Transcript: Office of Public Safety Holds Briefing on Public Safety in New York City

December 22, 2023

Assistant Deputy Mayor Louis Molina, Public Safety: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Louis Molina. I'm the assistant deputy mayor for public safety. I'm joined here today by my colleagues in the NYPD, Deputy Inspector Erik Worobey from the Operations Division, Deputy Inspector Michael Gulinello, the commanding officer of the Strategic Technology Division of the Information Technology Bureau, and Captain Lauren Foster from the Office of Crime Control Strategies.

We have three major main objectives in the office of public safety: to make sure people are safe, make sure that they feel safe, and keep them informed. Public safety is the most important issue for many New Yorkers, so we want to make sure we are keeping you updated on what the city is doing to keep you safe.

We hold these discussions on a regular basis to give you an opportunity to hear directly from many people in charge of protecting our city about what's new in their agency, what programs and services are available to you, and what you can do to keep yourselves and your loved ones safe.

To that end, we are going to kick off today's discussion with Deputy Inspector Worobey, who is here to give us a brief overview of the Operations Division, an update on how the NYPD has been responding to demonstrations about the Israel Hamas war.

New York City is a global city. What happens in other cities and countries around the world has an impact on us here in New York City. Since the October 7th terrorist attack, we've seen hundreds of thousands of people take our streets to exercise their First Amendment rights in response to the war.

By and in large, those demonstrations have occurred without incident; and that is, of course, thanks to the New Yorkers who have participated but also to the men and women of the NYPD who have made sure these events remain peaceful. With that, I will turn it over to Deputy Inspector Worobey for an update.

Deputy Inspector Erik Worobey, Operations Division, Police Department: Thank you very much, sir. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Deputy Inspector Erik Worobey of the NYPD Operations Division. A brief overview of the Operations Division. We are a 24 hour a day, seven day a week unit that assist members of the service in getting resources to members of the public.

I'll begin briefly with the protests and demonstrations. So, this year since January 1st we have policed over 4,000 demonstrations. Those include events, parades and also demonstrations. Now, beginning October 7th, we saw a rise in demonstrations as a result of events in the Middle East.

Since October 7th of this year, we have policed 450 demonstrations specifically related to Israel and/or Palestine. About 158,000 persons attended these demonstrations. A very small percentage, just a fraction of one percent, less than one percent engaged in conduct at those events that resulted in them being issued a summons, an appearance ticket, et cetera. We're going to continue to police these events to ensure the safety of all participants as well as serve the persons not attending the events.

Just speaking very briefly, in addition, what Operations does, we also coordinate the department's resources as the assistant deputy mayor mentioned. We have what is stated Strategic Technology Division as well as a Crime Control Strategy. Let's just say if there's a robbery pattern or a string of crimes, they're able to give us the method: license plates, vehicles and suspects associated with that.

We can then leverage the technology through the Operations Division to coordinate a response we can apprehend them.

We would know which way they flee, what vehicles they use, and we can in a way track their license plate so we can strategically place ourselves in a better position to apprehend them.

We also do interpreting services. Obviously, as you guys know, in this city we have a very diverse city and there comes times where language interpreting services are needed including sign language.

We're able to put the members in the field in touch with the physical member of the Police Department to assist them and even have them respond to the scene.

We also assist our other agencies. We're very fortunate to have a very talented skill set in partner agencies, and we can provide resources to them and they can also provide resources to us so we can better serve and improve public safety. Thank you.

Assistant Deputy Mayor Molina: Thank you, deputy inspector. As I mentioned earlier, our goal is always to make sure that people are safe and that they feel safe. While crime statistics can be an important metric in measuring our objective, safety — the feeling of safety — is often dependent on quality of life issues.

It is just as important for us in public safety to continue to drive crime down as it is to make sure people feel secure in their neighborhoods. Here to give us an update on a few of those quality of life issues and what the NYPD is doing to address them is Captain Lauren Foster. Captain.

Captain Lauren Foster, Crime Control Strategies, Police Department: Hi. Good afternoon. Again, I am Captain Lauren Foster. I am the executive officer of Crime Control Strategies. Every day the NYPD works to address quality of life conditions that affect every New Yorker: parents walking their children to school, dodging dangerous drivers, people walking to work on the sidewalks and the subways having to deal with disorderly conduct such as drinking, public urination; and of course, the proliferation of illegal smoke shops throughout the city and the disorder that surrounds them.

The NYPD utilizes several strategies to combat quality of life conditions throughout the city. These strategies include summonses and arrests, seizures and civil nuisance abatement lawsuits. Personal service summonses, a valuable tool to combat chronic quality of life conditions, are up for this year 76 percent compared to last year with 164,848 summons issued as of Sunday, December 17th. Public consumption of alcohol, public urination and reckless driving are all in the top five types of summonses issued.

To combat recklessness in the streets, the NYPD is taking a proactive approach to dangerous vehicle operation. As of December 19th, NYPD has seized 17,718 vehicles city wide. This includes 12,437 mopeds, 83 dirt bikes and 180 ATVs. This is an increase of 73 percent compared to this time last year.

Also as of December 17th, unregistered motor vehicle enforcement resulted in 5,628 arrests and 6,512 vehicles seized. This is an increase of seven percent and eight percent, respectively, compared to last year.

Finally, the NYPD is taking a multipronged approach to address the increased number of illegal smoke shops. Since the beginning of the smoke shop initiative, the NYPD executed 194 search warrants resulting in 324 arrests and 23 firearms seizures. Further, 174 stores were served with nuisance abatement lawsuits. Thank you.

Assistant Deputy Mayor Molina: Thank you, captain. When we're out in the community, one question that we hear all the time is, what technology is the city using, and how is it being used?  It's been a major priority for Mayor Adams and all of us in the administration to make sure that we are leveraging technology effectively as well as responsibly.

Our goal in leveraging any technology is to reduce and deter crime, operate more efficiently and keep our officers and members of the public safe. One of the many ways we do that is by using drones to increase situational awareness giving officers a bird's eye view of an area to gather real‑time information in an emergency or potentially dangerous situation.

Having improved situational awareness allows law enforcement to make some informed decisions, provide better response; and ultimately, keep the officers and the public safer. Deputy Inspector Gulinello oversees city‑wide drone operations, so I'd like to turn it over to him now to give us an update on the drone program along with some of the other technologies the NYPD has been using recently.

Deputy Inspector Michael Gulinello, Strategic Technology Division, Police Department: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you, Assistant Deputy Mayor Molina for allowing me to come here today, this afternoon and speak on where the NYPD currently is and the direction we are heading in the technology space.

Technology plays a pivotal role in enhancing the effectiveness of our public safety mission, providing innovative solutions to address and mitigate various challenges to reducing crime, combating quality of life concerns, managing our workforce, connecting more with our communities and increasing transparency and enhancing officer safety.

For years now, New York City has been at the cutting edge of public safety technology. We are constantly exploring, evaluating, testing and implementing new innovative technology with our goal of maintaining our position as leaders in law enforcement technology industry.

Within the past year, the Information Technology Bureau has had many technological advancements, but I would like to highlight some. Our domain awareness system enhancement: the domain awareness system is a central repository that officers across the city use every day to drive public safety.

From providing situational awareness in response to their calls for service or providing contextual and providing situational awareness in response to their calls for service or providing contextual information to officers, it allows them to make well‑informed decisions when accounting members of the public.

The data analytics parts of DAS are powerful tools to analyze vast amounts of information quickly, identifying patterns and trends that can help us take proactive measures and implement preventative strategies.

We have made great strides in building a fully redesigned platform with a new user interface including enhanced search engine on the back end. We've also built a lot of dashboards which… We have created many dashboards to help track metrics for varying data datasets. Dashboards more effectively help track community engagement public events, public drone permitting statuses or utilize a correlation between 911 or 311 and violent crime data based on time and location to make better informed decisions on precise policing measures or correlating collision data based on times and locations to better identify collision prone locations.

Integration of community based cameras: since June of this year, the NYPD has been working with small business owners within the 109 Precinct to integrate community‑based cameras to help augment crime fighting strategies. Community‑based cameras help fill inherent camera voids… Excuse me, inherent camera deserts within local stores which have great potential to help identify alleged suspects of crimes faster for responding patrol officers.

We've created a special events map viewer. Every officer who works a special event such as a tree lighting, a major parade or the New Year's Eve celebration coming up next weekend now have direct access on their smartphone to a detailed map of special events such as crime conditions, quality life conditions, street closures, traffic diversions, hospital or public or other safety locations. This gives officers more specified information for a special event they are at as well as the ability to better inform others that need information at that time.

Our next generation radio network and radios: we are enhancing our entire radio network from more than 50‑year‑old copper technology to fully‑integrated fiber network. It not only increases network resiliency and effectiveness, but it also gives us the capability to observe network issues in real time.

In conjunction with the network upgrades, we have started deploying APX NEXT radios with improved communications and the ability to increase interoperability with other agencies. This gives us improved capability to coordinate in real time as events are unfolding across the city. It also supplies real‑time location information and has a secondary LTE back call in case of an RF network dead spot or a network failure.

Our UAS or our drone program: drones are our most dynamic and evolving technology we're utilizing. They are used as aerial support and situation for officers on the ground. Even though all you need is an FAA 107 license to operate a drone, our pilots get a more extensive training through our safety course with safety as a top priority.

Their use case potential is always being evaluated. We currently drone response vehicles 24/7 as well as attend every major planned event. We operate a full fleet of approximately 46 drones consisting of different sizes for different use cases.

We operate our drones for specific flying missions and not just fly them up and down the blocks slowly for surveillance, as some people have portrayed. We can fly our drones in moderate wind or rain as well as locations a helicopter may not be able to operate. 

All drones have cameras with infrared and heat signature capabilities, which are beneficial in low or no light situations. They have additional attachments such as high‑powered spotlights, audio projection only speakers, and deployable safety flotation devices.

Drones can be used in many situations such as crime and collision scene surveys and mapping, barricaded subject scenarios, persons in crisis threatening to jump from an elevated structure, search and rescue operations, serving during severe weather events such as past flooding events we've seen in the city, search for wanted suspects, canvassing for missing persons, surveying of buildings and structures such as bridges or structural collapses similar to what we saw in the Bronx a few weeks ago, safety surveys during issued search warrants, beach and shoreline surveys for sharks along with distressed swimmers, pedestrian and traffic monitoring at large events.

Drones have given police commanders and executives the ability to make real‑time police personnel movement decisions from a remote location if needed. Police executives get the whole picture in real time as the events are unfolding. We can now see through a multi pane of glass instead of just solely relying on information being relayed back from the street on the ground.

We are always looking at new and innovative ways to utilize drones in our public safety mission. As technology continues to evolve, it becomes an indispensable tool in our public safety arsenal, contributing to our overall mission of safeguarding communities and responding effectively to crises.

I will close with this. The technological advancements within the 21st century have been and continue to be astronomical. We can't be afraid of using technology; rather, we need to embrace it, because it will be and continue to be the key to enhancing public safety. Thank you.

Assistant Deputy Mayor Molina: Thank you, deputy inspector. And with that, we'll open it up for on topic questions. Charles.

Question: Yes. There was a Donna… A protest outside Donna Karan's, I think it's a combination event space, residence in Greenwich Street in Greenwich Village a few nights ago. I've only saw like one or two things on it but it was an IDF fundraiser. Can you characterize that event at all and the protest and the policing?

Deputy Inspector Worobey: Sure. There was a group of individuals that started in Midtown, and one of their final destinations was that location on Greenwich. We understand that it was a fundraiser for the IDF. We did police outside to ensure the safety of all. There was minimal arrests associated with that and no injuries to any of the participants.

Question: Yes. I would like to found out if you have data about hate crime compared from last year to this year.

Captain Foster: We'll have to… We can get that back to you. Okay, sure, yes.

[Crosstalk.]

Question: Yes. How is the city preparing for New Year's Eve celebration and the safety of that event, one of the biggest events?

Deputy Inspector Worobey: Sure. Absolutely. We held a meeting yesterday. We brought in all the units associated with that, everybody from the patrol units to the technology units to some of our Crowd Control Units to also our Medical Services Unit. We are going to be prepared for that. We're going to have a large police presence out there both uniformed and plain clothes. We're going to be doing traffic control, pedestrian control to make sure it's a very safe New Year's for all.

Question: Hi. I think most likely this question is for Captain Foster. You mentioned, you know, traveling to school. So, my question is on safe corridors. You know, with the police officers. With the youth coordination officers and I think it's called neighborhood coordination on this, NCOs, YCOs, NCOs, you know, is there any plan to increase the number of officers because there have been a lot of incidents of melees or brawls outside of schools and you know, helping to move the kids along after school?

Captain Foster: So, each precinct commander creates, they create separate plans on different topics such as youth safe corridors, that sort of thing. And those plans are continuously reviewed and updated, and they're reviewed on several levels within the department. So, if there's a specific issue within a specific area, that commander would be able to move resources around.

Question: So, my question is regarding to NYPD data, the crime is down in the city this year, but according to FBI, the hate crime incidents or threats are on the rise. So, any specific measures are being taken to, you know, take care of this situation?

Assistant Deputy Mayor Molina: So, we can follow up with you on hate crime data. [Inaudible] with that question.

Question: Yes. You've outlined impressive strategies, equipment, et cetera, but the mayor had mentioned that the big problem is people's perception that crime is going up and hasn't fallen as statistics seem to indicate. Is there anything the Police Department, especially the uniformed members, can do to get the perception of the public to believe that crime is down and that the city is a lot safer than they perceive?

Assistant Deputy Mayor Molina: Well, I think our public safety briefings that we're doing on a more consistent basis weekly is one way to communicate with the public at large to get the public to understand what all the public safety agencies are doing to address issues to let neighborhoods feel secure and that we're getting the message out there to do that. And we're leveraging social media and other communication channels to do that as well.

Question: I would like to know how are you going to handle this situation on mopeds and the scooters outside that is going to be a concern from some communities. And also I'd like to know how NYPD is working in order to make sure that it's applying the same rule to everyone, because a lot of people from areas where new immigrants are, they’re complaining that they can do like whatever they want but in some other neighborhoods like in Queens, delivery guys, they feel that they are treating like with more, how do you say that, seriousness than the other.

So, what can you tell to those people, and what are you going to do in order to make sure that this is not going to become a problem?

Captain Foster:  I can speak to a couple initiatives that the department has specifically regarding vehicles. Patrol Services Bureau has a paper plate enforcement initiative which addresses expired and false registrations. Under that they have, year to date there have been 5,628 arrests for that violation, 9,249 B summonses and 6,512 vehicles towed. That's automobiles, mopeds, ATVs and bikes.

They also have an obstructed covered license plate initiative, same thing regarding vehicles. Year to date as of the 17th of December, A summonses — so, parking summonses — 6,330. B summonses — that's moving summonses — 11,743. And arrests, 1,693. And I gave you the numbers on seizures of illegal vehicles previously.

Question: Do you have a correlation of how much of those tickets are people from the city or from the NY plates or out of state plates?

Captain Foster: I don't have that information. Sorry.

Assistant Deputy Mayor Molina: Thank you. Have a good holiday.

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