Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears on NY1

August 19, 2019

Errol Louis: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. Police Commissioner James O’Neill fired Officer Daniel Pantaleo today for the 2014 death of Eric Garner. The firing comes about two weeks after an NYPD administrative judge recommended the termination of Daniel Pantaleo and Commissioner O’Neill’s decision today led to emotional reactions from the Mayor, from the Garner family, from the police union’s leaders. And joining me now to talk about this and more is the Mayor of the City. Mayor de Blasio is in the blue room at City Hall, good evening Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good evening, Errol.

Louis: Let me start by asking you, were you in touch with the Police Commissioner over the weekend? When did you learn about his decision?

Mayor: Well I want to respect the private conversations I had with the Commissioner of course, but it was shortly before he made his final decision – at the time he made his final decisions, he told me.

Louis: When the police union president, Pat Lynch, says that the NYPD is, and I’m quoting him, “rudderless and frozen”, and is calling for a no confidence vote with regard to the Commissioner, what’s your response to that? Have you spoken to the Commissioner? Is his job in danger at all as far as you’re concerned?

Mayor: This is a man, our Police Commissioner, who has done an outstanding job. Look at the fact that on his watch crime continues to go down, the relationship between police and community continues to improve, he was the architect and is the architect of neighborhood policing which is working. When we talk about all the things that have changed since the tragedy of Eric Garner, the fact that our officers have body cameras, that they are going through implicit bias training, that they have been retrained to deescalate, all of that credit goes to Jimmy O’Neill and he is someone who served in uniform for over 30 years and cares deeply for the men and women of the department. I think he’s an exemplary Police Commissioner. He has my full confidence, he always has, and I think what the union is doing is reprehensible. The men and women of the NYPD know that Jimmy O’Neill cares about this city and cares about all the men and women who served this city and our police department and that he has led us to a place of safety we’ve never been before, which is what everyone is in this for, to make this place safer.

So, no, I just think the irresponsibility levels of the PBA leadership just continue to increase by the day. They don’t seem to care about the future of New York City. They don’t seem to care about people. They only seem to care about their political needs, but I don’t think rank-n-file officers fall for it. I think rank-n-file officers are people who came here to do good. They took on this incredibly important job because they wanted to help people. I’ve talked to so many officers, I know they are motivated to do good in this world and I believe that they are supreme professionals and they’re going to keep doing their job just like Jimmy O’Neill said at his press conference. You know, someone is going to – right this moment – need a police officer, and that police officer is not going to hesitate to be there and help a fellow New Yorker.

Louis: Let me ask you about what has changed and what has not, specifically with regard to chokeholds, Mr. Mayor? As you may have seen in the New York Times, they added up, in the five years before you took officer, there was something like a thousand complaints about chokeholds that were forwarded to the CCRB. It resulted in only nine instances of discipline and in those cases it was only, at most, a few days of lost vacation. The prohibition has been in place for 20 years. The newly updated guidelines after the Garner case also say they’ve had in place for years in the past saying you shall not use chokeholds. So even after this case, taking five years to resolve it, and a termination, the first – as far as I can tell – and only instance in which somebody was fired for using a chokehold. Do we need a law? That’s what some of the civil rights advocates are calling for.

Mayor: What I think what’s been made very clear by this case, Errol, look I don’t need to repeat to you, but your listeners may not know the history that the NYPD internal disciplinary process would have happened a long time ago but for the United States Department of Justice telling us to hold. And that’s what poisoned the whole timeline here, and as I said today, our job is to make sure we never have to even consider another case like this because we stopped these tragedies from happening once and for all. I believe, Errol, we can do that. I believe with all the changes we’ve made and more to come, that we can stop these tragedies once and for all. But if we ever, ever find ourselves this situation again, we would not wait on the Department of Justice. So the first part of your question is answered by the fact that here you had an NYPD disciplinary process that was obviously fair and impartial and took very, very seriously that prohibited chokehold and the result of it. I think that message is loud and clear. This is not acceptable in the NYPD.

Now to the question of a law, I’ve said for a long time, my concern about any law is that it not be narrowly drawn in such a fashion that if a police officer is in a situation where they are literally fighting for their life, because there are circumstances where an officer is threatened with someone with a weapon for example, or a situation where they have to do anything and everything to protect their own life, that’s a different situation. So we have to be mindful of that and I am concerned that if anyone is looking at law change, they must take that into account. But the bigger point here is we have the –

Louis: Well so when you say –

Mayor: Preeminent example right here of the prohibition being acted upon with the consequences you’ve seen.

Louis: The – well I mean the consequences are five years after the fact and as you know, when the department and I guess, you know, the administration elected to wait after 18 months, the standards changed. That, you know, as the CCRB report made clear, if  they had acted, if the NYPD had acted within 18 months they could have simply found that there was a chokehold, terminated the officers, and that would have been the end of it?

Mayor: But Errol, why – respectfully – the Department of Justice – and if you disagree with this, let’s have it out – but I’m going to challenge that the Department of Justice for many, many years was seen as the ultimate arbiter, particularly on the issues of civil rights and issues between police and community. And remember, this started in the previous administration, in Washington, that said if the NYPD were to act, it could undermine much more serious charges that the Department of Justice has [inaudible] –

Louis: But – no – we have had this out. Look was there anything you ever heard publically or privately about this case that led you to believe that something that could meet the high standard of a civil rights case, which essentially means intentional misconduct by the officer –

Mayor: Yeah, sure -

Louis: When you woke up in the morning and said I’m going to go violate somebody’s rights. Did you ever hear anything about this case that suggests that such a case could possibly have been prosecuted?

Mayor: Yes, Errol, I don’t know what facts you’ve been looking at. But we know, we know for a fact that certainly in the previous presidential administration, the civil rights division in Washington believed they had a case. Now – with all due respect to you, I think they know a lot more about the law than you or me. So I find that to be an unfair criticism on your part of – I believe the Justice Department for a long time proved that they were serious about these issues. And we saw it in terms of a variety of prosecutions.

Louis: So I mean, did your cooperation counsel or any of the other attorneys that work for the administration tell you like hey, this looks like it could be civil rights violation?

Mayor: The – again, the question is did we believe the Justice Department was two things, did we believe the Justice Department was seriously talking about and believe that they had a potential case? And two, were they asking us not to act. I want to be clear, until we saw these results which are absolutely unacceptable. The fact that they took five years, and then they literally didn’t make a decision until the final day is patently unacceptable.

Louis: But, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor, I don’t want to interrupt. I mean, look, if they took 19 months, you would have been in the same position. That’s the problem. It’s not the five years, it’s the 19 months.

Mayor: But, Errol, respectfully –

Louis: After 18 months you lose the right to simply terminate the officer.

Mayor: And in the end there was a fair and impartial process that did terminate the officer. So I find what you’re saying a little strange honestly, because in the end the question is did the process work when it took place? Yes, it did. It was a fair and impartial process that resulted in justice. Now, if I had – listen, honestly if I knew then, would I know now I would have said it to the Justice Department, I don’t believe you, and we would have gotten ahead with our own process. But everything I knew about history, and everything our lawyers knew about history up until that point suggested the exact opposite the Justice Department was entirely serious, and bluntly with much more serious charges than just personnel matters.

Louis: You suggested that we’ve got a measure of justice and we can turn the page. I want to know if that’s necessarily the case. When I look at the CCRB report, it says among other things. One of their findings is that one of the officers, not Daniel Pantaleo but one of the officers on the scene was filling out a report on what happened in the killing of Eric Garner, and a spot on the report where it says was forced used, it says none. And asked what’s the top charge that might have been brought against Eric Garner, put down a section of the code that indicates you know something like sale of something like 10,000 or more cigarettes when in fact he was found with five packets of cigarettes. It looks like false information was put into the record right from the day that the killing happened.

Mayor: Again, Errol, look, I don’t find that acceptable at all. But I also think that what happened here was in the very beginning of our time here, this horrible tragedy occurred. And based on the police department that have been trained very, very differently and you know it. They were trained in a very different much more aggressive often too aggressive approach to policing where there was not de-escalation being taught, where there was not a focus on building relationships with the community, there were not body cameras, there was not implicit bias training. This is a very different world. And that is – the thing you’re describing to me is unacceptable. And that’s the kind of thing that today in the NYPD would be acted on. But the fact is once this occurred, a whole series of changes happened in the NYPD. It is a very, very different department today. And also you and I both watch a lot of situation in New York and all around the country where an internal disciplinary process to the eyes of a lot of people looked like it was biased one way or another. Here we had a process that was fully objective that resulted in an outcome that I think is justice. So, a lot has changed and we have a lot more to change. And I think with the bottom line, and certainly when I talk to people in this city we wanted to see this case resolved so we could move forward. I don’t think people want to live in the past. We can’t bring someone back we lost, but we can move forward as a city and make sure we never, ever have another tragedy. That’s what I am focused on.

Louis: Okay, let’s take a short break here, we’ll be right back. Stand by Mr. Mayor; we’ll have more with Mayor de Blasio in just a minute. Later on tonight I’ll get a reaction from Eric Garner’s mother Gwen Carr.

[…]

Louis:  Welcome back to Inside City Hall. I’m once again joined by Mayor de Blasio; he joins us from the Blue Room inside City Hall. And Mr. Mayor I wanted to ask you about something. I know this can this came up in a recent interview as well. On your website under accomplishments, this is your presidential campaign website, it says that on your accomplishments it says “oversaw divestment of the city's pension funds from fossil fuels” and people have quoted you on the campaign trail also saying that you know we’ve divested $5 billion from fossil fuels using the pension funds but some reporters at Politico have pointed out that that none of that has happened yet.

Mayor: Yeah Errol, I find this a distinction without a difference – a year ago or more we had a press conference, the City Comptroller Scott Stringer and I, the leaders of two of the biggest unions that are crucial to our pension funds Michael Mulgrew, Henry Garrido, DC 37, and UFT. All in 100 percent agreement that divestments moving forward all the machinery needed if you will, the process needed to do the divestment is moving forward. At the time we said it doesn't happen overnight. It has to be unwound. There’s a formal process because of the fiduciary responsibility of the pension board's to do it a certain way, but the decision's been made and it was announced publicly and we're all accountable for. And it's all moving forward. So I’m very comfortable that I’m telling people exactly what's going on.

Louis: Well I mean, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that you've initiated a process hoping this is going to happen? I mean in the end –

Mayor: No, because I am 110 percent convinced it's going to happen because everything that's needed to make it happen has been set in motion. If I didn't think it was going to happen I would say something less, but this is locked down. All the key players that needed to sign off have signed off. In fact very publicly it's happening.

Louis: Okay so when you – I mean look, when you say we have divested $5 billion from the oil companies from the fossil fuel industry that's a direct quote from you telling this to potential voters in Iowa. We have divested $5 billion from the oil companies. You’re saying that that has happened?

Mayor: Errol, I’m saying we’ve made the decision and I’m not – when you talk about the fact that you can make a decision it’s now you’re policy, it’s now what you’re doing, many, many policies take time to play out. Policies are announced all the time and they’re set in motion, and they’re locked down and still it takes years to implement them. That’s very normal. We’ve made the decision to divest, we’re divesting. I stand by that.
Louis: Okay, I mean, look I raise it in part because the natural follow up question by somebody who might want to follow your lead in another jurisdiction would say what was the result? Have the pensioners been harmed? What changed in the returns after you’ve made that divestment? What was the effect on the fuel companies? A lot of questions –

Mayor: All of that – these were all things that were considered for a long time before the decision was made, and there’s a tremendous amount of confidence, I am talking about the team at the City Comptroller’s Office, my team at OMB and the folks who work on pensions. All of that was analyzed we’re absolutely certain we could find equivalent or better investments. We’re absolutely certain that taking money out of the fossil fuel companies does have an impact on that industry and we want that industry to understand they have to get away from fossil fuels and move to renewables and look, there’s a movement all over the world. This is not just New York City but New York City is one of the leading places that’s actually put in motion at such a serious level and made a decision. So I am absolutely confident that the analysis that was done, the scrupulous analysis get to the decision is going to be proven right.

Louis: Okay, another presidential campaign question. You’ve got a CNN town hall comping up this weekend. Who takes part in that? I don’t know how they put these things together. But who is going to be there? Where is it going to happen? What’s it going to look like?

Mayor: So, I’ll let CNN speak to their own process, but it’s pretty much what they’ve done around the country. It’s going to be – this one’s going to be based in New York. There is another candidate who is going to have time ahead of me, Steve Bullock of Montana. We each get an hour. I think CNN has done two in a night, three in a night. I think they even did four in a night at one point. But it’s a model that they have developed that I think every, or almost every candidate has had one now where it’s a one hour town all with people from around the country. So it’s very consistent with what they’ve done previously.

Louis: Okay, we’ll wish you the best of luck Sunday.

Mayor: Sunday at 7:00 pm, Errol.

Louis: Sunday, at 7:00 pm, I’ll – my VCR will be there.

Mayor: Alright.

Louis: And we’ll see on Monday. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.