Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on CBS 880 to Discuss Orlando Shooting

June 13, 2016

Pat Farnack: Thanks so much for joining us Mayor.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: You’re very welcome.

Farnack: What is the City doing in light of what’s happened in Orlando to prevent something like that happening here?

Mayor: Well I am proud to say the NYPD is not only the finest police force in the country but we have the strongest anti-terror capacity police force in America. Last year, working with the City Council, we added a number of official police officers including 500 plus for our new Critical Response. That is a full-time anti-terror force, well-trained in what they do— all full-time, they prevent terror. And you will see them out and evident today, all over the City in all kinds of locations and also by LGBT community locations. This attacker obviously meant to intimidate and attack that community. So you will see that expanded police presence. By the end of the year we will have 2,000 more cops on the street so that will continue to make us safe. I can safely say between the intelligence gathering capacity of the NYPD, working very closely with our federal partners and the kind of presence that we can put on the street, [inaudible] at the moment we have exceptional abilities to keep people safe.

Farnack: Mayor is this the new normal now the way we have to react with caution after something like this occurs?

Mayor: Well, I say a couple of things. One – for New York City, since 9/11 now for fifteen years we’ve [inaudible] so I think that we are in a different place than most other cities in the country. The second thing I’d say is it doesn’t have to be this way if we continue effective efforts. Obviously, there’s been some real victories for the United States overseas in terms of defeating ISIS with our coalition partners but also we continue to work on the ground here to deepen our police and intelligence gathering efforts. And that means having a very strong relationship with all communities – with the Muslim community and all communities. That’s also how we fight crime and this has been one of the hallmarks of the [inaudible] of the NYPD, our neighborhood policing and the ability to gather information in cooperation with people in the community.

Donald Trump attacks some of the policies we have here in the City and policies that were determined by the NYPD and I would say the obvious: the NYPD and Bill Bratton know a lot more about security and safety than Donald Trump will ever know.  

And one of the things we realized in the previous policy that the City [inaudible] many members of the Muslim community. And we want everyone in that community to feel a sense of deep connection to the City government, to the NYPD and to be partners in fighting terror. And that’s something we can continue to deepen.

Farnack: Mayor, Pride Week in New York City is coming up next week. Are there extra steps being taken to ensure that those who are in the City, to celebrate, are going to being safe?

Mayor: Absolutely, you’ll see today at a few sites around the City, again that expanded NYPD presence. You’ll certainly see it in front of key LGBT community centers. There is going to be a vigil tonight at the Stonewall Inn. I’ll be participating with many other New Yorkers, obviously you will see a lot of NYPD presence there. As we go throughout this month we celebrate the LGBT community, people can rest assured there will be beefed up police presence and for the big parade at the end of the month, absolutely. Not only the usual [inaudible] of police but a lot of them are the Critical Response Command and the anti-terror force that will be out and evident. So, we believe in strength in numbers. NYPD has the great advantage of being such a strong, well-trained force and people in the community can know that they are going to have the NYPD watching out for them.

Farnack: The subject of mental health is very important to your administration. How key is this going to become to keep America safe? Often people – they don’t want to get involved, they are afraid to get involved if somebody is acting in a certain way. What do you suggest?

Mayor: I love the question because it gets to the heart of the problem. We’ve seen these mass shootings, and as you said before, you already mentioned the part about the new normal. We can’t allow them to be a new normal. And another part of the equation is dealing with mental health issues. Some of these shootings seem to have some kind of political motivation but others have simply been the acts of people with severe mental illness who got their hands on a gun or many guns and acted out. We need to find people in distress early and what we’ve been trying to do in this administration, led by my wife Chirlane McCray, is to work on destigmatizing mental health and provide a lot more access to mental health treatment early. It does require people helping people in their life, their friends, family, loved ones – it does require reporting a situation if you see it. If you fear that someone might not be in a good place and you know when we first started to focus on terror after 9/11 we talked a lot about watching out for bombs in the subway – ‘If you see something, say something.’ Well that is at least it’s true, if not more true when it comes to mental health issues. If someone is going through a severe problem, we need the people in their life to pick up the phone, call whoever is appropriate. Call the police, call a school if it’s a young person. Let them know what they’re seeing because that’s going to allow us to get that person treatment before something degenerates. And this twin challenge in this country – the lack of focus on mental health services with the easy availability of guns has proven to be tragic over and over again. We have got to go at both of those issues right now if we want to avoid this being the new normal.

Farnack: Security, you were mentioning, has been beefed up all around the City. And it was interesting to watch during the Tony Awards show last night. I was interested to see some of the actors came out in the street in front of the theater to do little skits and songs. And my heart was sort of in my throat but at the same time it was good to see that it was business as usual.

Mayor: Part of how we keep business as usual is to have a very strong security presence. And so it’s obvious to anyone who wishes to do harm to us and that’s for a terrorist and that’s for a criminal that the NYPD is out in force. That’s why we are the safest big city in the country. So I think you can factor those two points there together. If you want to maintain what we value, the kind of normalcy and the kind of open society we value, we do need the kind of security presence that is going to [inaudible] – and the two can go hand in hand. And it does every day in New York City. Look, we are the most unified and multicultural city you can imagine at this point in our history – every faith, every kind of people together. We don’t live in perfect harmony but we live in a pretty extraordinary and basic harmony, every day. And that is guaranteed by NYPD.  The NYPD helps not only to keep us safe but to protect those values. Terrorist are trying to undermine those values. One thing I say all the time, especially as New Yorkers – we don’t get intimidated. We are not going to be intimidated by terror. We are not going to change our values, we are not going to change our ways, so it’s so important for people to be comfortable and go about their daily business. Know that the NYPD is watching your back and know that you can continue to live the way that you love here in this city.

Farnack: Thank you so much for taking the time to join us.

Mayor: You’re very welcome.