Transcript: Mayor Eric Adams Briefs Media Following Mass Shooting at Nightclub in Brooklyn

August 17, 2025

Watch the video here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoP3-qWidr4

Mayor Eric Adams: Good morning. I should just say morning. We had 12 people shot in the city, a mass shooting. And the second in a few weeks, you know, it just impacts and reinforces why we do this work of going after guns on our streets. And just really, really want to thank the police commissioner and the men and women of the New York City Police Department, Pastor Monrose, Commissioner Howard of DYCD and AT Mitchell from Man Up, who has been a real partner around the issues around gun violence. 

t was almost in 2019, when we had 12 people shot in Brownsville. I remember walking with AT Mitchell throughout Brownsville and Pastor Monrose as we looked at that issue back then. And now we're back with the shooting of this magnitude that took place in July. This took place here, as you know, in August. 

Last night, we lost three New Yorkers and nine more are in the hospital after a horrific act of gun violence at a nightclub in Crown Heights. Today, while, of course, we mourn the victims and pray for their families and their community, we are calling on the public. We need your help. We need your help. 

If you were inside the club, if you heard individuals talking about this shooting, if you witnessed someone fleeing the location, every piece of information would allow us to put the puzzle together to solve this crime. If you witnessed the event or if you have information, please call Crime Stoppers, 800-577-TIPS. 

Gun violence of this magnitude, it really scars a community and a city that we will continue to fight to do everything that's possible to continue to take illegal guns off our street. And I can easily stand here and tell you how we have driven down crime, that we have removed over 22,000 illegal guns off our streets. I can give you those numbers and those stats, but that does not comfort those who are the victims of gun violence. 

What I can tell you, we will continue our aggressive pursuit to remove these illegal guns off our streets. Every single victim of violence, particularly gun violence, is one too many. And last night, mass shooting reminds us of all the work that we must continue to do. And the NYPD and our partners and our faith-based community and our crisis management teams, we have mobilized them to immediately respond to this incident, as well as work with the friends and families of victims to stop any potential retaliatory action. 

We're always concerned after a shooting. Retaliatory shootings will follow if we don't get on the ground with our crisis management team and other partners. The deputy commissioner, I'm sorry, the commissioner of DYCD, Commissioner Howard and AT Mitchell, they will be coordinating to see how do we continue to get our crisis management team out to be activated and respond to this immediately. 

I also communicated with Pastor Monrose. We unfortunately will have to mobilize a mass shooting plan. He's going to be put in charge of getting all our partners together so we can mobilize around these mass shootings. As I stated, this is the second within weeks, and we don't want this to turn into a normal course of doing business of violence in our city. 

And CMS hospital responders will be dispatched to Kings County Hospital, Brookdale Hospital, and Maimonides Hospital where the shooting victims are receiving medical attention. We want to thank those hospitals for their quick response. Additionally, we provide trauma services and facilitate mediation efforts for the families of the deceased individuals in an effort to stop the retaliatory action. 

And finally, we are going to pray for the families and the victims and ask for all New Yorkers to join us in prayer as we lift these families up. We cannot answer hate with hate or violence with violence, but you have my word, we will do all that we can to protect the innocent and bring the guilty to justice. 

We will find those who are involved. And right now, we will continue to think of the families. I want to turn it over to the police commissioner to give us any update and just an overview of what took place. Commissioner.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch: As the mayor said, what happened in Crown Heights this morning was a tragic, senseless act of violence. Our prayers are with the victims and their families. Our job now is to determine who is responsible and to hold them accountable. 

We've spent the past few hours poring over surveillance video, canvassing the neighborhood, and I can provide you with the following update, which is preliminary and subject to change. At approximately 3:27 a.m., we started to receive multiple 911 calls about a shooting inside of 903 Franklin Avenue, which is a lounge in Crown Heights known as Taste of the City. 

Officers arrived within minutes of the first 911 call and found numerous gunshot victims inside of the location. Currently, we have identified 12 victims ranging in age from 19 to 61, nine males and three females. Since the time of our last briefing, the victim count went up by one from 11 to 12. 

Three of the victims have been pronounced dead. One male, age 27, and one male, age 35, who succumbed to their injuries at the hospital, as well as one male, age 19, who was pronounced on scene. The nine remaining victims are at local area hospitals with what is being described right now as non-life threatening injuries. We are withholding victims' names at this time, pending family notifications. The investigation into this incident is ongoing. 

What we know preliminarily is that there was a dispute inside the crowded club that led to the shooting. We believe that there were up to four shooters involved in this incident. Our crime scene investigators have now recovered 42 shell casings from multiple guns. The shell casings appear to be from nine millimeter and 45 caliber weapons. 

At this time, no one is in custody and the shooting preliminarily appears to be gang related. Our detectives have recovered a firearm in the vicinity of Bedford Avenue in Eastern Parkway. We are investigating whether that firearm is tied to this shooting incident. As the mayor said, anyone with information is urged to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS. Thank you. I'll now turn it over to Pastor Monrose.

Pastor Gilford Monrose, Faith Advisor, Office of the Mayor: Thank you, commissioner. Thank you, Mayor Adams, for your continued leadership on showing the humanity side of the business of running a big city like New York. 

Today is a summary, of course, of worship across congregations in Crown Heights and New York City who have gathered to worship and pray. We are reminded of the frailty of human life and the reckless and deadly behavior of those who are armed with illegal guns with respect to human life. 

Our prayers and our condolences are to the family and friends of those who have lost their lives and we are praying for the speedy recovery of those who are in the hospitals. May we take a moment to have a moment of silence as we remember the victims and also remember those who have lost their life even this year. 

We pause and reflect for those who are injured and our prayers and our love to all of those who have paid the ultimate price of losing their life in New York City. We will be providing clergy care throughout the coming days and I want to also recognize and thank Commissioner Keith Howard for providing the support and also now I'll turn it over to AT Mitchell-Mann who will have some comments.

AT Mitchell-Mann, Founder and CEO, Man Up! Inc.: Good morning. AT Mitchell-Mann again from Man Up! Incorporated, one of the crisis management system organizations in Brooklyn, New York, a part of the citywide crisis management system. I'm here joined by other fellow colleagues of mine alongside the system as well as my colleagues here in government and I'm speaking on behalf of the community at large in Brooklyn right now and not the entire city. 

I'm more than sure as folks woke up this morning, everyone heard the sad news that we were very taken aback because the summer has been relatively going quite well throughout in terms of the different things that the community has been doing. But, this morning we woke up to the sad news and it made us really question you know what is really going on in our city in some cases and we are outraged. You know the community is outraged. 

This is a mass shooting just as the mayor spoke about similar to when we were together back in 2019 that took place in Brownsville, Brooklyn and our community's response and our position is just the same. We will be denouncing this incident. We are denouncing senseless violence. We do not, you know, think that this is a way that one needs to resolve their conflicts if that's what they chose to do but now we step aside and we allow for our colleagues in the Police Department to do their job.

But we have been as a system we've been responding ever since the call has been made. Our hospital responders are, as the mayor mentioned, on location at the hospitals right now working with the families. Our men and women who are violence interrupters are also at work right now, as said, trying to prevent any forms of retaliation and so we are going to do our part. You know, I just want to end by saying my condolences to the families of those that lost and also to the family members who are recovering at the hospital. 

But this is a mass shooting. You know this happens um as you said this is the second one in a couple of weeks so mass shootings require mass resources and so we look to go into that area of Crown Heights and to be able to pour those resources within that area and we're looking forward to everybody else's collaboration going forward. Thank you.

Question: Commissioner, you mentioned gang related, can you identify any of the gangs involved in this and can you also speak to if this was a planned attack or if these were just two groups who came across each other?

Police Commissioner Tisch: So, I'm not going to provide that information now. I'm going to let the investigators work it. But I want to say, approximately 60 percent of our shootings in New York City are gang related and so we really see gangs driving so much of the violence in in New York City and a lot of our work in bringing the shooting numbers down so far this year has been because of our relentless focus on guns and gangs. And as the mayor said we're certainly not going to let up now. 

Question: Do we know if these victims are innocent victims? And also, I know you can’t discuss too much about motive, but do we believe that this gang— that there are teenagers involved in this gang?

Police Commissioner Tisch: So, again I'm not going to speak more about the gang motivation. But yes, we have reason to believe that some of the victims were involved in the shooting incident. But, again, that is preliminary and subject to change. 

Question: Do you know if any of them are innocent victims here?

Police Commissioner Tisch: There have to have been innocent victims here, yes. 

Question: Commissioner, did they have security at the door? I mean how do four guys come in with guns, four?

Police Commissioner Tisch: Yep, the club did have bouncers and we are working now to identify those bouncers and interview them. 

Question: [Inaudible] rival gangs? Multiple?

Police Commissioner Tisch: As I said, I'm not going to comment more on the gang relation here. But anytime we have gang violence we always immediately think about retaliation and how we plan for that.

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