Transcript: Mayor de Blasio, Commissioner O'Neill Hold Media Availability on Crime Statistics

January 3, 2019

Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill: Alright, Happy New Year, everyone.

Audience: Happy New Year.

Commissioner O’Neill: Ah, look at that, a response.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Commissioner O’Neill: Must be a new year.

Mayor: That’s better than graduation. You got a response.

Commissioner O’Neill: And in a few moments, of course you’ll hear from Mayor de Blasio and then from our Chief of Crime Control Strategies, Lori Pollock and we’ll have end of the year crime figures and then we’ll take questions about the crime stats, the year-end stats and then we’ll go to off-topic after that.

First, welcome to the 6-7 Precinct here in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. I want to commend the commanding officer, Inspector Elliot Colon and every NYPD member that’s assigned here from their incredible efforts working side by side with New Yorkers who live and work in this precinct and in patrol Borough of Brooklyn South. I’ll tell you, this precinct when the entire borough and the whole city actually when it comes to crime and disorders a much different place than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. Community involvement is a major reason for the turnaround here with the very active 6-7 Precinct clergy council. I think they call it the God squad as they – and those who do so much to help reduce gun violence. And the other members of this neighborhood like the Violence Interrupters who steer young people away from gang life and help stop retaliation.

Every day the cops here are out interacting with people, building bonds that continue to take illegal guns, and drugs off the street. Today, we’re chronicling what really was another truly remarkable year citywide in 2018 in terms of how the NYPD and all the people we serve gage our city’s safety. It is much about reducing violence and disorder and actually making people safe and as it is about ensuring people feel safe. And by precisely focusing our resources on the areas and the people responsible for driving that violence and crime and disorder, we’ve been able to earn dramatic drops for yet another year. And when I say we, I mean all New Yorkers, the men and women of the NYPD, the FBI, the Secret Service, State Police, the ATF, the U.S Marshalls who happen – none of them happen to be getting paid right now. Our great partners, the New York State Police, our other local state and federal colleagues, like our prosecutors and the U.S. Attorneys with whom we work so closely to build solid cases, and to send away criminals with meaningful, appropriate prison sentences. You heard me say that. If you want to keep seeing solid crime reductions year after year, it will take all 8.6 million New Yorkers who live in our great city, plus the millions more who work and visit here annually too. Every day, members of the NYPD are making those connections; they’re building trust, and strengthening relationships in every neighborhood around the city. And our continued collective success will be sustained by even greater cooperation. In 2018 many of the indicators of a safe society like reductions in bellwether crimes such as burglaries, robberies, and shootings all saw dramatic drops over the previous year which is extraordinary given the historic lows we already achieved.

We’ve just logged the fewest number of murders in New York City in nearly 70 years. Our homicide rate has plugged to a level that was simply unthinkable just a generation ago. The men and women who put on these police uniforms everyday know better and it’s their skill and dedication that gets it done, its keeping New York City safe and by far it’s the safest large city in America. We know that 2019 promises to be a year of great opportunity, another chapter in our city’s history that will see even more NYPD successes realized on behalf of all New Yorkers. It would be sometimes of adversity, because that’s the nature of policing, there will also be moments of great triumph through crimes and arrests prevented, many lives saved, families kept intact, and the quality of life vastly improved. I want to commend all of our NYPD members and all of the New Yorkers who steadfastly support our neighborhood policing philosophy which is taking us to even greater higher heights together. Unified as one New York City they are the reason we continue to be a model – the standard in fact for the rest of the country, and the world. Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Thank you very much, Commissioner. Happy New Year, everyone. Happy New Year to all of the members of the NYPD who are here. Commissioner, congratulations, I want to express my gratitude and all of the people of New York City owe the NYPD real debt of gratitude for the achievements that were undertaken in 2018. It’s unbelievable what has happened here and congratulations to First Deputy Commissioner Tucker to Chief of Department Monahan, all the leadership here. A special thanks to our host, Inspector Elliot Colon, the commanding officer of the 6-7 Precinct and congratulations to all the men and women of the 6-7 Precinct, they’ve done some great, great work in 2018. We’ll talk about that in a moment. Thank you as well to our partners in this work, the elected officials who represent this community, Assembly member Rodneyse Bichotte and Councilmember Mathieu Eugene, thank you for your great work all of us together in 2018.

Look, I want to put this in perspective; we had in 2017 a record setting year. We had crime down in ways that no one believed possible previously. And in 2018 the NYPD beat the record again.

In 2018 the NYPD set a new record. The lowest level crime that we have seen since the 1950’s in this city, and very, very importantly two years in a row under 300 homicides. You know for anyone who has looked carefully at this over the years. For many years in this city good people, smart people, close observers thought there was no way in the world that a city of 8.6 million people could possibly get below 300 homicides in a year. When it happened in 2017, there were a lot people who said it must be an aberration; it must be a one-time deal. The NYPD has made very clear by their actions that we’re in a new normal now and we intend to go farther. Less than one homicide a day in this city and we intend to go farther, so it’s extraordinary for what’s been achieved. Overall crime down 1.3 percent since 2017. You’re going to hear from Chief Pollock on the numbers in a moment. But when you look in the context of just recent years and I want to give you the comparison to five years ago in 2013. Murders are down 14 percent since 2013, just five years’ time – 14 percent reduction in murders.

When you go back to 1990 which very sadly was the high water mark time of when crime was at its worst. Murders are down 87 percent since 1990, when you now look at the 2018 numbers, it’s unbelievable. And that means thousands of New Yorkers who lived and families that remained whole, we always have to these numbers and then look at the human reality. People walking the streets today alive who wouldn’t be otherwise.

It’s unbelievable to think how far we’ve come. But it has taken an immense amount of very systematic work, very hard work by the NYPD and so many community partners to get to this point. And the 6-7 Precinct is a great example of that, again if you take that comparison to 1990, 6-7 Precinct has gone even farther compared to 1990 murders are down 89 percent in the 6-7 Precinct. So that’s something everyone should be very, very proud of.

We’re the safest big city in America. We prove it year, after year, after year. This is now a pattern that’s going to stick and that’s going to get even better. And we’ve said very clearly we have to be the fairest big city in America and the NYPD is leading the way. These facts are astounding to me. Stop and frisk down 94 percent since 2013 and crime has continued to go down year, after year, after year. Overall arrests down 37 percent since 2013, I want to repeat that, overall arrests down 37 percent since 2013, crime down consistently and addressing the crisis of mass incarceration at the same time. You don’t have a mass incarceration people – excuse me you don’t have a mass incarceration crisis if people are not being unnecessarily arrested. That’s one of the keys to writing that wrong and the NYPD is leading the way. The new marijuana policy has led to an 81 percent decline in marijuana related arrests. These were conscious actions based on strategy, based on ideas like precision policing that made a huge difference. Obviously neighborhood policing now fully rolled out in every precinct and making a huge difference. We simply can put it this way – members of the NYPD are getting information and support from communities like they have never seen in generations. It’s making a huge difference. One of the things they’ve most needed was that kind of support, that kind of information, knowing about things before they happen, getting the kind of tips that will make a difference, that’s what our officers are getting now and it’s one of the keys to continuing this reduction in crime. So that’s all extraordinarily good news and there is one other piece of news that couldn’t possibly be better. Thank God, we lost no officers in the line of the duty this year and thank God for that, and thank God for the work that our officers do, we want them to be safe, it’s out obligation to make sure they are safe. And at every graduation I tell the families of our new officers, we are adding the things that will make sure they are safe more and more all the time – better equipment, better training, the kinds of approaches that will protect our officers – 2018 a very good year.

So the bottom line is it is working and now we intend to go farther. And it’s working because the NYPD is hand in hand with neighborhood residents, making neighborhoods safer. And this is a great example right here in the 6-7 Precinct in Brooklyn. Just a few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

Congratulations to all and now I’ll turn to Chief Lori Pollock, our Chief of Crime Control Strategies to go over the numbers.

Chief of Crime Control Strategies Lori Pollock, NYPD: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Happy New Year, everyone.

Mayor: Happy New Year.

Chief Pollock: So what does New York City look like going into 2019? It looks like the safest big city in the country. In a city of over 8.6 million people, we went five days or more without a recorded murder, five different times in 2018, including a streak of nine consecutive days, November 25th through December 3rd without a murder for only the third time in the CompStat era. Our murder rate is 3.31 per 100,000 persons – the lowest per capita murder rate for New York City in over 50 years, down almost two murders per 100,000 from 2012 when it was a little over five per 100,000. We are at record lows for murder, shootings, robbery, burglary, GLA, and total index crime. Overall crime is at a new record low. The first time in the CompStat era we have recorded below 96,000 index crime. That’s a reduction of 1.3 percent.

Brooklyn South where we are now, has seen a five percent reduction in index crime this year and the 6-7 Precinct is down ten percent in index crime in 2018. Although overall index crime is down, we have seen an increase in domestic index crime for most of the city. Three of the five boroughs have seen an increase in domestic violence with only Patrol Borough Staten Island showing a decrease. PB Brooklyn South is relatively flat but the 6-7 Precinct saw a 5.8 reduction in domestic violence index crime.

Murders – December continued our downward trend and we recorded for the first time, three straight months below 20 murders, October, November, and December. Citywide our murders are at a record low, 289 versus 292. In 2018, 17 percent of our murders were domestic, 49 versus 45 domestic murders, an increase of four. 70 percent of those murders had no prior history and three incidents involved multiple victims. Of these 49 murders, 19 victims were shot in 14 incidents. Domestic related fatal shooting victims were up 19 versus five and the murder shooting incidents were 14 versus five. We have removed over 65 guns from households when given the opportunity during domestic violence calls, home visits, and through other human intelligence. And over all shootings were responsible for over 55 percent of our murders. This underscores the importance placed by the NYPD on each and every firearm we come into contact with when we strive to treat each gun arrest or recovery with its own crime scene. We work very closely with the appropriate prosecutorial venue to ensure that we provide the very best case possible to maximize the leverage a prosecutor may use to ensure a successful prosecution.

Overall our gang related murders are 92 versus 90. This translates into 32 percent of New York City’s murders involving a gang member. Persons under supervised release, parolees, and probationers are involved in over 19 percent of our murder incidents in 2018. And these are the sharks, not the minnows.

We talked about murders in the Bronx in the first half of the year, 53 versus 30 that was an increase of 23. Adjustments were made by the Borough Commander and the second half of 2018, the Bronx recorded 37 murders versus 42, a decrease of five over the second half of 2017. They did show for the year an increase of 18, 90 versus 72 and the most notable increase was in domestic violence murders in the Bronx, 20 versus 11.

Queens North showed a marked increase of murders in the second half of the year, 25 versus 13. And increase of 12 murders and those 25 murders were driven primarily by the 1-14 Precinct, ten versus three. The 1-14 experienced two unrelated domestic murder incidents resulting in a total of four victims. The 1-0-9 also showed an increase of six versus one.

Shootings- we continued our downward trend with shootings and a new record low. Shootings were down 3.4 percent in December and 58 versus 67, a decrease of nine. 64 was the previous low in December of 2016. This is the ninth straight quarter with record low shootings, the longest streak since 1998. Our 2018 shooting total was down 4.4 percent, down 35 shootings, 754 versus 789 and 789 was the previous low in 2017. Housing shootings overall are down eight percent, or 13 incidents, 143 versus 156. The Bronx housing shootings were down 15, 30 versus 45 in 2018. And gang related shootings in housing were down citywide, 81 versus 94. Overall our gang related shootings were down 40, 359 versus 399. This does translate into 48 percent of New York City shooting incidents involving a gang member. And Brooklyn North led the shootings with a 16 percent increase, up 27 shootings, 195 versus 168 and these shootings are driven by gang related violence, 116 versus 93, plus 23 or a 25 percent increase. Brooklyn North accounted for almost a third of all gang related shootings citywide.

Brooklyn South is down in gang related shootings – 64 versus 74 and the 6-7 Precinct saw a reduction in gang related incidents, down eight, that propelled them to their lowest shooting number ever in the CompStat era, 39 versus 46, a reduction of seven shootings.

Talk about rape – rape increased 328 crimes or 22.4 percent in 2018. In 2018, 27 percent of rape reports occurred in years prior to 2018 versus the 20 percent we say in 2017. We talk about this often – the current trends will not be fully understood until we are well into 2017. Transit sex crimes are down 15 percent, there is some good news there, they are down 156 crimes. Felony assaults — we saw a minimal percentage increase citywide. DV felony assaults did drive the slight increase. They saw an increase of 4.5 percent.

Robbery is at a record low for the third straight year. Every patrol borough won the year in robbery. The 4-7 Precinct alone was down 100 robbery complaints, that’s a decrease of 24 percent. Burglary set a new record low for the sixth straight year, finishing down two percent or 243 crimes. And again we are down in GLA, a new record low for the fourth straight year, finishing down four percent or 227 crimes. There was a decrease in housing index crime, and transit was up overall crime 3.8 percent and that was driven primarily by grand larcenies in Manhattan. And I’m looking forward to another successful 2019.

Commissioner O’Neill: All set Lori? Thanks. So we are going to do on topic, yearend crime stats? Ashley?

Question: Good morning, Chief Pollock could you repeat the number of out of year rapes for 2018? You gave the percentage but I’m not sure that you gave the actual number?

Chief Pollock: I didn’t give the actual number. It just gets a little convoluted. I can give it to you at the end if you want the actual number?

Question: Yes I would.

Chief Pollock: Okay.

Question: For the - Commissioner O’Neil and Mayor Bill de Blasio, the rape statistics are probably the thing that stands out the most in the crime stats yet neither of you mentioned in your opening remarks and I’m wondering why that is?

Commissioner O’Neill: I’ll go. So this is – as you know we meet the sexual assault advocates every three months, we actually had a meeting with them a couple weeks ago, and this is – their contention as well as our belief is that rape is an underreported crime and as the numbers go up, that’s – we’ve had our program, our public awareness program, for people to come forward with sexual assault complaints and I think that’s a big part of why that number continues to rise. And we’ve done an overhaul of the Special Victims Division. Chief Shae with Chief Harrison is the CO of that Special Victims Division now. I was – I left most of the numbers to Chief Pollock, she is the Chief of Crime Control Strategies, and that is a responsibility, didn’t leave it out on purpose.

Chief Pollock: I can give you – just repeat the number you were looking for.

Question: The raw numbers of out of year rapes for 2017 and 2018?

Chief Pollock: Okay, the raw numbers of the out of year – okay – so the number of out of year complaints was 401 versus 250, so it’s an increase of 151 crimes over last years out of year reporting.

Question: Thank you. And I want to go back to my question to the Commissioner and to the Mayor, I mean this is your annual press conference where you send your big message about crime, you’ve come with one of the largest signs I’ve seen to date, and I’m just wondering why rape didn’t make – it just seems strange omission that didn’t make your opening remarks –

Mayor: It’s not – respectfully we – this is a – sorry – this is a profoundly important issue but we’re dealing with a new reality that we’ve talked about many a time in these settings where the advocates and the NYPD believe the same thing based on the information that they have. That a historic underreporting is finally being addressed and I think the #MeToo Movement is a part of it and a number of other things are messages that are being sent by government, messages are being sent by the media, by advocates, helping victims, survivors, to know that they should come forward. That it’s important that they’ll be protected, they’ll be supported, and that it’s also important in terms of finding the perpetrators and making sure that they don’t hurt someone else.

This has been a very consistent pattern for quite a while now and unlike other areas where we believe crimes have been profoundly underreported for societal reasons, and bad societal reasons, this is an area where we know there has been a problem and we think the problem is finally being addressed. So to say, look at this increase suggesting it is a pure new phenomenon would be a mistake from everything we know and would be meaning that there is a new type of crime happening. What we understand this is tragically what was happening for a long time but not being reported, it’s finally being reported.

Chief Pollock: May I add something?

Mayor: Please, please.

Chief Pollock: So from the standpoint of the NYPD our outreach has been incredible. We have 550 – over 550 people dedicated to domestic violence in the NYPD. We’re doing a top to bottom reorganization of the Special Victims Unit and we’ve added people to that. We also have the human trafficking division which also now bolsters the reports because there’s a lot more interviewing going on and that has a domestic and it has a rape nexus in the human trafficking. We have advocates in every precinct for strictly for domestic violence special victims and then for victims of other crimes. We have an increase of 329 walk in reports this year. To me, that’s a trust issue. That means we’re building trust that people would walk into a precinct and speak to maybe the cop on the phone, maybe the desk officer and explain to them what happened to them. The message is that we want the reports, we want to hear from you, we want to investigate these crimes, so we are dedicated to improving reporting, getting more granular with the analysis of any sex crimes, not just rapes. So –

Question: And so is that an increase of 329 from what?

Chief Pollock:  So the rapes – okay – it gets very convoluted with the numbers – rapes increased 328 percent – I mean excuse me – 328 crimes, or 22 percent in 2018, so that’s from this year. So that’s the increase this year, 328 rape reports that occurred this year.

Question: I see. I heard you say something about walk-in reports so I just wasn’t sure.

Chief Pollock: So I said that now the 328 walk-in reports – I can’t – I don’t have that parsed out as to – if those walk-in reports were from prior years or happened contemporaneously, so I don’t have that breakout.

Question: Thank you.

Chief Pollock: You’re welcome.

Question: How many of those walk-in reports amounted to a complaint?

Chief Pollock: We take a complaint on every report.

Question: So all of those –

Chief Pollock: Yes, sometimes they won’t – they’ll have very vague, very minimal details so a lot of times our reporting isn’t perfect because it winds up being the address of the Special Victims Office because that’s where the conversation is taking place.

Question: Do you know how many of them amounted to an arrest?

Chief Pollock: No I don’t have that information.

Commissioner O’Neill: Yup?

Question: Mr. Mayor, Mr. Commissioner, it’s very commendable that the rates have been going down and particularly no police officers lost their lives in 2018 and that’s remarkable. My question is, with all these statistics about crimes reported, where are the statistics about those who have been arrested and then the convictions?

Commissioner O’Neill: We can get those numbers to you. Yup, the back row?

Question: Since 2013, I’m just curious, how is the rank and file numbers change of man power in the police force?

Commissioner O’Neill: We had an increase of I think, Mr. Mayor was it two years ago?

Mayor: Yeah.

Commissioner O’Neill: Effectively 2,000 more patrol officers went from a little over 34,000 to a little over 36,000.

Question: So with the decrease in crime, you’ve increased officers at the same time?

Mayor: Yeah we did that over two years ago and it was with the firm belief that it would consolidate our progress in reducing crime and it would also allow us to implement neighborhood policing on a citywide level. Both those things happened. And I want to thank the City Council, they were fantastic on this and they pushed very hard for the idea of more officers on patrol.

So we have 2,000 more officers on patrol than we had two years ago and it has absolutely contributed to these extraordinary numbers you’re hearing today, this extraordinary success. It’s also allowed there to be the time and energy on the ground for neighborhood policing to work because officers have been given time to develop those deep community relationships that now are helping us drive down crime even more.

Question: [Inaudible] as a follow up, how is the contract negotiations with the PBA right now? Where are we at?

Mayor: Ongoing. I mean that’s all I can tell you, there ongoing conversations.

Question: [Inaudible] with the, you know, the reduction in crime, you know, maybe it would be settled soon.

Mayor: Well, you know, we always want to settle each contract as quickly as possible. Most important facts are that with the three major contracts that we have settled with DC37, UFT, and Local 237, I believe we’re now in the neighborhood of almost two thirds of our workers, of our city workers, under contract already. We’ve just really begun the latest labor bargaining rounds so we look forward to going further and a door is open to all unions to speed up the process.

Commissioner O’Neill: Tony?

Question: For either Chief Pollock, or perhaps Commissioner or Chief Monahan, you have the rape complaint it’s just one issue, one part of the component, how is the clearance situation for rape complaints, where do these complaints wind up?

Chief Pollock: The clearance rate is 40 percent right now.

Question: How – historically how does that figure?

Chief Pollock: It’s average. It’s the average over the years, 40 percent for the rape complaints.

Question: That would be complaints that go to either arrest and then possibly conviction or some disposition?

Chief Pollock: Yes.

Commissioner O’Neill: Mark, hold on, Mark?

Question: I was just wondering, is there any more rape data as far as the numbers and statistics for rapes?  For instance, like how many are strangers or how many are domestic incidents?

Chief Pollock: Yes, so I have it broken down same year reporting and outside of year reporting so the same year reporting – domestic violence same year rape complaints increased 105 crimes, so it was 491 versus 387, and then outside of that category, 72 crimes or eight percent, 902 versus 830.

Commissioner O’Neill: Yup.

Chief Pollock: That’s my buddy back there.

Mayor: You want to just repeat them?

Chief Pollock: The DV same year rape complaints, domestic violence, same year rape complaints, they increased 105 crimes, 491 versus 387. Then outside of that category of domestic violence, same year rape complaints increased 72 crimes or 8.7 percent, 902 versus 830. This is same year numbers and if you want we can go over this afterwards, I’ll give the numbers to Press Office and they can give you something written out which would be a lot, probably, more efficient.

Commissioner O’Neill: Yep?

Question: I just wanted to confirm that the percentage of murders that were committed by parolees – did you say was 19—

Chief Pollock: Probationers and parole. 19 percent.

Question: And is that – I guess I’m wondering is that a relatively normal figure and does that suggest there need to be any changes as far as kind of oversight—

Chief Pollock: This is the second year in a row that it has risen – the percentage has risen.

Commissioner O’Neill: This is part of our strategy for 2019 to work closely with the Department of Probation and New York State Corrections who’s responsible for parole, to make sure we get those numbers down. Yep?

Question: So two questions. First of all for the out of year rates, do you know how many of them were – do you know what year they were coming from? Are they from last year? Were they from five years ago, 10 years ago? And my second question is about the transit numbers. I just want to know what types of crimes that we’re looking at, they were [inaudible] percentage or something. What specific types of crimes and what’s being done to combat that increase? So—

Chief of Transit Edward Delatorre, NYPD: Good morning, Chief Delatorre, Chief of Transit. So transit crimes, that increase we had was driven by grand larcenies. If we look in Manhattan, overall transit crimes for the year were up about 95 crimes. We’re still averaging roughly one crime per million riders a day, but if you look in Manhattan we had an increase of 99 grand larcenies, just in Manhattan alone. We did have a time during the year were we had some international teams, professional pickpocket teams coming in that were hitting our ridership. We caught a few of them and they were being prosecuted, and then we have a group of our own homegrown – we call them “Nifty Fifty” but the number’s probably over 100 at this point, but to give you an example, these are people that are predators that just work the system constantly. Richard Rembrandt, arrested eight times in 2018, four times in transit, all for grand larcenies. Another fellow we have, Rudolph Faulkner, arrested seven times in 2018, five times in transit, another grand larceny offender. We have numerous people – Santiago Gonzalez, arrested five times, all five times grand larcenies in transit in Manhattan. The good news about the names I’m giving you is we’re working closely with the District Attorneys and all of these people are actually in custody right now, so when they’re in custody is when we start to see the downward trend again in grand larceny crime, and we’re working closely with the DA’s now and the [inaudible] on other strategies on how to handle these people going forward.

Question: Can I ask you what types of things are things are they stealing, mostly? And then, you said international pickpocket teams, where were they coming from—

Chief Delatorre: Well we had two teams in particular—

Mayor: Quite exotic, right?

Chief Delatorre: Yeah, we had two teams in particular that come off the top of my head. One was from Colombia, and one was from – I believe it was a Chile, and in fact one of them was wanted in Kansas City, because they – what they do is they come into the city, they work the transit systems and they work topside as well. They pick as many pockets as they can over the course of a week or two and they go to another city. So these people that we arrested actually had no criminal history in New York State.

Question: And you arrested both of those?

Chief Delatorre: Both teams, yeah, we picked up both teams. We have very, very good plain-clothes officers working the transit system.

Question: What are they stealing?

Chief Delatorre: Their just picking pockets. They’re taking anything. We saw a lot of cellphones taken, we’ve seen – we’ve been seeing a lot of the headphones, the Beats, the very expensive headphone sets, some of those we’ve seen in a snatch. But for the most part when they’re picking pockets they’re looking for wallets, credit cards, cash, cellphones – cellphones were a big one.

Question: Is that for just the pickpockets or is that for grand larcenies in general?

Chief Delatorre: That’s grand larcenies in general, yep?

Question: Chief Delatorre since you’re up there, on Christmas day, Commissioner Bratton raised a warning that the signs were present in the transit system – basically the seeds were germinating for a potential crime increase in a way that we saw in the 70s and 80s how the crime started in the subway and then blossomed out into larger increases in the city. Is that something that you’re concerned about given that – especially given that transit crimes were down most of the year and then increased in the latter part of the year?

Chief Delatorre: No, I’m not. In actuality what we saw was a trend where some people had – recidivist offenders had gotten out of jail, come back into the system, and once again started taking advantage of some our riders. We caught many of them at this point and we’re now seeing the numbers stabilize and go back to normal, you know, we’re we normally would be.

Commissioner O’Neill: So Ashley, as you know, I started out as a transit cop way back in 1983 so I’m particularly sensitive to any rise in crime in the transit system and as you know, also, Commissioner Bratton was the Chief of the Transit Police in ‘90, from ‘90 to ‘92 where crime was just out of control down in the subway system. In will not be returning to that level and the slight increase that we’re seeing this year, we know where it is, we know the geography of it, and we have a strategy to make sure it goes down. Dean?

Question: We’re here in the 6-7 Precinct in Brooklyn, the number of precincts that had low crime rates this year. Can you go through the numbers or the reason once again for having the news conference here in the 6-7, what they’re numbers are, because I’m going to go on the street and speak to the folks to see if they feel safe here.

Commissioner O’Neill: Alright, you want all the numbers? I’ll give them to you right here, because Inspector Colon would really like that if I did that—

Mayor: Go for it, go for it. No, no, make him have to listen.

Question: Conversationally.

Commissioner O’Neill: Alright, so the murder number in the 6-7, year end, in 2017 was 17. At the end of this year, in 2018, is six.

Mayor: Unbelievable. Where’s Colon, we’ve got to give this guy a round of applause.

Commissioner O’Neill: Where’s Elliot?

Mayor: Is he at his own press conference?

[Laughter]

Commissioner O’Neill: The rape number went up four, from 39 to 43. Robberies are down 26.6 percent, from 335 in ‘17 to 246 in ‘18. Felony assaults are down 1.6 percent, from 612 in ‘17, to 601 in ‘18. Burglary’s down 0.9 percent, from 227 in ‘17 to 225 in ‘18. Grand larceny is down 10.8 percent, from 657 in ‘17 to 586 in ‘18, and grand larceny auto is down 24.6 percent, that’s from 130 in ‘17 to 98 in ‘18. So overall they’re down 10.5 percent, a raw number of 2017 in ‘17, and 1805 this year in ‘18.

Mayor: So Inspector Colon, first of all, when people are saying nice things about you, you got to be there. I just want to take a moment – hearing those numbers, absolutely amazing, the progress that men and women of this command have made under your leadership and the elected officials will affirm the fact that this is a precinct that not so far back in the future had a lot of challenge – excuse me, not so far back in the past had a lot of challenges, but to hear that kind of progress, just from 2017 to 2018 in unbelievable, so congratulations to you and all the men and women of this precinct.

Inspector Elliot Colon, NYPD: Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

[Applause]

Question: How did you get it done this year?

Inspector Colon: Trying to get this microphone to work.

Mayor: There you go.

Inspector Colon: So, I’m obviously going to be a little biased in saying that I have the privilege to work with greatest cops in the City of New York and working in best community in the City of New York. Listen, when you pair those two together, you’re going to get success. Our NCOs, our neighborhood coordinating officers here in the 6-7, they work hand in hand with the community, they hear their problems, they address them immediately, they come to me, we figure out ways to address the situations that might arise from the community members. My field investigation officers, they do thorough investigations on that small percentage of people that are causing all the crimes. That is the big reason why we have the success we do with the firearms that were taken off the streets here in East Flatbush, that lead us to number one in the city. My community affairs, we established a relationship with our nightlife to prevent any type of violence in the nightlife community. We do that on a weekly basis. If they have events they reach out to us, we work out plans, how we’re going to pan out that night with the establishments, and it’s just been a – the formula works and we’re going to continue to 2019, we’re going to have a better year.

Mayor: Amen.

Commissioner O’Neill: I just – I want to add one thing to that. We’re also in the 6-7 because as everybody remembers in this room, in June of ‘17, we had a police officer, now a detective, who was very seriously injured. The 6-7 Precinct continues to take care of Dalsh and his wife Esther and his daughter Dashi. They still – Dalsh is recovering very slowly, it’s a really serious injury and with all this work that’s being done here, the men and women of the 6-7 continue, every day to look out for Dalsh and his family. Elliot, thank you for that.

Mayor: Amen.

Commissioner O’Neill: Back row?

Question: Yeah, following up on the – you mentioned recidivist offenders pickpocketing – you mentioned a serious number of crimes committed by parolees. I’m wondering for the Mayor, policy wise, I mean there’s been a big, there’s going to be a big push in Albany for parole reform, for bail reform this year. You know, is the NYPD talking to you about these crime issues is that a big concern as these changes might come to the state?

Mayor: I think it’s a couple different things. I’ll start and I’m sure the Commissioner has thoughts on this too. The things that we want to achieve in Albany are things like bail reform and speedy trial reform to ensure that particularly folks who have the lowest level offenses, non-violent offenses don’t end up in our Correction system if they don’t need to which is bad for everyone involved. So, those are the things that would revolutionize our Correction system, allow us to greatly reduce our population, save a huge amount of money for the taxpayers while still keep the city safe.

And this true for the whole state. The whole state needs bail reform and speedy trial reform. But at the same time we have real concerns about the parole system and while we can say there’s things where we want to see reform we can also say there’s things where we want to see some tightening up – again, the Commissioner and others can speak to some of the things we want to see handled better by the State on parole and we obviously are going to be talking to our own Probation Department to make improvements as well.

Another point I’d like to make is while we’re doing bail reform to ensure that non-violent, low-level offenders are not ending up in a jail cell who don’t need to. We should do another reform which is to give judges the right to consider the dangerousness of an individual brought before them in determining whether to grant bail or not because we’ve had situations where it’s quite clear that if the only question you can think about is flight risk, it leaves out a very, very crucial consideration. It’s – what does it mean for the people of the neighborhood this individual comes from, whether they pose a threat to their neighbors. That issue has to be addressed in Albany as well. Judges need to be empowered with the ability to make decisions based in the dangerousness of the suspect as well.

Commissioner O’Neill: Just to add to that – this is how we’ve gone from 2,245 homicides down to 289 this year just by using these strategies. Anytime we see where there is an issue we address it immediately. So, we’re looking at parole violators, we’re looking at probation, what’s the level of supervision – and this is all at the same time working with both of these agencies to make sure we can do this as effectively and fairly as possible.

Question: [Inaudible] rapes [inaudible] -

Chief Pollock: [Inaudible] refer to Chief Shea on that. Is that [inaudible] or no?

Question: [Inaudible] and then the Mayor, Commissioner. Mayor in your opening remarks you mentioned the marijuana policy [inaudible] fare evasion changes [inaudible] is this department now, with crime at the level that it’s at, is it moving away from [inaudible]?

Mayor: Not in the least. Not in the least. I’ve been very comfortable from the beginning of this administration embracing quality-of-life policing. I think the phrase broken windows is very loaded. It’s one of those things that different people see different things in it, and there’s some elements of the historical dialogue on broken windows that I don’t agree with at all.

But quality-of-life policing, I agree with 100 percent and that I define as remembering to sweat the small stuff, remembering to focus on the small things because if you don’t deal with them it can lead to great crime and disorder but also because communities want those things addressed.

Here’s the reality in New York City for decades, a lot of communities were overpoliced in terms of being treated – individuals being treated in a kind of difficult way in their relationship between police and community but under-policed in terms of a lot of the quality-of-life issues that they wanted to see addressed.

So, this is the way it used to be. We want to do this where we want to get the policing levels to be right for the needs of the community, respectful to the members of the community, but also take the quality-of-life concerns very seriously. When I was younger in this city, and talked to people in neighborhoods all over this city, there used to be – you get your car stolen back in the day, you barely would bother to report it because a lot of times the precincts would say, ‘We can’t get to that because we’ve got much more serious things we have to deal with,’ right.

People want to know if there’s a burglary or their car is stolen or something is taken from them, that it’s going to be acted on. They want to know that there’s going to be follow-through and they want it to be respectful and they want it to be consistent.

So, that to me is quality-of-life policing. I believe in it 100 percent.

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner O’Neill: Yeah, just hold on, let me just add to that. So, as you know, many people sitting up here were precinct commanders for a long time and if we didn’t address quality-of-life complaints you weren’t a precinct commander for very long. Every meeting that I’ve ever gone to, people are not really talking about homicides and shootings. They’re talking about quality-of-life. I’d just like to give you our numbers since we changed our policy in the beginning of September. Our marijuana arrests are down 81.2 percent. That’s 7,189 versus 1,349.

So, we’re making sure that when we’re out there, the people who are getting arrested are the people involved in violence and crime. And that’s how you get closer to the community and that’s how you build trust.

Question: [Inaudible] heinous gang murders last year – I’m thinking of Junior Guzman in the Bronx. What gang enforcement have you been doing and are you continuing coordination with the federal authorities who seem to have a strong impact on bringing down these gangs –

Commissioner O’Neill: And again, this is who we got from 2,245 homicides to where we are now. Terry or Dermot, if you want to speak about that –

Chief Shea: So, as has been said, the precision policing piece of what we’ve doing the last four years continues to drive how we deploy our investigations, cases on an ongoing basis. The case that you mentioned dealt with the Trinitarios up in the Bronx. At any one point in time in New York City, there is a number of cases going on – long term cases, short term cases – to address whoever is driving crime and violence throughout New York City. That continues to be a focal point in how we police New York. And it’s at the core, really, of what we’ve doing for the last four to five years with precision policing.

Commissioner O’Neill: These cases are done in conjunction with the prosecutors whether they are local prosecutors, the SN – Special Narcotics prosecutor – or the Eastern or the Southern District. So it’s done in conjunction with them. We don’t do an investigation and then end up bring it to the prosecutor. We work with them from the beginning.

Question: [Inaudible] ask why you thought the Bronx [inaudible] crime reduction [inaudible]?

Commissioner O’Neill: I think if you look at the murders specifically in the Bronx, I think in July and August those were very challenging for us but towards the end of the year, we focused on the gangs and crews and we were able to get those numbers down. Lori, do you want talk about that a little bit more?

Chief Pollock: We did reduce our gang murders nine versus 11 in the Bronx for the second half of the year. We had at least 23 long-term and short-term case takedowns besides that work by Dermot’s shop, ceasefire catchment area enlarged. I think we talked about this the last time. We do see sprees or spurts of gang violence. We are quick to be in the violent group that may be retaliating. We serve them with no retail notices and we do go into enforcement actions when the violence isn’t quelled because of our warnings.

Chief Shea: And I think Bronx overall was down in gun violence shootings this year. They’re at all-time lows so, a lot of positives in the Bronx.

Chief Monahan: If I can just add – this is something that we do at every CompStat meeting. We discuss the drivers of the violence, which gangs are causing the violence working heavily with Dermot’s shop to see who we should focus on and that’s exactly what we did. In the beginning of the year, the Bronx had some issues. We put a lot of focus on it. They came down to CompStat quite a bit and they really did turn it around tremendously.

Question: [Inaudible] follow up on the Bronx domestic violence numbers. Forgive me if you said this – but what were the citywide numbers of domestic violence murders, and if they’re drastically different in the Bronx or in high-poverty areas. What’s the reason behind that? What can be done about it?

Chief Pollock: The domestic violence murders for the city were 49 versus 45, so we were up four and we had a couple of incidents that involved multiple people unfortunately. Those were in Queens. In the Bronx, the domestic violence murders were 20 versus 11. Of those, I can tell you how many – 70 percent of them had no prior history. So, again, we have 550 dedicated domestic violence officers citywide. It’s about outreach, it’s about people coming forward when they know there’s a problem in a home that maybe there was no reporting prior. So, that’s public service announcements – and housing murders, domestic, are down also five versus seven.

Commissioner O’Neill: One other thing we do when we’re looking at domestic violence cases. We ask about guns in the household, and our field intelligence officers have removed 65 guns from households where we have responded to for domestic violence calls. Tony? Yeah, go ahead – hold on.

Question: 65 guns –

Commissioner O’Neill: Removed from households where we responded to a domestic violence job. Tony?

Question: [Inaudible] close the circle on the homicide number. You’re at 289 now [inaudible] but is there a possibility that this could adjust upward by a couple – I say that because on late Monday, you had an incident in Manhattan and you also had an incident in the 1-0-1. Could this –

Commissioner O’Neill: Yeah. the number – as it did last year we ended with, when we had our press conference, it was 290 then it went up to 292. It’s at 289 now, it’s – all probability, it’s probably going to go up a couple of numbers but it’s still a homicide rate of 3.4 per 100,000.

Hold on, Ashley.

Question: [Inaudible] to treat overdose deaths as murders in some cases. I’m wondering if those are reflected [inaudible] –

Commissioner O’Neill: Dermot.

Chief Shea: Yeah, those are unintentional overdoses. That’s how those come in from the ME. That’s not the Police Department classifying. Those are classified as per the ME report. Those are not homicides. Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible] opioid plan last year, New York City decided to treat those deaths as murders [inaudible] –

Chief Shea: Yeah, I think that’s somewhat semantics. What was said was we treat the investigation as a homicide meaning to pay more attention to it – I’m sorry I can’t see you through the trees there Ashley – but to treat the investigations, so who you have responding, how we build a case on those. But when you differentiate between how was it classified from the ME, you speaking strictly – that’s a legal definition and that comes from the ME. They are in fact not homicides.

Commissioner O’Neill: Dean?

Question: We were talking a lot about the Bronx [inaudible] police shootings in the Bronx I know up in the Fordham area. Folks are very concerned about cops firing a lot of shots during an investigation. How did we end up the year in terms of police shootings [inaudible] use-of-force when you talk about [inaudible] fire their guns –

First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin B. Tucker, NYPD: So, Dean, we’re talking mainly these are adversarial shootings so as I talk about this think about in the context of joining the litany of records that have been set this year. So, over the last four years – well, first of all in 2018, we ended the year with 17 adversarial shootings. And if you track that from 2015, we had 33 adversarials. In 2016, we had 37, in 2017 we had 23. And so this trend downward is continuing.

Those are – adversarials really means these are when our officers are involved in gun fire with the bad guys. And so those numbers I think also reflect pretty much everything else you’ve heard about this – sort of the way in which we’re bringing crime down but also when you think about those number they’re extraordinary because we’re talking about 8.6 million people in this city, 61 million visitors.

We’re talking about time when we’re reducing our arrests but also the Mayor mentioned that we had no officers killed last year as well and so our officers are getting better at de-escalating, we’re getting better at restraint, we’re even firing fewer rounds as another example. So, I think the bottom-line here is adversarials have gone down with means officers are firing their weapons far, far less than they have in the past.

And so to give you an example, we talk about the history – when I got out of the academy in ‘72 we had 954 firearm discharges in this city. And if you base it on how we’ve been tracking adversarials, roughly half of the discharge cases to-date have been adversarials. So, you’re looking at over 400 adversarials back in 1972 to give you just some context for where we are now versus where we have been.

Mayor: Say the number again for 2018.

First Deputy Commissioner Tucker: 2018 is 17.

Question: [Inaudible] number of bullets fired –

First Deputy Commissioner: Well, no, no – I won’t get into the number of bullets fired except to say that the rounds that are being fired – those numbers have come down dramatically. I mean significantly as well – I can give you chapter and verse on those, you know, from year to year if you’d like but they have come down as well. We even have had fewer officers involved in those shootings which will tell you something. So the more officers you have, to the extent that they’re firing rounds as well, the number will go up. But very – with one or two exceptions, the number of rounds being fired have decreased significantly.

Mayor: And Dean, I want to – I know obviously your job is to ask probing questions but I just want to dwell on this for a moment. If when Ben came on the job it was 400 or more adversarial shooting incidents and in 2018 it was 17 for a city of 8.6 million people across 365 days with 36,000 officers, I mean that’s a breathtakingly low number and that’s a real credit to all the leadership – Jimmy, Ben, everyone up here – for having so systematically introduced the de-escalation training and changing a lot of the other approaches, obviously neighborhood policing. I mean, you can hardly get that number lower and it’s unbelievable progress.

Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Phillip Walzak, NYPD: Two more please.

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner O’Neill: Yeah, we’re not going to – we’ll have plenty of time for that.

Mayor: Plenty.

Commissioner O’Neill: We got all day. We don’t have to be anywhere until 6:00 pm.

[Laughter]

Mayor: Marathon press conference.

Question: Counter-terrorism and school safety – I’m just wondering how they fit into to the picture and if they had a good 2018 as well.

Commissioner O’Neill: Sure, John, do you want to talk about that.

Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, NYPD: On the counterrorism side, of course, we saw the conviction of the Chelsea bomber, we saw the conviction of the Port Authority bomber, Akayed Ullah. We’re still assisting through the Intelligence Bureau, the Counterrorism Bureau and the JTTF and the preparation of the Saipov case – the threat has shifted largely in our assessment to the lone wolf which is what I think we’re looking for, for the foreseeable future driven by a propaganda machine that even as of the week before New Year’s Eve came out with ten posters featuring New York as a target. So, it remains a very high concern. And to-date since 9/11, as you all know, we’re prevented approximately 30 plots against New York City and obviously we want to continue that trend of prevention.

Question: 2018 versus 2017 –

Deputy Commissioner Miller: In terms of the numbers?

Question: [Inaudible] and investigations –

Deputy Commissioner Miller: Well, the Intelligence Bureau people went out on 854 leads that came into the New York City Safe hotline. These are tips on terrorism. Some of those turned into significant investigations that are ongoing now that I’m not able to get into in detail. Some of those were washed out but it’s a 24-7 job. We did go – starting from the December 11th Akayed Ullah attack to this December 11th, obviously a year with a successful terrorist attack in New York City. That is not without a great deal of effort. It’s also not without help from the public.

Mayor: Okay, before the next question. I just want to acknowledge and thank State Senator Kevin Parker who represents this community. Thank you for being with us. I appreciate it.

Commissioner O’Neill: I’m going to have to get the mid-year school safety numbers for you. We don’t have them. Mark?

Question: What do you guys have on – as far as hate crimes go? Any sort of breakdown related to that?

Chief Shea: So, the preliminary numbers at the end of the year – we accounted for 361 hate crimes recorded in New York City. That’s the final tally. I believe it’s a seven percent increase. The vast majority, over 50 percent, of the hate crimes that we recorded in 2018 are anti-Semitic in nature. And that’s going with historical – unfortunately historical trends that we see. When you look at two categories in particular – criminal mischief, damaging another person’s property essentially, and aggravated harassment – generally falls into utilizing electronic means, think telephone calls, letters, things of that nature and intentionally – which is key – intentionally harassing somebody and putting them in fear. Those are the two categories where we see essentially the entire increase.

We have made a number of arrests, our Hate Crimes Task Force. Frustrating at times is that we’ve – as has been said with Chief Delatorre and Transit, the same hold trues here – we see sometimes with hate crimes, the same individuals doing this type of activity over and over. So, we have three or four individuals that would account for the entire increase this year when you look at how many times they’ve been arrested whether it’s drawing swastikas or things of that nature.

Commissioner O’Neill: We’re going to move on to off-topic – crime off-topic.

Mayor: Crime off-topic.

Question: I’m hoping the Commissioner and Mr. Mayor, you all, can speak to the increase in traffic injuries and pedestrian fatalities. I know that overall fatalities are down for another year which is wonderful news – but I’m hoping to hear from both of you on what you’re thinking can be done differently or can be improved on for 2019. And Mr. Mayor, I’m wondering if you’re considering more funding for Vision Zero redesign projects.

Mayor: Well, we appreciate the question very much. First of all, let’s do the big picture. The big picture is 100 fewer deaths related to traffic compared to just five years ago. So, this is the ultimate measure.

Question: And Mr. Mayor, I’m wondering if you’re considering more funding for Vision Zero redesign projects?

Mayor: Well, we appreciate the question very much. First of all, let’s do the big picture – the big picture is 100 fewer deaths related to traffic compared to just five years ago. So, this is the ultimate measure of Vision Zero. You know, when we started Vision Zero – an idea that we borrowed from elsewhere and created in the image of New York City – a lot of people thought it was utopian and impossible to drive down fatalities in a real way and a lot of people thought it would not gain acceptance among New Yorkers. We’ve seen the exact opposite – 100 fewer deaths in five years, basically have already reduced deaths by a third with a brand new idea being implemented here. And the acceptance levels and belief in Vision Zero are extraordinary among New Yorkers. I mean, I talk to people all of the time in all of the town hall meetings – if there was ever something you would have expected – I’ve done 59 town hall meetings – you expect New Yorkers to get up and say, hey, we don’t like this lower speed limit or we don’t like the speed cameras – I don’t get that. I get the opposite. I get a lot of support for it most places. This is the beginning of the changes we need. And so, Vision Zero is supposed to be evolutionary – but fast evolutionary. 

I think the ultimate goal is behavior change – convincing motorists to be careful on a regular basis, to yield to pedestrians, to really honor stop signs and stop lights, to recognize there’s going to be consequences. So, for example, you’re going to see more red light cameras because we now have the ability to do that legally around more schools. You’re going to see more enforcement by the NYPD of failure to yield. I think this is one of the ones where we need the biggest culture change – let’s face it, busy crowded city, a lot of motorists think of failure to yield as a pleasant theoretical idea, but they don’t actually – I mean, yielding to pedestrians as a pleasant theoretical idea, they don’t actually practice it. We’re going to convince them they have to do it every single time or they’re going to suffer consequences. Definitely a lot more re-designs coming, a lot more protected bike lanes and traffic-calming measures. We’ve put a huge amount of resources in, we intend to continue that. So, I am convinced you will see fewer fatalities regularly, because, remember, it’s a growing program. Every new traffic re-design helps, every new speed camera helps, every time people get the message it helps. 

Commissioner O’Neill: As with crime, we’re always trying to push that number down as far as traffic fatalities. We do have some specific strategies that Chief Chan will talk about for 2019. 

Chief Thomas Chan, Transportation, NYPD: Again, certainly want to thank the Mayor, and also the Commissioner, for their support on Vision Zero. And again, success comes with many partners – other City agencies, elected officials, our speed cameras and things of that nature, and certainly our officers and traffic agents out there who are assisting us. And New York City’s traffic fatalities has been falling to its lowest recorded levels, and it’s not since 1910, a time when the Model T Ford debuted in 1908 are we seeing this revolution – at that time, the City had approximately 72,000 registered vehicles. At this time, where the City’s population was only half of what it is today, our roads are certainly getting safer, and this is certainly done by a collective effort by the Mayor, the Police Department, and all our partners. And we look forward to reduce crime because traffic and fatalities are a group effort to reduce these numbers and we’re going to make sure that this Vision Zero is going to be a reality. 

Just to go back and touch base in terms of our injuries – yes, we’ve seen the number of injuries in 2018 increase by three percent overall. When we take a look at traffic stats when we meet weekly with our boroughs and our precincts they lay out their strategies and what they see as trending in their particular precincts, we see that low-impact collisions, rear-ends, side-swipes resulting in injuries throughout the City and we saw that trend throughout the year itself. When we take a look at the collisions involving injuries, the largest one is going to be our occupant injuries – and occupant injuries this year is at 45,711, it’s up three percent. What happened is that, when we take a look at occupant fatalities, fatalities is certainly the worst – you’re injured and you die as a result of that injury – occupant fatalities have gone down 36 percent for this year. Nevertheless, our pedestrian injuries are down a half-a-percent. Bicycle injuries are down 3.3 percent for the year also, but collectively year-to-date it’s up two percent for injuries. Just bicycle fatalities, we take a look in the raw numbers, we see that bicycle fatalities last year was 24. This year we’re at 10 – we’re down 58 percent. So, again, we’re very happy to work with our partners and our advocates and we’re doing a great job. And I certainly encourage everybody to wear helmets while they ride their bicycles. That certainly will help us reduce the number of injuries and fatalities in that area. 

What we’re looking forward to doing – pedestrian fatalities – the pedestrian number, when we look at it, is going to be the largest number out of all of the categories. Operators, passengers, motorcyclists, bicyclists – pedestrians are going to be the largest number. We see that even though the pedestrians are – the population in New York City of seniors is only 13 percent, they represent over 50 percent of our fatalities on our City streets. So, that’s an area we’re going to continue to work on. We saw that many years ago – we went to senior citizen centers, we helped apply reflective material and educate. And we’re certainly going to work – continue to work with the Department of Transportation and also the senior citizens to continue to educate them about safely crossing our streets and things of that nature. We are going to specifically target dangerous times for pedestrians and also educate our motorists, that when you are making that turn at the intersection, whether you’re making a left turn or whether you’re making a right turn, that is certainly one of the most dangerous times for our pedestrians, whether it be during after-hours when it’s dark out, during sunset and things of that nature. We see that number of fatalities and injuries increase during those particular hours. So, we are going to work with our partners in terms of a campaign to reduce and also heighten the awareness. When you’re crossing the intersection and vehicles are making a left and right turn, you as a pedestrian have to pay attention. Our bicyclists and our motorists have to pay a great deal of attention to people who are using our City streets. 

Question: To follow up, can you talk a little bit about where the increase in pedestrian [inaudible] if you know anything more about the increase in pedestrian fatalities this year – if there are specific boroughs, or neighborhoods, or types of streets where you’re seeing them go up and how are you addressing that?

Chief Chan: One of the things that we over the years – we’ve been looking at this for the last five years – we don’t have a specific one location in one particular precinct. Certainly, that would be easy. Then we would say, okay, let’s put an officer, let’s put a traffic agent there. It doesn’t happen there. It’s rather random. We don’t have quite often repeat locations. So what we ask is that where we have injury locations for pedestrians, we make sure we do an adequate amount of enforcement at those locations. We’ve also incorporated our auxiliaries, and auxiliaries will go out there with their reflective vests and traffic wands and they will actually assist the pedestrians in crossing the street at those locations. And basically, I have not seen any situations where if we have a traffic agent or we have auxiliaries who are assisting people to cross at the locations, we rarely have any instances while they’re present there. So, we’re certainly looking to encourage and have our auxiliaries target those locations. And again, pedestrian locations where we have injuries, we’re going to have enforcement there also. 

Question: One last follow-up – were you kind of surprised to see that people killed riding e-bikes were counted as motorcyclists as opposed to cyclists? I’m wondering why and when that started?

Chief Chan: When we evaluate the CIS – NYPD works with the Department of Transportation – their research implementation and safety unit to make a decision whether that e-bike, is it a bicycle or is it a motorized scooter in that scenario? And the best way I can explain that is that, if we take a look at a CIS job and we have video tape and we observe that individual peddling that e-bike, then he was a bicyclist. But if he’s accelerating and he’s not peddling, then he’s using an e-bike. So there’s the difference. He’ll be categorized as a motorcyclists because he’s utilizing a motor. He will not be categorized as a motorist, so he’s either going to be a bicyclist or he’s going to be a motorcyclist.

Question: Are you considering making another category?

Mayor: We need to get to other things, Nick. C’mon –

[Laughter]

Mayor: Jimmy, call on someone else, we’ve got to keep moving. 

Commissioner O’Neill: Hold on, I’ve got to – Marcia, thank you. 

Question: So, this is a question for you and for the Mayor – one of the phenomenon’s in terms of traffic [inaudible] we know have sidewalk [inaudible] and I wonder if the Police Department and the Mayor are considering any actions that would make it easier to pass [inaudible] on sidewalks. You know, we saw the Brooklyn Bridge being completely overrun. Midtown – walking in the street this holiday season has been a contact sport, for a lack of a better [inaudible]. I wonder what [inaudible] you might anticipate to make it easier to diverge sidewalks in New York City.

Commissioner O’Neill: And we do have to come up with a strategy for the holiday season in 2019 because this is something that I was in contact with Chief [inaudible] from Manhattan South numerous times and we have access to many cameras all over the City. If you just saw Rockefeller Center, you saw Fifth Avenue, you saw Sixth Avenue – there’s a number of steps we need to take, moving forward. We do have to look at vendors to make sure they’re not clogging the sidewalk. We have to make sure that there’s nothing that’s interfering with pedestrian flow. We have to make sure we have people – it’s only about spill back for cars now, it’s about spill back for pedestrians too. We have to make sure we have the right number of traffic enforcement officers or police officers at the locations where the pedestrian traffic is heavy. 

Mayor: Yeah, Marcia –

Question: What kind of things would you like to see that would make the pedestrian flow easier [inaudible]?

Mayor: Well this is the whole point – it’s a real issue. And the City’s growing, there are more tourists than ever before, more jobs than ever before – brings in commuters. We’ve got to take this issue seriously and do more. So, first of all, the enforcement points that the Commissioner just pointed – we have more police officers than we have had in a long time, we have more traffic enforcement agents than we’ve had in a long time. We’ve got to use them where there’s pinpoint locations where there’s a problem. We also have areas where we need to enlarge the sidewalks, and that is something that the Department of Transportation is working on in some key areas – that’s also consistent with Vision Zero. So, I think the here and now – immediate thing – is to use our enforcement tools in a more targeted manner. Certainly that is an example for the Brooklyn Bridge – that’s not a typical situation, but one that needs to be acted on very quickly if we ever see anything like that again. I instructed all of the agencies involved to act immediately when I heard those reports. I want to see, if we’ve got a situation like that, get our officers out there. If there’s illegal vendors, get them the hell out of there and clear the way. 

Last point would be, we have an opportunity to do some important reforms in terms of vendors, which I think have to require geographical zones for vendors and more enforcement. Hoping we can come to common ground with the City Council on that. 

Question: Mr. Mayor, I have a follow-up question. [Inaudible] to the point where, like Venice, we need to consider a tourist tax, where you might have to pay a tax to get on the Brooklyn Bridge or to get into the Central Business District, as much as Venice has decided –

Mayor: We’re not Venice. I think we are an open city and we’re a city that is succeeding. And yes, we had $62 million tourists last year or the year before, yes we have 4.5 million jobs and growing. There’s a lot going on here. But I think it’s a situation where we work the way we’re doing it now. We have to take measures though to deal with those numbers. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Again, first blush, I don’t like the idea. I’ll always be willing to discuss it, but I think we’ve got a formula that’s working now. People want to come here. They want to start businesses here, they want to visit here. I’m certainly not looking to inhibit that. 

Question: Often during when you swear in recruits, they often hear you say to them, be careful who your friends are, choose your friends wisely. If you have bad friends, get new friends. In light to the revelations in the police corruption trial that just ended, the favors and the bribes, whatever you want to call them, given to top commanders, or former top commanders – have you been saying the same things to your Chiefs? Assistant Chiefs? In light of everything that we’ve seen in the last couple of years. 

Commissioner O’Neill: Yeah, Tony. The message is clear. We’ve actually – Joe Resnick has spoken to all of our executives – all of our captains and above – to make them aware of this. To be quite frank, I respect the trial process of course. I respect the outcome, but what a terrible chapter in NYPD history over the last four or five years. I’m glad we can look at it in the rear-view mirror. But moving forward, we have to make sure that everybody knows, not just captains and above, but everybody in the Police Department knows that this has to be a corruption-free agency. We have to make sure that that’s the case, because everything we do we’re looking to build trust. Just look at what transpired over the last couple of days – we have these great crime reductions, we have what happened in New Year’s Even – couple hundred thousand people, million, two million people, depending on who you talk to –

[Laughter]

And what a great job by law enforcement and the NYPD, and then a day later, two days later you have a headline about NYPD corruption. What does that do to all of the trust we’ve been building over the last couple of years? This is something I really take seriously and I preach to not only the new cops but to every police officer, every captain and above in New York City that this can’t be. You have to be able to make that distinction and we are held to a higher standard and will continue to be held to a higher standard. 

Question: [Inaudible] chiefs as well, watch who your new friends are.

Commissioner O’Neill: Yeah, I mean it’s – take a look at your friends before you become a chief and see who your friends are after you become a chief, and hopefully there’s not too many new ones because they might not be your friends for the right reason.

Ashley?

Question: Speaking of trust, we know that you bill your legacy on building trust with the public, but one of the big hindrances to that is the public’s inability to know how you are handling officer misconduct that comes before you. You have a legislative majority that can handle this issue on 50-a, so I just want to know, what’s your move. 

Commissioner O’Neill: So, we have the disciplinary panel review – should be on January 19th. We’ll get the results of that, I really look forward to it. Another initiative I take very seriously – I think we have a decent system and I’m always looking to get better. I’ve spoken out about 50-a, we have to find a proper balance between building trust in the city and keeping officers safe, so when we get to the – I think we’ll be able to get to that point. 

Question: I guess for two years now we’ve been going back and forth over 50-a. Is there a legislative proposal on the table that you’re supportive of? What do you want to see in the legislation?

Commissioner O’Neill: Just what I said, Ashley. We have to strike that balance. There are real concerns that I have for police officer safety, but I also think people really need to know what a robust disciplinary system the NYPD has. People have to see that, and we have a couple of things going right now, one of them is held up in court. We have the [inaudible] that we’re looking to release and we’re looking for that court case to get over, and hopefully that decision is favorable to us so people can actually see what we do.

Question: Can you explain what the concern is for officer safety? Because in most other states, officer’s names are released without issue. And also, when you all want to show that an officer has done a good job, or with a gun arrest, you put them on Twitter with their faces and their names and we don’t see the same with misconduct. 

Commissioner O’Neill: Obviously the situation is different. You’re taking about a police officer that does something positive and a police officer that maybe did something negative, maybe not, so we have to be careful of that. I have a lot of concerns as the Police Commissioner in this city and one of my primary concerns is to make sure we keep our cops safe. 

Question: But if a police officer takes a gun from, say, a Blood, then he’s pissed off the Blood. Wouldn’t he also be in danger –

Commissioner O’Neill: I’m not going down that road. 

Rich?

Question: Clearly marijuana is going to become legal at some point in the very near future. Does there need to be some sort of a pause to give the Police Department time to figure out what you have to do here? Or a pause to get some sort of testing regiment for people who might be driving under the influence?

Mayor: Can I just jump in first and say, there needs to be a pause on a whole host of issues. And before the legislation is passed, which could be as early as April 1st, policing issues, health and safety issues, questions on ensuring there’s economic empowerment for the communities that suffered from the previous laws – there’s a host of issues. We as the City tried to speed that up by providing a report a few weeks ago that delineates very specific proposals for how to get it right. And I have a very clear message for Albany – get it right the first time. You know, you’ve got the whole history we saw with the tobacco industry where they got to run wild. We’ve got the history with the pharmaceutical industry where they got to run wild, that lead to the opioid crisis. Here we have a chance to actually get it right before a whole new legal industry is created and we’ve given the State a roadmap based on the real experiences of other jurisdictions and months and month of research. NYPD played a crucial role in that. So, I hope that there’s not a sense of rushing and ignoring the problems and details. I hope there’s a thoughtful process that actually speaks to those issues before the bill is passed. 

Deputy Commissioner Walzak: Let’s do one or two –

Mayor: Wait, wait –

Commissioner O’Neill: Alright just – you cut me off there. 

Mayor: Dude, Phil –

[Laughter]

Very aggressive, Phil. I thought you were from Wisconsin, I thought people were nice there. 

[Laughter]

Deputy Commissioner Walzak: It’s all a facade. 

Commissioner O’Neill: Can I go now?

[Laughter]

Rich, I said this a couple of weeks ago, I’m really concerned about under 21. We sent people to Washington, we sent people to L.A., we sent people out to Colorado concerned about what do we do with enforcement under 21? I’m greatly concerned about driving under the influence about marijuana because we need to make sure we have enough drug recognition experts because there is no instant test for finding out whether or not you’re under the influence. I’m concerned about the gray and black market. And I’m really concerned about quality of life for the people of New York City that don’t want to smoke weed, especially second-hand smoke. 

Question: Getting back to the Grant trial and verdict – I think this came out today, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney said that corruption scandal involved years-long bribery scheme that lead to tens of thousands of dollars in benefits being provided to select group of NYPD officer. And I’m just wondering if both the Commissioner and Mayor can respond to that [inaudible]?

Commissioner O’Neill: There were a number of executives that were retired – I think it was three years ago now – that were involved in – had some sort of relationship with the people that were on trial. Again, this is – there’s so much good work that’s being done in the NYPD and to have this happen and to have people, whether intentional or not intentional – have this happen was really a blow to the trust that we’ve been able to build up in this city. I think we’ll be able to get it back again, but people have to see that we are held to a higher standard. 

Mayor: Yeah, there’s been real consequences for people who did the wrong thing. That’s what matters here. 

Question: [Inaudible] brief update on the Right to Know Act. It’s been in effect for two-and-a-half months – just wondering, has that been added to the patrol book? What’s happening lately?

Assistant Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters Ann Prunty, NYPD: Good afternoon – Ann Prunty, Assistant Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters. Yes, that has been added to the patrol guide in preparation for that statute coming into effect. We also did extensive training in-house for our officers, so we have guidance now in the patrol guide and we backed that up with the training. 

Question: If Chief Shea could quickly talk about if there’s any updates on the teens who stole a couple of buses in the 4-1 and in the 7-5 and went on a bit of a joy ride?

Chief Shea: Unfortunately, we don’t have anything substantial in terms of an update to that case. But as with any case, we’re encouraging anyone with information to call.

Question: Chief, can I just ask you about a rape on Saturday [inaudible]

Chief Shea: Yeah, that case – I think we did a media release and an updated media release on it. We are currently seeking – we have identified the individual for that case. It’s one of the stranger cases that I’ve read in a while and that’s why we felt it was imperative to get out as soon as possible that individual’s identity and we’re asking anyone with information on his whereabouts to please give us a call at Crime Stoppers.

Question: [Inaudible]

Chief Shea: I won’t get into the specifics of what transpired that evening.

Commissioner O’Neill: Jillian.

Question: Update on the missing persons case on Staten Island. Has there been any movement there? Has a body been found? I know [inaudible] –

Chief Shea: There has not been, as of yet, a body located. We’re going to that missing persons case – we are actively working the case. We have searching a number of sites both in Staten Island as well as New Jersey. We are preparing for the worse but at this point in time, it remains an active missing cases that potentially could turn into a homicide investigation.

Commissioner O’Neill: Marcia.

Question: [Inaudible] congested sidewalks – you said there were things that you wanted to do. Are you thinking about the possibility of having traffic enforcement agents actually directing pedestrians [inaudible]. How would you do it?

Commissioner O’Neill: We haven’t figured that part out yet.

[Laughter]

That’s what we’re – going into 2019, because I was in Midtown a lot during the holiday season, it was – this is, again, a sign of our success as a city and we have just millions of people coming in here especially during the holiday season, especially to spend – maybe we can do some more to get them to go to the outer boroughs, to get some [inaudible] in the Bronx and in Brooklyn, make sure that we can spread the cheer around.

But there are things – I mean the traffic enforcement agents you know, maybe putting more of them at pedestrian crossings, if we can make sure we can have the timing of the lights correct, I know there are still some sidewalks where we have some NYPD concrete barriers, making sure we get them switched off to bollards so people can move between them more freely. I think there’s a number of things that we can do. And as we move forward through 2019, we’re going to have to come up with them.

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner O’Neill: I’ll go with that – before Thanksgiving. I’m not going to give you what year though.

[Laughter]

Yeah, no that is – I mean, it was – all joking aside, it was of particular concern to me. I saw a couple times in Rock-Center, you know, those cross-streets there 48th and 49th, just absolutely jammed with people.

Question: [Inaudible] drones next [inaudible] –

Commissioner O’Neill: I’m going to turn it over to our drone expert.

[Laughter]

Chief Monahan –

Chief Monahan: We’re actually utilizing the drones on different crime scenes, officer-involved shootings. So, they’ve been up quite a few times helping us develop things. I know it was used on a homicide scene out in the Rockaways not that long ago. The next major event we have coming would be St. Patrick’s Day so hopefully we can get them up, and the weather will cooperate. But St. Patty’s Day is never usually that nice a day for us.

Question: [Inaudible] move on to open questions –

Commissioner O’Neill: About.

Question: About – well, away from crime.

Mayor: You’ll get –

Commissioner O’Neill: About the NYPD?

Mayor: You’ll get there, brother. We’ll get there.

Commissioner O’Neill: About the NYPD?

Mayor: Why don’t we do a few more NYPD crime-oriented questions and then we’ll go to off-topic.

Question: [Inaudible]

Chief Shea: Yeah –

Commissioner O’Neill: You guys aren’t getting restless, are you?

[Laughter]

Question: [Inaudible] got to get back to the Bronx –

Mayor: I thought you wanted the marathon session. We were going until 6:00 pm.

[Laughter]

Chief Shea: So on New Year’s Eve, on the four to 12 tour, we had an individual at a location in the West Village in the 6th Precinct. Lives at the location with a female. It’s a 62-year-old male that unfortunately passed away – victim of a gunshot wound. It’s being investigated as a homicide, as you know. We do have some significant leads. It remains an open homicide investigation. There is an element to this potentially of marijuana coming into play – whether it was a marijuana [inaudible] as being explored. But right now it remains an open homicide investigation.

Question: The 1-0-2 rape case that John has asked about – the imitation firearm, was it recovered, what was it, was there a description of it –

Chief Shea: There was – the allegation is that a firearm was displayed. Nothing has been recovered at this point in time.

Question: [Inaudible] what was it exactly if it was an imitation? What it a toy –

Chief Shea: Yeah, I’ll have to get back to you in terms of further on that. My understanding was it wasn’t recovered but I will get back to you on that.

Commissioner O’Neill: Yeah, last one –

Question: There was a lot promotion for countdown cameras at intersections. Has there been any statistics on that regarding the fewer accidents at those corners?

Commissioner O’Neill: Yeah, we’d have to get that answer for you through DOT, or you can go to DOT directly. Okay, thank you.

[...]

Mayor: Okay, off-topic. Gloria.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Afternoon.

Question: [Inaudible] L-train shutdown [inaudible] –

Mayor: A couple – sorry – a couple things I want to say. One, I don’t want to comment in any detail until the Governor has announced his plan. This is information we’ve only gotten initial briefings on. I spoke to the Governor earlier. So –

Question: Today?

Mayor: Yes. So, come back later in the day, we’ll gave more to say. I’ll state the obvious though – anything that avoids disruption I favor obviously and a lot of people in Brooklyn, a lot of people in Manhattan have been really worried about the L-train shutdown. So, if there is a plan that can be better for the people of our neighborhoods that’s great but I want to reserve any further judgement until I hear more.

Question: There’s a ruling this morning on the Airbnb [inaudible] –

Mayor: Again, literally just came out so I can only speak broadly. But look, we think it’s a good law. This is a law to stop landlords from creating de facto hotels which is unfair and illegal which creates real security problems for neighbors. The law is pointed at a  real problem and we think it’s a good law. So, you know, when a judge does a temporary injunction, there’s still a whole lot of legal process to be had and we believe we’ll ultimately prevail.

Question: Mr. Mayor, as I’m sure you’re aware, Scott Stringer did a news conference this morning about Fair Fares. Once again, do you have any updates, response to his accusations, is there a concrete date that you –

Mayor: Look, guys, God bless him, first of all. The – we are entirely focused on doing something that’s never been done before in the history of New York City and I want to thank the City Council for their focus on this and for their partnership over the last six months in creating a brand new initiative that never existed before and has to be gotten right. And we said it from the beginning – our target was January 1. We will have an announcement very soon. It will be an announcement specifically starting the Fair Fares program so real New Yorkers do not have to choose between paying for a subway ride and having enough to eat that day.

And this is about fighting poverty, fighting income inequality which is entirely what this administration came here to do. So, we’re going to make it work, but we insist that it has to be workable. It has to be a plan that every stage is announced as it’s ready and people can start signing up at the point and get the result.

The other thing that is clear is that this is a vision – we talked about it when we announced it at the handshake agreement with the City Council back in June – it’s a vision that we are starting here in the City of New York that ultimately I’d love to see covered as part of an MTA funding plan that I hope will happen as early as April 1st in Albany because this is something that ideally would be packaged into that so we could free up resources for something else. But it’s about to start and it’s going to have a really good impact.

Question: Just to follow up – what specific part of the plan is complicating matters that needs to be worked out –

Mayor: The never-done-before part of the plan. Like, seriously.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: No, no – the fact is that – look, when advocates, to their credit, say here’s something we should try that could be good and fair and create more opportunity, you know, I like the idea from the very beginning. I always said we had to figure out how to pay for it. We came to an agreement with the Council and what we said at the time – you can go back and look at that press conference – was we’re going to do this now but everyone agrees it would ideally be part of an MTA funding package in the future. But then part of the agreement also was we had to figure out how to make it work in real life that it would be consistent because we’re not announcing something that’s going to have a lot of bugs in the system. The idea is make sure once it starts, it works, it’s sustainable, that it respects the right of the tax payers to know that they’re money is being used well. There is a lot to work out, and there’s different types of populations. The goal is of course to help people who are struggling to make ends meet but there’s different populations within that that we can serve in different ways and reach in different ways. So all of that had to be worked through, but when I say soon, I mean soon, we’re going to announce details and the ability for people to sign up and then they’ll be additional waves as we go along. Yes?

Question: Yes, two questions. One, on the Neighborhood Pillar Program launch that you just launched, I believe last week, is that going to utilize the Third Party Transfer program?

Mayor: Well, hold on now, the – when you say Neighborhood Pillar, and forgive me there’s some of our program names that I don’t recall immediately, Neighborhood Pillar is which one?

Question: It was announced last week, it had to do with creating more affordable housing by HPD somehow purchasing or getting hold of property.

Mayor: So, again, I want to be careful when I’m not familiar with the details of something, we’ll come back to you later in the day with the answer.

Question: But you were quoted on it?

Mayor: I’m sure I was quoted on it. I’m saying, when you say Neighborhood Pillar, I’m just being real straight up with you, known you 100 years brother. When you say Neighborhood Pillar I don’t have a file that comes up that reminds me of the specifics of Neighborhood Pillar, I will get you an answer later on today.

Question: Are you familiar with the Third Party Transfer?

Mayor: Of course.

Question: Do you feel that it’s doing justice to a lot of black and brown homeowners that are losing their properties under it?

Mayor: I think, and we’ve talked about this before, that if someone in a specific situation does not respond to violations and there’s ongoing problems that affect the neighbors, and there’s meaningful efforts to give someone time to address those issues and they don’t address them on a regular basis, it’s appropriate to take action, but equally, we said this publically before, if anybody – if a property owner says “Hey, I have a way I can solve this problem” we want to work with them. That’s always our preference – it’s just to solve the problem. Not to take the property but to solve the problem to begin with. I remind you it’s very few properties, and I remind you that they require council approval. Council’s raised some important issues about this and we’re working with them to improve the program. But, is there a place for it? Yes.

Question: Second thing, but it’s on another subject.

Mayor: Okay.

Question: The sign awning issue that was supposed to go in front of the City Council and it didn’t, I’m told, because of a union issue, are—

Mayor: I don’t know about a union issue.

Question: Do you know what held—

Mayor: I know why the sign awning issue matters because we have safety concerns that have to be addressed but I have not heard about a union issue holding it up.

Question: Is it true that when there’s a—

Mayor: Okay, this is the last one brother.

Question: —that when there’s a – it’s related to sign awnings—

Mayor: I know but we still have to get around to other people so last one.

Question: On the 311, does it require a response all the time for Department of Buildings to go out in the field?

Mayor: If there’s a question about safety we want them to go out and address the issue quickly. I’m not going to get into the nuances of awnings. I know why we care about, because there are real safety issues and we don’t want to ever ignore the proper way to put up an awning, but – so I’d say wherever there’s a question that might have safety implication, yeah, of course, we want that kind of follow-up, but that’s part of what we’re trying to work through right now.

Question: [Inaudible] the governor announced—

Mayor: Yeah, I just spoke to it a moment ago. I don’t know if you got that.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Yeah, so again the bottom line is, brother, no, the bottom line is we’re way into hearing the details, obviously very much want to make sure that New Yorkers are not inconvenienced and if this is something that’s going to make people’s lives better in Brooklyn and Manhattan that’s great but we have not heard the detail yet. We’ll have more to say, later in the day, when we have the details. Okay, Rich.

Question: Mr. Mayor, on that tax on marijuana, on the road map—

Mayor: This seems to be a big interest of yours, Rich.

[Laughter]

Question: A lot of people seem to be interested in it. On that blueprint or roadmap that you said you sent up to Albany, have you had any reaction from anyone? State legislators, the governor?

Mayor: Yeah, no I have not spoken to the governor about it. I would say the response has been good from state legislators, and we’ve got a couple of them here you can talk to afterwards, but I think some of the response we got was a lot of agreement on economic empowerment that – again I want to emphasize, my goal, and I have two legislators listening, I hope I will persuade them. My goal is that we avoid the corporatization of the marijuana industry. We have a chance, and these two folks and their colleagues hold in their hands a chance to do something that’s never been done before, to literally exclude corporate America and ensure that this is a small business, community based industry where opportunity, first and foremost, goes to communities that were victimized and individuals who were victimized right down to people having an opportunity to start businesses and get jobs who served time who never should have served time to begin with. That’s, I think, something that there’s a lot of support for in Albany. I think there’s a lot, equally, a lot of concern in Albany about getting the health and safety issues right. So, yeah, we’ve gotten some very good feedback and I’m hopeful, I’m very excited about the new State Senate and how the new State Senate is going to allow the Assembly to do a lot of things they wanted to do previously and were always stymied on.

Unknown: Me too.

Mayor: Yes, so – I’ve got a witness, so this is one where I think the state of New York could do something absolutely revolutionary, never-before done, and I’m excited about that possibility. Yes.

Question: On Airbnb issue, did the City go too far in the law in requiring Airbnb to share that extent of post-data? Why not require post-registration as other cities have done successfully which –

Mayor: Well, obviously we don’t think we did. I mean, you know, in the legislative process, Willy, you’re talking about not only the Council’s lawyers but the Law Department passing judgement, and the Law Department is pretty sober about these kind of things. We felt we were well within the law. And look, we have a huge city with a lot of Airbnb activity and a lot of concern in our neighborhoods and unfortunately a lot of examples of abuse, and to put a strong data regiment in place made all the sense in the world. So, I think it’s a good law. I’m comfortable with the law and we’re certainly going to fight for it legally.

Question: Mayor, just to go back to the L-train, I understand you don’t have all the details but the City spent several years and probably [inaudible] considerable amount of money in seeking to mitigate the L-train shutdown that now maybe won’t happen. Is that a concern of yours?

Mayor: Of course but again – one, I want to reserve judgement until I’ve got a thorough briefing on the plan. Two, whatever the plan is, we have to confirm that it’s going to work in terms of the reality that we’re facing. So, I would just caution everyone – we’re not undoing anything we’ve done in the short term. We’re going to keep all of our current approach in place until everything is settled.

But that said, if it’s an improvement for people’s live, if it helps us avoid a lot of dislocation, of course I like it but let’s reserve further judgement until we get details.

Question: Just to follow up on that – the City has installed like a lot of bus lanes –

Mayor: Brother, I know –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Well, I don’t want to jump to that yet. I obviously – look, we’ve installed lots of bike lanes, lots of traffic calming measures, we’ve been expanding sidewalks in places for other reasons. If it turns out that this really is a sea change, then we’re going to evaluate what it means and if we’re going to look at these things in another light. But I want everyone to just – I want you to hear, there’s a little bit of native caution in my voice here, this is breaking news. When we’ve fully analyzed it we’ll be able to say if we think everything’s been resolved or if more has to be done to resolve it. But until we are 100 percent certain – and we’ll work closely with the State, we’ll work closely with the MTA – until we’re 100 percent certain, we’re going to keep all of the precautions we have ready and waiting just in case.

Question: [Inaudible] I hear that you don’t necessarily know all of the –

Mayor: I really don’t – are you talking about this?

Question: Yes.

Mayor: I really don’t know any of it but go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible] has not consulted you on these potential changes that he’s going to make?

Mayor: Again, I want to respect the privacy of the conversation with the Governor. I’ve gotten from the Governor an overview, and it was good conversation but that’s very different than everyone drilling down in the different agencies and really understanding the details. So, I’m just not going to be able to give you more than that until we get a chance to analyze the plan.

Question: I just wanted to ask you about what you said yesterday about the trial of Chief Grant. You said that you tuned it out because it didn’t involve you, I guess, but doesn’t a case alleging bribery of a high-level cop – isn’t that something [inaudible] –

Mayor: We’ve spoken about this 100 times. I’m just not talking about it anymore. Anything else? Going once, twice. Thank you every – you got, wait. She got her hand up just in time.

Question: When did you speak to the Governor?

Mayor: This morning. Thanks, everyone.