Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on CNN

September 22, 2016

Alisyn Camerota: The issue of crime and policing – now at the forefront this morning of the 2016 campaign following police shootings in Charlotte and Tulsa. Donald Trump favors Stop-and-Frisk. He calls the controversial policy under New York City Mayor Giuliani an unqualified success. But New York's current mayor does not agree. And Mayor Bill de Blasio joins us now. He has endorsed Hillary Clinton for President.

Mayor, thanks so much for being here.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: You're welcome.

Camerota: Before we get to Stop-and-Frisk, let's talk about the violence that we saw overnight in Charlotte. What's the answer to quelling the violence there? People are so angry about another police shooting.

Mayor: Well, look – violence is never acceptable. Let's be clear. People want to peacefully protest, that's of course their right. But let's go to the underlying causes here. People are very frustrated because the relationship between police and community is not what it should be in most parts of this country. And this is really the work of our time – to bind police and community together. But that happens through neighborhood policing, through connecting people very personally so police and community get to know each other. It certainly is not through policies like Stop-and-Frisk which have created a real wedge between police and community – created division. And it's not – really when you look at it – it's not something new to understand that we need a kind of communication – a kind of understanding between police and community. Our Police Commissioner now, Jimmy O'Neill, believes in this. He's the architect of neighborhood policing. Bill Bratton just left office here – the greatest police leader of our time – believed that the way forward for all American police departments was to deepen that relationship. This is where we have to go.

Camerota: But let's talk about Stop-and-Frisk because so many people say it was effective – you may not have liked it, but it was effective. The crime rate plummeted in the – from what it was in New York City in the '80s and early '90s to then in about 2011 – I think it dropped by more than 75 percent. And a lot of people give the credit to Stop-and-Frisk because it was proactive instead of reactive.

Mayor: I understand people say that. That's just not the history. The history is that Bill Bratton came in 1994, instituted CompStat, which was a systematic, strategic approach to policing. That's what really started the change even before David Dinkins increased the police force here. That's what changed things in New York City. Stop-and-Frisk was for – it was intensified for a limited period of time in the last decade, in particular. And the bottom line is it created a huge amount of division of police and community. We ended that unconstitutional use of Stop-and-Frisk, that overuse of Stop-and-Frisk. What's happened in the three years since we made the change – crime has gone down consistently since we actually stopped using it. Bill Bratton would say that what we needed to do if wanted more safety was bring police and community closer together. That's what proved to be the case. So, Donald Trump talks about Stop-and-Frisk like he knows the facts – he has had no experience with policing, no experience with public safety. He should really be careful because if we re-instituted Stop-and-Frisk all over this country, you would see a lot more tension between police and community.

Camerota: Let's talk about the terror attack that we saw here in New York and New Jersey over the weekend. Rahami is the suspect. He was taken in alive after a gunfight with police. Do you know what his status is – if he's talking yet to police?

Mayor: Well, obviously the police, the FBI – everyone wants to get a lot more information from him. But the most important thing to say here is the NYPD, the FBI – all of our partners – did an extraordinary job of finding him very, very quickly. We've got more work to do. There's a couple people of interest out there we'd like to talk to.

Camerota: Let's talk about those guys because I think we have a picture you guys have put – putting out the picture first of Rahami worked. I mean we got it out on TV. It worked. We got him in short order. So tell us about these two guys that you're now asking for the public's help.

Mayor: On the first point, I want to thank everyone in the media – did a great job getting the word out. We also used for the first time a broad messaging system. We sent to every cell phone, every device in the New York metropolitan area – a message that this guy was on the loose. And that is one of the reasons – because it was out there so broadly – that an individual immediately called the police when they saw him.

Camerota: And he had been watching CNN, by the way –

Mayor: You see?

Camerota: And he recognized Rahami across the street.

Mayor: And we thank CNN. But now we've got two individuals out there. We do not know if they have an involvement or not. We know we need to talk to them.

Camerota: What makes you think they have an involvement?

Mayor: By the video, there's a – obviously a question of whether they were somehow associated. But we want to be very careful about this. It's not a confirmation that they were involved, but they may know something about the devices that were used. They may have even been people who were stopping by, but still could give us some context to what they saw. So, there's a lot more work to do. Here's the thing – it all adds up the same way. The public has a huge role to play here. The famous phrase – if you see something, say something. I hope this is the ultimate illustration to the people of this country that everyone can support law enforcement with their voice, picking up that phone, going over to an officer, saying you saw something. In this case – how many lives were saved because one guy followed through and actually informed law enforcement of what he saw?

Camerota: It really worked. In this case, it really worked. From – so many people – we talked to the woman who saw the pressure cooker.

Mayor: Right. That's right.

Camerota: She called 9-1-1, and they were able to lift the fingerprints off that and find DNA on there. It worked on every single level. Is your latest thinking that this guy acted alone or that there is some sort of – there was some sort of help, or even cell here in New York or New Jersey?

Mayor: Okay, this is all preliminary, an ongoing investigation. One of the things I always say is – law enforcement will define the state of play. I think it's very important that anyone who's an elected official not pretend to understand what law enforcement understands. So they'll tell us. What I can tell you so far is – we don't have specific evidence of a cell. We are concerned to know if there are other people. We just don't have a final answer on that yet. So this has to be done very meticulously, very carefully. I don't think it's helpful for any of us, certainly not elected officials, to jump to conclusions until we have the facts. We've got to get those two guys in. Huge investigation is going on. And it's a seamless investigation – the FBI, NYPD, all our other partners – very much working together to find out what else we need to know about this case.

Camerota: Does it worry you that this wasn't stopped beforehand?

Mayor: I think there's something to learn in each and every one of these situations. We need to know more obviously about what that earlier contact with the FBI was. But it's not right, again, to jump to conclusions. There's a huge volume that the FBI has to handle. We need to understand specifically what did they know, how did they follow-up, and what can we learn for the future. This is a part of our lives today, but the reason I maintain a lot of hope is there's extraordinary intelligence-gathering capacity – certainly on the federal side – NYPD has it as well. Consistently we've been able to find things and stop them with very few exceptions. But even with the exceptions – what we learn after the fact is – people knew. People knew who if they had simply called in, it would have made all the difference. I think this about deepening the public's understanding that they have to be a part of this – they have to be partners with law enforcement.

Camerota: I mean his father tried, you know –

Mayor: And that's important.

Camerota: His father tried to alert authorities.

Mayor: And that's important, and we need to know what happened there. And I'm not for a moment saying there aren't some things to learn from this and some things that might not have been done right. But I will say this – we are learning every day in this age where there are lone wolves – we understand that. And sometimes we get the kind of prior information we want, and intelligence gathering is the number one defensive tool. But we also learned in New York City – you need a big, robust force. We have the biggest anti-terrorism force we've ever had that we've instituted in the last year. You need a lot of involvement in the public. That will give you the best chance of stopping these things before they start.

Camerota: Mayor Bill de Blasio, thanks so much. Great to have you on New Day.

Mayor: Thank you.

Camerota: As always.