, and I'm looking forward to those discussions. But no, at this time, there is no change planned to the crime-fighting strategy that has delivered historic results. Yes. Robert, the name is there.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Mamdani: Look, I think as the commissioner said, the two of us are in constant communication and what New Yorkers deserve and what we are fully aligned on is the fact that we need to see genuine public safety across the city and that is something that is felt when New Yorkers can walk through their neighborhood without fear or without concern.
That is something that is felt when they see a City government that is addressing the fundamental concerns that actually underpins the misdemeanors and the minor crimes that we're speaking of and that is going to be the focus not only of myself but also of my entire city government.
Police Commissioner Tisch: Can I just—I just want to add to that the Quality of Life Division is by no means a return to broken windows policing. It was done in response to a doubling in the number of 311 complaints that we have received in New York City over a period of four years. Those are people from every neighborhood in the city calling the city for help on quality of life concerns. Now they vary neighborhood to neighborhood but one thing that is true across all of them is that there are quality of life problems.
And so the Quality of Life Division was designed to make the NYPD more responsive to 311 in much the same way that historically we have been quite responsive to 311. So we're responding to noise complaints. We are moving abandoned vehicles that have taken up parking in front of someone's home for months. These are things that we had not historically been responsive to, and New Yorkers were begging us for help.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Police Commissioner Tisch: So I have been very clear that the Gang Database is a tool that has helped us both in terms of fighting gun violence, certainly when we have a shooting in the city, we use the gang database to anticipate where we may see retaliatory violence, and that has helped drive our gun violence down. But yes, it also contributed to the gang takedowns that we – that have been so successful this year.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Police Commissioner Tisch: Yeah, so, um, a few things. First, we went all in on it. We had thousands of cops basically all year long, but particularly over the summer. We know that gun violence has historically surged, working overnight, foot posts, on the streets and in the neighborhoods where gun violence has been the most persistent problem.
And those deployments have shown unbelievable results. But we also have better data and more refined systems than we have ever had in the past. And one of the things that I have enjoyed working with here is leveraging that data and those systems to make sure we are going after the right people and putting the cops in the right places.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Police Commissioner Tisch: Yeah, and I'm actually looking forward to having these conversations with the Mayor and with his team because, as I mentioned, to address the problem of youth violence and kids falling victims to violence, it's going to take an all-of-city and, frankly, an all-of-state approach. There are things that I've went through in quite some detail that the NYPD has changed this year, which are beginning to show some real results. I have some ideas on what the Department of Probation and what ACS [Administration for Children's Services] can tweak and change in order to continue to improve outcomes. So yeah, addressing youth violence is going to be an all-of-City and all-of-State approach.
Mayor Mamdani: Just to the commissioner's point, we tend to tell young people in the city what they shouldn't do, and we have much less to say on what they should do. I think the commissioner's exactly right in terms of the whole-of-government approach that's required to also provide services, programming, and opportunities for young people across the City, and I look forward to having those conversations and delivering on that for the young people of the City. Thank you.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Mamdani: You know, I will say, I made the decision to retain Police Commissioner Tisch because of the work that she was doing. And that was work that could be measured in statistics of the kind that we have shared today, and also in the manner in which she tackled the crisis at hand at the upper echelon of the department that she was inheriting. And what we are seeing are the fruits of that work, and I look forward to continue building upon that.
Police Commissioner Tisch: The federal government can help out by shutting down the pipeline of guns into this city. Last time I checked, there are no gun manufacturers based in New York City. So I think we can, we will obviously at the NYPD continue to do everything that we can in our power, including our precision policing, putting cops where they need to be, doing focused investigations. But we will get—it would be great if we could stop the pipeline into the city and a lot of that falls on the federal government to do.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Mamdani: I think these numbers showcase a police commissioner, an executive team, and a department that are delivering for New Yorkers. And also, as the commissioner has said, as well as the governor has said, we cannot rest on these results. We have to build on these results. And I appreciate the commissioner and I's shared focus on doing so. And the fact that the creation of the Department of Community Safety is one that will also help to alleviate some of the immense, ever-growing burdens we are putting on this department.
I think the commissioner remarked upon the number of 311 calls that have increased over the years. In an annual year, the department is facing 200,000 calls on mental health crises alone. So there is no question of what the department needs to continue to do. And also I can tell you that as a New Yorker, I know there are more important things than for a police officer to be asked by a tourist in Times Square which train is working, which exit they can use, which elevator is functioning. That means that there are opportunities for us to supplement this work and to ensure that we actually empower officers to do the work that they signed up for.
[Crosstalk.]
Governor Hochul: No, we feel that this is an impending threat to New York. Minnesota has already received a letter that identifies there will be a suspension of funds that cover essential programs, including child care. And I have to ask the question, why is there such a frontal assault on children in this nation from this administration? Just back in November, they stopped feeding our kids. Now they won't vaccinate our kids. They're not allowing their parents to have their health care premiums covered without going up dramatically to make sure that our kids are raised safely and healthy.
And now they don't give a damn about childcare for kids. So this is a fight we're going to have to take on if we get that notification. It's vindictive. I believe that we'll be successful in court, we'll be having a litigation strategy, and we'll fight this with every fiber of our being because our kids should not be political pawns in a fight that Donald Trump seems to have with blue state governors.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Mamdani: So this is work that is ongoing within our administration. The focus is on building this Department of Community Safety. And to be very clear, it is about supplementing, as opposed to supplanting, the work that the NYPD does. What we are seeing right now is that there are far too many New Yorkers who are– whether experiencing the homelessness crisis or the mental health crisis, who are not being connected to the services that they need. This is an opportunity for us to build upon the incredible work that the NYPD has done as we've just spoken about. And start to deliver for those very New Yorkers.
Governor Hochul: Just on that question. No, we have successfully worked to deal with the homelessness crisis in our subways. There's over 1,000 individuals who've been long term homeless. Really, this was the only world they knew. And they're now in support of housing because of a scout teams that we help fund and initiatives where we send in mental health professionals with law enforcement to back them, but it's also to develop relationships with them, so I feel confident that you know we're going to continue funding the overtime for NYPD in the subways [so] I'll continue that path. We have our MTA police, we have Transit Police, and so I feel confident that nothing will change and the mayor's committed to ensuring the safety of all on the subway so I don't believe that's going to have a negative effect at all.
Mayor Mamdani: There would be coordination between the NYPD and the Department of Community Safety, as there would be as part of a whole of government approach. The Department of Community Safety would report through the first deputy mayor. This will be work that will be critical in tackling so many of the different issues we see in our city. We've spoken about the mental health crisis, we've spoken about homelessness. Part of this is also tackling the silos that have existed within city government.
We have a number of different initiatives, a number of different departments that are tasked with doing very similar things, but they're operating in isolation. So even when we are thinking about the incredible work that is being done on tackling gun violence, the importance of actually cohering the crisis management system, for example, within a larger framework that is tackling these kinds of issues, that's going to be critical, and that is something that we are looking forward to.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Mamdani: Yes.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Mamdani: Just to be very clear, the executive order that we issued was a direction to the police commissioner and the Law Department to review a number of the very things that they had been tasked with prior, and then to present that review to myself.
Question: And governor, if you could talk a little bit about that forthcoming policy, and more broadly, since you two are standing together in your first joint press conference as elected, you know, pretty much statewide, citywide leaders. How do you work through differences? Just bring me behind the scenes a little bit about if you have, you believe A, he believes B, how do you work through that?
Governor Hochul: Well, first of all, in my State of the State address, I'll be announcing safety zones around houses of worship where people can go freely to go to a safe place without threats of violence or protests. So we'll be announcing that very shortly to protect individuals. I get along with most people. The mayor's a nice guy too. And I think what you talk about is what the people of the City of New York want.
When I became governor, there was a long legacy of conflict, turf battles, big egos that were fighting each other, right? Non-stop. It was a constant clash. And I don't think anybody felt safer or better about life as a New York City resident when they saw two leaders in conflict. I took that lesson to my last four years and I worked with Bill de Blasio successfully for a few months.
I worked with Eric Adams and I'm looking forward to working with Mayor Mamdani because that's who I am. I don't need to have a public fight just for my ego satisfaction. I believe we can work out issues as we have been before the election. Our teams have been talking nonstop. They're embedded as we talk about the priorities of the city, our priorities and how we blend them together heading into our next budget and in our State of the State.
So I feel very confident that New Yorkers will not get the drama that perhaps is only enjoyed by the press, but it's not going to be there because we have work to do. We have a city and a state that are counting on us to actually lead and not be actors in a larger political theater.
Mayor Mamdani: And I will just add one thing to what the governor said, which is that I remember when the governor became the governor of our state, one of the first acts that she took was to actually get the money out of ERAP [Emergency Rental Assistance Program] and into New Yorkers' households across the state. And to me, it was an example of what it can look like when the focus is on the work, the focus is on the results, the focus is not instead on continuing that legacy of conflict between City Hall and Albany.
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