Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on MSNBC

December 30, 2019

Geoff Bennett: Alright. Joining me now is New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mr. Mayor, it's good to see you. And earlier this month, after a deadly attack at a kosher market in New Jersey, you said it was too close to home. And you also said this kind of hate was “right on our doorstep.” But if you look at the numbers, it would appear that this kind of violence is, to extend the metaphor – it’s actually in your house. It's in the city. From January to November of this year, anti-Semitic incidents are up 17 percent, that’s according to the Anti-Defamation League. So, what are you doing to stop it?

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Geoff, what we're seeing, first of all, is a horrible national crisis of anti-Semitism. We have to put this in perspective. Something is wrong. It has been growing over the last few years. The most horrible instance was, of course, the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh. But we see more and more of these things, and we've just got to be clear, anti-Semitism is now taking a more and more violent form in the United States. And the permission that's being given for hate speech in general is underlying a lot of this. We've had situations here, no doubt, we’ve had real bias crime problems in the last year or two in the city. We've seen them grow. We have not seen, thank God, the kinds of attacks we saw, for example, in Jersey City. But the answer to the challenge is to be additionally vigilant, to put more police presence out, we're going to have community safety coalitions, community members of different ethnic backgrounds, joining together to patrol the streets and to inhibit this kind of violence. And we're focusing on our young people and our schools, adding to our curriculum immediately to teach young people that any act of hate ultimately comes back to hurt everyone, every community. So, I don't see this as just isolated incidents, I see this as a growing crisis that needs to be addressed right down to the foundational level of how we educate our young people and how we bring our communities together to fight hate in common.

Bennett: One of your predecessors, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, had suggested that you bring back the so-called broken windows theory – the theory of policing where you see small signs of hatred like graffiti, or broken glass, and then take it more seriously, address those signs more seriously, literally read the writing on the wall. What do you make of that?

Mayor: Geoff, it’s striking how out of touch Rudy Giuliani is at this point. He doesn't even understand what's happening in New York City. The NYPD very, very consistently deals with quality of life crimes, hate crimes, the smaller things like graffiti, for sure, whether it is a hate version of graffiti or just every-day, you know, destruction of property or desecration of property. The bottom line is, we take all that seriously. Look, this is the safest big city in America and I’m very proud of what the NYPD has done. And the fact is it's because there is that deep presence all over our communities and the theory of neighborhood policing, something Rudy Giuliani never attempted, which is to actually get our officers to have a close and communicative and respectful relationship with our communities. Now, we're getting a lot more help from communities in finding out who's doing these things and in preventing these kinds of acts.

So, no, we take every hate crime seriously. We take every quality of life offense seriously. But we also know, ultimately, if you're going to police communities effectively you have to do it with the people we serve, and that's what our police have done so much more effectively in recent years. And to actually get to the basis of hate too – we’re not going to get rid of this horrible trend of hate in our country simply with public safety activity. That's a part of it, but a huge part of it, Geoff, is educating our young people differently and bringing communities together to renounce this permission that's been given to hate speech, and, bluntly, to also address the reality of the social media companies that are allowing their platforms to be vehicles for hate speech. There's a lot going on here that we have to get to the root cause of.

Bennett: In the immediate term, though, I wonder, is the neighborhood policing sort of the best solution? Because I'm told, you know, in the wake of recent attacks, you've added police presence, as you talked about, at least temporarily around many synagogues. But I'm told that once that ends, you have these Jewish communities that are left holding the bag and having to pay for their own security and, in effect, having to protect themselves.

Mayor: No, Geoff, that's just not right. We, first of all, have a very strong presence in all of our communities. The NYPD – 36,000 officers – has been a very, very effective police force over the years, figuring out where we need to get our officers – precision policing – to really figure out what we have to stop in terms of any kind of trend. But the other point is, we've said to the Jewish community, I've been very clear, that presence going to be continuous until this crisis is over. We do not ask any community to fend for themselves. We’ve got to have an all-for-one attitude here, and that means increase police patrols, it means security cameras, lighting, all sorts of physical measures. But I have to emphasize, we also need to bring together different communities in these Communities Safety Coalitions, because some of this is finding people – a lot of it is finding people before they act. If someone's got hatred in their heart and they're talking out loud in a way that suggests they may act, we need people to immediately let the police know. If you see something, say something – that phrase that we associate with international terrorism, that phrase is really pertinent when it comes to stopping a hate crime too. And you're not going to have the ability to have a police officer on every single corner at all times, but you are going to have the ability to have a very strong police presence and a deep connection to the community that brings out that information, allows us to stop these crimes before they happen.

Bennett: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, thanks for your time this morning. I appreciate it.

Mayor: Thank you, Geoff.