 Good morning and welcome to gun violence in New York City neighborhoods a series of panel discussions to explore Complementary solutions from the law enforcement in public health fields generously sponsored by the John A. Reisenbach foundation I'm Dan Stagemann. I'm the research director here at John Jay College, and this is I believe our final event in our spring 2017 Initiative America's gun epidemic, which is an interdisciplinary series exploring the many facets of gun violence in the United States As some of you I imagine know already This initiative ran up against our winter weather this year another act of God Two of our highest profile events our mayor's panel and a book talk featuring ghetto side author Jill Leovi We're scheduled for what turned out to be our blizzards this year and and canceled as a result So you can read into that whatever cosmic significance you will but in any case we're ending strong to with today's conversation I'd like to briefly frame the issue that our experts are here to discuss today New York City is often featured and rightly so as a great success story in the history of American gun violence from a firearms homicide rate in the thousands through the 1980s and into the 1990s that was reduced in 2016 and it's actually surprisingly difficult to get accurate statistics on this for recent years But I'm willing to bet our experts will will school me on that the number was closer to 220 in 2016 out of a total of some 450 murders for the year who's got exact statistics for me on that anyone no That's an 80% plus reduction from its peak and the end one of the lowest per capita murder rates And gun homicide rates in the country The reasons for these reductions are manifold And still very much under study But some of the frequently discussed causes include stricter gun laws here in New York City targeted law enforcement efforts community policing NYPD officers spend comparatively a lot less time cruising the streets in their cars than police in other cities do and And City investment in public health interventions like the cure violence intervention that you'll hear more about today Still while this success story gives New Yorkers much to celebrate New York City's current gun violence rates dwarf those in comparable European cities say London's rate for in for instance is consistently in the low double digits So New York City's 200 or more gun homicides and hundreds of non-fatal shootings cause untold harm and that harm is visited Disproportionately on New York City's communities of color as are the harms associated with criminal justice responses to gun violence So how did we get here? And how do we continue to reduce gun violence in New York City and the myriad harms associated with it? Well, that's what we're here to discuss today So some practical concerns before I introduce our first panel today's program consists of two expert panels of 75 minutes each followed by a luncheon The flow of the conversation is in the hands of our talented moderators But generally each panelist is going to get about 10 minutes to discuss their work Followed by 20 to 25 minutes of moderator guided discussion and finally another 20 to 25 minutes of audience question and answer And because we are being recorded we'll ask questioners to use a microphone. I guess this one So without further ado, here's our first panel, which is made up of Reisenbach Fundees and focuses on solutions and innovations from the law enforcement field I will leave it to you to read the full bios in your program But starting on my left. We have Lieutenant Mark Moreno who is an NYPD officer He began his career with the New York police department in February 1994 and Is has been the Crime Stoppers unit commander in the detective bureau since November 2016 To Lieutenant Moreno's right is Greg Roberts who is executive director for the New York City Police Foundation a position He's held since sorry for which he has worked since 1980 Next is Danny Peralta who is executive managing director of the point community development corporation non-profit youth development organization in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx and finally our moderator Rick Curtis whose Professor of Anthropology here at John Jay and currently our chair of the law and police sciences department So give our experts a hand Well, I guess let me start off You're gonna go first or who's Well, I'm not sure what you prepare to go first, but I don't have a preference But essentially what we're gonna do is we're gonna have the gentlemen say their piece We'll have to Q&A at some point so everybody gonna have a chance to ask questions and Interject your opinions and so hoping it'll be lively Feel free to get up and get coffee if you need to enliven yourself and You know, so here we go. So gents. Thank you so much Well as you wish my name is Mark Moreno. I'm a lieutenant in the New York City Police Department Had been for 23 years currently on the commanding officer of the crime stopper unit and under my command follows Gun stopper Basically what we do is Encouraged community to communicate information they may have regarding specific crimes and illegal handguns and We try to identify Where these wanted person who committed some of these heinous crimes that you see on the news are quite often Additionally, we ask them to notify us if they have any information on illegal fire on that people may have We use an incentive-based program that's financed by the police We offer rewards for crimes up to twenty five hundred dollars for some of the most serious crime And we'll offer a reward of you know, five hundred dollars for some information We found that you can ask the public For their help and they'll give it to you quite often but offering a reward kind of opens up a much much larger People who are willing to then tell you what you may need to know Both programs utilized the reward concept. They're in total entirely funded by the police Foundation Gun stoppers offers a one thousand dollar Reward for anonymous tips We do it anonymously obviously because people in their communities don't want to be outed by others and this again It's another incentive that we offer them Anonymous reporting crime is far more attractive people than having to identify Crime stoppers has been instrumental in solving crime we received over three thousand tips in twenty sixteen and Since 1983 we've solved over fifteen hundred homicides Foundation has paid out over two million dollars to our tips done stop It's a great program and last year alone you received approximately seven hundred It's an integral part of the department's plan to rid the city of illegal firearms and We do always allow our keepers remain anonymous even when they're collecting their reward They get a code name code number and they can collect cash That's that's what I have on gun stoppers I Could start off with a question Well my question is a bit specific Could maybe maybe if I gave my background I was going to set this up I think this is more to talk about what's what's relevant now because I think that we talk about the broad police Historically and right now where their priorities coming on so the police foundation is sort of the bridge between the police That's why I'm avoiding the bike All right, so the police foundation was started in 1971 at the time of the nap commission anybody remember that anybody know that right here Serpico days Right, that's right. John Jay was involved that so those were the serpico days. It was part of a broad based Investigation into citywide corruption so the police foundation was formed in that climate to be a hedge against corruption It was a legitimate vehicle for businesses and individuals to Thank the police department if you will and get involved with the department So it's grown over the years to become a very active and strategic program development Operation the early days it was scholarships. I think some of the first scholarships like many of the commissioners. We did scholarships here We did in the early days They were going to get rid of the mounted unit in the 70s because of economics and we kept the mounted unit going for Decades we did the first bulletproof vest in 1975 was the first time that technology came on and how we do things we worked at that time with a Abney which is Lou Rudin and the PBA we formed a partnership to get the first 18,000 vests for the police department and how it works after that legislation was passed to provide vests as Standard equipment moving forward because we can't fund things into perpetuity All that is So that was in the 70s and 80s we took over crime stoppers crime stoppers started in the Southwest They put a case on TV a cold case that had no leads on it and people Watched this on TV. It sparked their memory and it led to calls that helped the police saw this cold case And now it operates around the globe all around the globe hundreds of cities in United States and Guam as a crime stopper Australia's got a crime stoppers. I don't know you know this they they won't take the money in Australia They all just do it because they they call in and they want to be good Samaritans in in Australia and interesting All across crime stoppers all around the globe two-thirds of the money is picked up and one-third of the money is not picked up Maybe some of our clients are detained at the time and writers or perhaps somewhere else and can't get the money But that's how it works. Who knows about crime who can be pulling people inside? So we took we did that 80s and then the 90s We became the modern police foundation when Commissioner Kelly came. I remember sitting with him It was the smoke was still in the sky was November after the 9-11 attacks and we told Commissioner Kelly There's more support than ever before for the police. So think big think big we can probably get a lot of money for your for your programs and To his vision and foresight he Recognizes at that time the department had to change they had to set up counter-terrorist operation a Police department set up counter-terrorist operation. So we did that at that time. We started program called international liaison We now have 12 investigators assigned to Terrorist hot spots around the world gathering intelligence counter-terrorism intelligence to protect New York City at the beginning that program was Caused concerns for some of the other agencies the FBI and the CIA was saying why why does the New York City Police Department? Have people on our turf doing this Well our our detectors were the first one at the London subway bombing got information directly back to New York City Where they deployed resources accordingly to what happened there and what an instant action based on that real-time Information to protect New York City and I think we're still waiting for the official report from the federal government on that attack So that's why we were doing it then and it's grown to become so popular now that some of these turf battles no longer exist They know they're no longer concerned about this and to the point where our detectors were in Paris We sent our guys who were there and the old Detectives who were in Paris before went there there were the lead detectors there They were the ones who had more data than anybody they went to Belgium and told the Belgian officials about these individuals had ties up there So our our intelligence now is second to none because of that program And we have related programs that work on that project as well where we have analysts who take this data either from our Liaisons overseas or looking at Al Jazeera or all sorts of open source information and prepare the briefings for the police Commissioner every day, so we've got a tremendous Infrastructure for counterterrorism here that the police foundation is helping support and the other thing that Commissioner Kelly described at that time in I guess it was 2002 was the need to modernize the police department's technology, you know, he said we're a typical Large organization. We don't know what we know a lot of that data was not digitized It was in the head of detective like you and it once you left a lot of intelligence went with you So it became and he described something He said kind of like a norad system the screens and everything like that So we built the real-time crime center wall like this wall screens and all so that was the screening room And then that led to building a data warehouse that is now the real-time crime center That is the basis of the new real-time crime. So basically what it was like a Like an NYPD Google, you know, so they took all the data that detectives doing things and created search engines Some of the search engines they would get from private industries like the credit card companies So if we're looking for you, we would find out well, you know him or you know her and where you're gonna be hiding You'd be with him hard So we'll find you like that. Well, some of the other things would be like a tattoo database or a nick a nickname database There was one case we always used there was a sparrows it in in In the village and the guy robbed it and he had a little silver revolver and he had a Tattoo on his neck that said sugar so they put him through the the database it the The tattoo and nickname and they found like 499 hits of sugar and they were all working women and he was the only guy in there and They found him with a robbery history there and they were able to get him that like that so that's sort of like the modern policing and The other one that we did prior to that that people think is more technology is com staff So we got the first computer for com staff When Bill Braden was here the first time in 1993 he said his team get me the The crime statistics and they said to him. Okay, Commissioner. The next quarterly statistics will come out in June 1993 NYPD did not have a Computerized system to track and analyze crime, you know that pins in the wall here and that's when you had to pin So we got him I remember it was like a ten thousand dollar HP 386 that we bought them and that started what has really changed policing around the world much to the detriment of precinct commanders like yourself You're welcome, you know, so what they did was all of a sudden they had all the data that they would have all the data And they would bring precinct They would bring precinct commanders down precinct by precinct you'd be there with all your peers from your borough So you're the precinct commander, but this is the 20th precinct on this screen They would have a pin map Electronic pin map show me all the murders on Columbus Avenue show me all the robberies on on Amsterdam Avenue What are you doing about it? And they really help people accountable and out of that process came all the modern strategies That change those numbers that you were referring to when we went from 2300 murders to what are we under? We're under 500 now, but it began at that time in 93 and this miraculous Decline continues Right, so those are the old days where we are now that we do crime stoppers We do gun stoppers from my point is the policing tactics that started then and actually They're changing as we speak When commissioner Bratton came back this time and O'Neill Was put into this process of re-engineering the department, which is something that we funded to take a snapshot of the department Where are we going now? They knew Brad news to talk basic crime is the lowest it's ever been but Cops are not happy and the community is not happy What's going on? So they knew they had to change some of their tactics There's been a lot of political and media issues over stopping question they kind of change how they were doing those and They reduced the stops and the crime continues to go down. But what they're doing now Which will set the state for what we're talking about now is is setting up a neighborhood policing model so part of what was going on in in the past Administration that did reduce crime, but as some people discussed, you know Perhaps contributed to some of the attention with the community that are apparent now locally and nationally So one of the things that was going on was there was something called impact zone So in all the high crime precincts were determined to be impact zone And they would send all the new recruits out of the police academy into these impact zones to saturate them with manpower That's the good news But the bad news was some of the young kids there did not have the training the experience or some of the interactive skills to handle Those neighborhoods and the direction that they were given that they were given to do a lot of stops And when you do stop you give out you have to fill out a form called 250 So fill out 250 fill out 250 fill out 250 and that became part of the comms that Numbers driven system that was going on. So you had two things going on You had a numbers driven system there because the people set up comms that knew that you have to refresh these metrics over time Otherwise these numbers will kill you and you have to really look at what you're accomplishing rather just driving numbers driving numbers and then They started looking at how to change that now. So they changed these impacts on They start getting the new cops Field training officers mentors what a concept, you know You would think that everybody does that every corporation does that but they were not doing that So now you new cops get field training officers And we also set up partners in the community to orient them to the diverse cultures of the community Then they set up neighborhood policing and this is going to get to your point one second Neighbor policing change the way they do patrol. This is not community policing in the past This is not just a small problem. This is changing their entire operation They knew that the 9-1-1 system was the best thing and ever and the worst thing that ever happened to the police department It just ruled you get in your car and you drive around drive around you saying maybe not in some other Cities but that's still ruled to patrol force. So neighborhood policing now. They're pulling officers off of 9-1-1 duties They're backfilling them because actually the 9-1-1 calls are not suffering from any You know Increased length and time to the calls to come in Because they backfill and they have the resource to backfill the 9-1-1 calls But you now work in your sector a precinct's broken up to like six sectors a BCD&E and used to be in sector a but then you travel here and you travel here and travel here and travel Now you stay in that sector. You work there every day You get to know the people and 30% of your time is devoted towards building these contacts with the community and Solving the problems Collaborative they knew they had a trust problem in order to reduce crime further. You have to build trust in the community There are certain neighborhoods with where people will not call 9-1-1. It's like crop stoppers does well It's anonymous, but that's a problem if people not calling 9-1-1. What do you got? So this is the challenge now to build trust to further reduce crime you have to build that relationship So that's a new operating program We've been talking more about how that will work so that we can build the next 25 minutes But to his point we have to measure that we had to measure that if we're gonna get into a whole new world of Policing we're taking a corporate approach to this now. How do you measure the results? So we funded this survey that you read about in the times today. They're calling it a sentiment meter We we're working with people who you know do this, you know in your world either the advertising world or the political world And they've had great experience doing that and they're measuring the sentiment the level of trust in the precincts and Giving this to the precinct commanders in real time now So the precinct can see what's trending on 79th Street people up there or trending up trending down You can have access to read all the Open source Twitter and Facebook rumblings that are going around the precinct You can find all this data that's going on there And we also turn this into new way to measure because how do you measure? How do you measure community interaction? You know we can measure how many times you talk to someone there but how do you measure a Productive community interaction it's something that people all around the world the army is looking to that How do you measure swaying hearts and minds? So that's what that survey is about today? So let me just mention that the question that we had it I was in class right before I came here And we were talking about a website that's popular among students called rate my professor calm right as students are very familiar with this website and The comment in class is that you know the only students that go on to that website to fill out You know the comments about a professor or the ones that either hate the professor or the ones that love the professor The vast majority in the middle Don't really bother with the rate my professor, you know They feel near the here nor there about it You know so the question that was that was raised in class is that if the NYPD starts shooting out email text message questions Over the course of the day like you know, how do you feel now? How do you feel the NYPD is doing a good job? It will be like the rate my professor effect right the ones that think they're doing a wonderful job will respond and the ones That think don't think it will not you know will also respond, but the ones in the middle. We're like, you know You know so I don't know. I mean not that we shouldn't do it I'm not suggesting that but not only that so some of the polling is being done like a pop-up on your phone Who's doing that and that that's a skew population I wouldn't do that right so part of what you're saying is very true And you know all of these polls as we saw by the most recent election, you know, they're flawed Well, we were struck by the we were struck by it in my class because the students in the class summer who are sitting here in the front row Have done a survey this semester where they have to go and Interview ten people that they know so family friends their network members if you will and essentially asking the very same questions You know, do you think the police are doing a good job? You feel safe? You feel safe at night? So it's very interesting. We'll be very interested to compare our findings, which we've been collecting since 2012 and we've got maybe 20,000 responses now and we had 1500 responses this semester With the ones that the that the NYPD gets from this kind of method. I Very curious to see how how well they match But I'm very heartened to see that they're they're going in this electronic kind of new world I think it's a really good move for the NYPD to begin to collect some more Deep dive data if you will about police community relations, so we can't feel anything but good about this This is more Establish some metrics for but but related to what you're saying the real the real goal now is with this neighborhood policing That's in now over the half the precinct The department recognized this sort of dialogue is necessary and again, let me be very clear The goal is to continue to be front. This is not just so let me ask this question then Which is the real question given that this panel is about gun violence could that method of polling the community? gain any Pertinent information about I don't know about the polling but the program itself the program itself once we build the Relationships and you raise a good point before because the police department Tends to speak to the same people that precinct council meeting the same people there You know the target audience So our whole goal now the real goal of this program now is because that's just the metric side But the real goal is probably to be hearing about this in days to come There are gonna be meetings in every precinct There's gonna be a huge media campaign to get the public to understand this new way of policing and engage It's a public engagement campaign and there is a shared responsibility Component to that because if the community doesn't embrace this and get involved, it's not gonna work So what we're really trying to do is reach out beyond the normal Suspects if you will and get into populations that we haven't dealt with before and that's the role that the foundation Can play very well with because we have different context in the community and we're trying to get Coming up In the community to spread the word out there and get the community about it can't be here's the new NYT So part of the communication campaign that we're doing In addition to mass media is getting the young people and the people in the community to share their own stories about this I put on their own social media Two components the polling will try to measure some of the sense But the real work In the neighborhood with people who have not had dialed I don't know if you've any of you have ever seen it whenever you get no matter how hostile The person is anti-police. They are when you get them together with cops. You've seen this many times you know and once you get through the the venting or some of the Perceptions that people have based on the climate we're in They leave friends it happens every time it happens every time reasonable people So sorry, can I ask that we hear from Danny at this point because I think that's a great segue into his work I was thinking that too. Thanks, Dan Thank you again For the opportunity to speak today. I'm gonna come from a different angle. I don't I don't do policing So I have very few statistics on that particular work that we do But again, I represent the point community development corporation Since 1994 we've been at the front lines of revitalizing the Hunts Point community in the South Bronx We work obviously in Hunts Point, but we work with other neighborhoods surrounding neighborhoods Longwood Monhaven We get young people from Soundview from a lot of these different communities that are very similar You know, I'm not sure what people's perception of Hunts Point is in the South Bronx But we've been trying to change that perception from within for many years now and our work really challenges again the norms That some of our young people and just the community in general have even though themselves, you know So our work is You know getting revitalizing the community in three main areas. We use the tools of arts and culture We use youth development and leadership and then we do a lot of work of our environmental justice And these are the things these are the tools these are the entry points I think for some of our community members to see themselves as leaders To actually make a change in the community and so we offer programming for young people In those hours again when they get out of school primarily the three to nine p.m I'll give them something to do one of the things that we find is that young people obviously are seeking or something to do Right, they want to be constructive in some ways It totally depends again on mentoring and the ability to find other networks to be able to again address violence But also to have an alternative to violence. So that's most of our work You know most of the work that we do is we bring a young person in we ask them What is it that they want out of our community center and then we also ask them What do they want to contribute to the community, right? So it's not just about collecting services and coming in and and being a part of what we do is also Contributing to that culture, right? So there's a there's a direct impact that we find when young people again are creating when they're coming in and they're using their hands You know to do stewardship programming for example some of the community gardens that we have or building painting murals We're talking about young people that are being trained as other youth development Specialists so they're actually working with the younger youth and training them and mentoring them and again There's a direct connection we find with having the space for young people again to be creative to be safe And then again the direct relation to them and their ability to not commit violent acts and that could look like a lot of things You know for us in our community. It can look like obviously gun violence, but it looks like you know abuse at home I mean you're talking about You know unhealthy relationships, you know, we bring those topics up to young people. I was speaking to Miss Ashley earlier What is the the how are we how are we talking to young people about the use of social media where a lot of violence is being born and Spread, you know an emoji can get you killed in our community. Believe it or not So how do we address that and again? We're really on the front lines listening to the young people listening to the families paying attention to the statistics To understand again where the trends and how do we impact that and then again How do we work with partnership and doing that right one of the things that we you know Part of stuff is that we don't do this work alone right if you're gonna revitalize a community It takes a lot of stakeholders across the board and everybody has to be at least amicable All right enough to be at the same table most of the time so that we can speak about these issues Candily and again to your point right you can't hate people that you've gotten to know and that's a big big part of our work It's about education is about leadership But again, there's something to be said about the ability for young people to think critically and to do something I'm tangible with their time and so these are the things you know young people come into the point They're able to do programming like black and white photography in a dark room With a collaboration with the International Center of Photography, which is a program that I came from Originally and I came in just to do black and white photography for three hours on a Saturday We'd be 12 13 years ago and I'm the executive director of the organization So again these opportunities right I mean looking at dance classes. You're looking at stewardship again That's a very big part of our work. How do we get young people to directly change the dynamics of their neighborhood one? You know by growing food by doing community cleanups by being out there again mentoring other young people Very very important to our work. We doing things innovative at this point things like Community Wi-Fi where we're building a community wide free Wi-Fi for the whole community, right? Our community does not have some of the community members do not have the resources to pay the exorbitant fees that Some of these communications companies offer. I mean see me charge for the services So we're actually building a system that young people are building They're actually creating the nodes they're they're installing them and they're creating this Wi-Fi network again Some young people that didn't know that they wanted to be digital stewards much less enter into a tech field You know so these are the intro points that we do and again We see success in a lot of different ways from young people You know one of the things that we point to again is that it is an asset-based organization Everybody has an individual role. You can learn again better yourself Your self-esteem leads to a larger community self-esteem being built And these are the entry points again that we invite young people to be a part of and there's no right or wrong way You can't fail at after-school programs You can't fail at building yourself up and making a magazine and at developing photographs at Choreographing a dance for your community, you know you can't fail at these things And so these are the encouraging points that we enter into I'm working with the you know rising Bach Foundation in the last Year they help fund one of our major programs, which is our team Program, and we have an excellent Program in the summer for six weeks where we train young people around leadership and again They're coming in a lot of them fresh They never had a job much less thought about leadership much less thought of critically about the community and we do things like community mapping Right, what is our community consist of who are the stakeholders? Where where again where are you in relation to these folks and where are you again in relation to help building your community up? And we enter into these conversations and again the outcome is typically We know we do a big large showcase for the community where these young people again They learn how to play the guitar or they learn how to paint or they learn how to Organize and they're out there doing that You know they're paying it forward and these again are the types of activities that we enter into a young people Some of the young people come for a couple of weeks Some of them come again for a number of years and we see a transformation if you come to the point for one day If you did a workshop let's say in social circus you're gonna be changed somehow. Maybe you learn how to juggle. Maybe that's what it is Maybe you know, maybe you started thinking about occupational therapy And maybe that's an interesting point for you to maybe get higher education in that field So these are the things again that we do it is very highly mentorship based again is very highly individual Young people come in again. We try to match them up with a with a with an adult staff again That can help follow them in their engagement. You know this this summer and this fall actually this winter You know, we also that was some of the blizzards But we were trying to put together this art exhibit called Mikasa as Mikasa and it's a it's a it's a largely a Lot of young people that submitted work So we have maybe like 20 young artists from all over the world actually and this is part of a larger initiative that we've been doing now As a result of violence We lost one of our our community members a young man his name was Glenn ripe on September 13 2009 He was murdered senselessly in the in the lorry section. He was cleaning his Lorry's side. I'm sorry. He was cleaning his grandmother's window when he was attacked and stabbed and he and he perished And and the catalyst for that was his friends and family are getting together for one doing therapy very important Right, we were able to we had to process this loss And we had to become empowered and in the process of understanding our grief and understanding again The power that we even had with that we developed something called a house of spoof and the house of spoof collective now You know, it's a whole bunch of different artists from all over the city Mainly young people who have been curating art shows again in in celebration of Glenn Wright's life And so this past we were supposed to do it in the fall But again, we have bad weather this past February we had an opening again several hundred people More directly impacted by this this exhibit that was up and talk mainly talked about displacement in our communities And how people are addressing displacement because that's a big issue in our community right now But obviously again, it was empowering and it gave again people that were typically Maybe disempowered because of violence and opportunity to get to lift themselves up and again see themselves as catalysts for change And not just be sorrowful and again some some of this work again I can have a million examples of how it works for us directly But it is again in tandem with a lot of different groups And it's very important for us to again look at the way the community looks at itself And how the community intends to address his own issues as much as possible Okay, before we Open it up to the audience I just want to comment that we've heard about some wonderful programs on behalf of the NYPD Community programs and hunts point But I do want to refocus this on the problem rather than the solutions because gun violence is a problem I mean, I'm a resident of the 73rd Precinct for 27 years Brownsville, all right, and I can remember when I moved in in January 1990 That it was automatic gunfire every night. All right, I don't have the automatic gunfire every night That stopped really in 93 the year it started going down the automatic gunfire stopped every night but I still hear it quite often I do and and last year I had a couple of murders on my block So this is not an infrequent occurrence to me and I hear the gunfire very frequently So despite all of the good programs that we have going on There's still a problem out there and I think that we need to talk more about that and what's driving the problem What drove the problem back when I first moved to the 73rd Precinct was crack and open air gun mark Drug markets, that's really not the case today But I think that we need to have a bit of a discussion about the factors which are driving gun violence Drugs are still there obviously, but there's other factors. I think that perhaps we should talk about The other thing that I want to mention is that in Hunts Point that you know wonderful things going on there Also, there's like Ruben Austria up there who's doing the community connections for youth program Which is you know similar kind of thing. So there's a lot of Focus on youth in the South Bronx However, I have to point out that the two youth detention facilities in New York City One is located in the South Bronx Crossroads right there on you know Westchester and 150th or something right so that's not really a good thing and The New York Times ought not to tout the New York Times But they did do a very large series on murder in a 4-0 right and they went through every single murder in a 4-0 And there were some really heartbreaking ones that they described there and honestly we've been good I've been going there every Sunday with the 2030 students at a time to address some of the conditions right where they want to build the new 4-0 precinct in fact the property Oh, you know designated for the NYPD is the biggest open-air drug market in New York City. It's right there so You know the fact that we have to go there as private citizens and address a problem that's a driving crime and violence And it's been there for 40 years unaddressed is appalling to me But you know what if we don't step up as private citizens and do something about it We can't really wait for government to solve our problems because they won't you know So this is Republicans should be very happy with me right now. You know what I mean But it's true I'm not waiting for the government to go and solve this problem And we've been going with groups of students every Sunday for the last nine months really to address what has become a vector for crime and disease in the South Bronx and for 40 years No one's done anything effective about that and you know, we figure it's got a change So I want to talk about the problem here a little bit So if any of you have any questions or comments now it'd be the time Lieutenant please share with us the NYPD's evaluation of the acoustic This technology used to detect to pinpoint where gunshots are originating from I understand. There's some neighborhoods that have this Modern technology and will it be expanded to other neighborhoods? Obviously It's it's been Instrumental Now You worked in these commands you had shots fired. You didn't have any information. So there was nothing to investigate Now with technology to have a shot spotter you can go to that exactly Trace those ballistic fat you have a specific gun You recover that gun later on it all leads to You know get some of those guns off the street the shot spotter is You know, it's a part of the bomb. It's effort to fight gun violence Will we see it expanded throughout the whole city, you know the department's expanding it slowly it's going to expand First and foremost communities that need it and then outward as we move forward People weren't pulling when I'm at once and now you have a record of a shot You can send resources those locations Yeah So I would like to ask The two representatives from the police foundation and the police department what they think about Addressing civilian complaints as a means to Civilian complaints in in these more Or less Involved neighborhoods as a means to build trust Between the police department and and the community at large. I think The the gentleman from the foundation correctly pointed out that this that operation impact had a had a large impact in an in an unforeseen way in eroding that trust between Between the community and the police department because so many youth were stopped, you know back in 2010 2011 During these during these massive sweeps And so I'm wondering if there's if there are concrete ways that the police department is looking at to build that trust And what they're doing to measure the increasing trust 180 Now I Just wanted to ask a question since I've got the mic in my hand There's a lot of conversation now about listening to the community and having these lines of dialogue open I'd like to get a sense from from Danny How does that play out with the point right now? Is there a presence there that you see from law enforcement and is that a positive thing? And if so, how? Yeah, you know, we've had I Will say a contentious relationship at all at times with the police department Particularly around stopping frisk, you know for a time we've and even to this day We still educate our young people around what their rights are How to interact with police because we do see a lot of those stops still happening in our community We actually have Ironically, we actually have a great relationship with our community officers They actually support a lot of the events that we do a lot of the endeavors that we try to enter into They make sure that we get our permits that were safe when we're doing these kinds of activities Again, it depends what you're talking to, you know, some of our young people who again have engaged in some of these workshops Understand how to engage with the police. They probably have a better time communicating with police if they do get stopped But we've seen again young people that have gotten arrested and we've been to read in some instances There's a couple of high schools around the way that we've that that right on right on hunts point have and a lot for yet And in the times, you know in middle of the day, maybe there's some truancy going on And so we've seen the police maybe coming up to the young people and maybe about to arrest them Or maybe take them back to school and we've been to read in the situation again Well, we know that it might be escalating, you know Where we see the young people kind of getting upset and this is back and forth coming out And so we say, you know what, you know We're members of the community and we talk to the police in a certain way We talk to the young person in a certain way and we try to diffuse issues, you know But it's never an exact science and again, you know, we don't You know, we have a lot of things that happen in our community again that happily directly to us We have to talk to the police, you know when when when somebody there is to have violence in our community We're not gonna step in directly obviously because that's not our role, you know So we do have to call the police. So again, it totally has depended But I would say that after the community policing piece the neighborhood policing has happened There's been a lot more of a walk-in from the police department again They have a whole new team of community officers in our area directly and we've seen them coming in out of our space now I would say in the last six months more than in the last like eight years that I've been working there So there is I think a different approach happening for sure how that plays out I like to see how it happens in the summer to be honest with you That's really where a lot of the things issues come up and where we see a lot of those interactions with police I'm in the young people that again are contentious in some ways for sure. See see the department in the first time in my memory Recognizes the rude issues if you will and recognize that the work you're doing is really the answer You know if we can get young people involved in owning their community or actually more fundamental staying in school and getting jobs Then it changes police work and that's the goal of this administration and that's the goal is neighbor policing things So it's it's taking a long time to take root in the neighborhoods. I'm glad you're you're seeing your ups But we will work together now because I'm looking for partners like this the police a good cop Would like nothing better than to say I see this kid over here if I don't do anything with him I'm gonna be arresting him with a gun in a year But if I can get him to work with you now, there's nothing better than that That's the goal now, but we need to build partners like that And I think part of the other thing when you think what is the problem is that I think you were a hundred percent right? Keep up the fight because people have to own their neighbors and take them back now because kind of we're on our own right now in this political climate And But it's a it's a good opportunity It's a good opportunity to take back your neighborhood. So again Make the noise they make and this police department will respond to that They will respond to that but it's more importantly is to really get the young people if we could do anything for guns to keep the kids out of the system and keep the kids active in the neighborhoods and all and the more Operations like yours, that's the whole deal. So we'll definitely be working in the 401 over there That's what we're doing now and these neighbor police are they're looking Not into have the resources like you but also to to make the relationships there and get this dialogue on because people I'll know that you guys are active and how many people who knew about their neighbor policing program before today About half about half, but it is a lot more extensive than just another catchphrase. It's not just a Another you know name for a program that they're changing the way they operate They're gonna have communication officers in the precinct working with the community on social media and Communicating in the new world, you know, it's happening very fast and quite frightened. They were behind in the times As far as messaging, you know, you saw over the last couple years granted we're all talking about some of the The tactics that were a success of reducing crime, but we're also Crit being criticized after that And that became a huge political issue and it became a media issue and it reached a point where The department was so behind in messaging what they were doing to make the change the commissioner even tells about the low point of all this Political and media environment two officers were assassinated in their car as a result of that So that showed the need so we have to really change this dynamic and change the way they're getting their word out because there are a lot of Good cops and good stories and now there's a structure in place to have this dialogue The first part of the question is could you talk a little bit about how police officers are being measured, right? You mentioned there's been a lot of talk about measuring and measuring very hard to do things But generally the assessment of the quality of a police officer has been measured in different ways over the years But currently how are you thinking about doing that? The department utilizes obviously Evaluate options But part of the new evaluations are there interactive So, you know, it's difficult to evaluate a police officer Simply based on what the public think You know if a whole community Doesn't like or is given a display We want to automatically say And Do we know if the right people are the ones making those So you have to take everything And compare it Who's comparing a bad guy who's been arrested 50 times drug dealer is that the person that we're listening to? It's either one making those three complaints or is it a good city a hard-working person So, I mean, you know to evaluate a police officer in that sense is very difficult to just draw a black-and-white Scenario to say he's got a kind of civilian complaint It doesn't it doesn't end up Sometimes So I hope that Well, it's certainly part of it and it leads into the next part of this question Anodotally people complain about interactions with their their community police officer or other Officials they'll come to them and say there's you know this drug market on my street and the officer will say to them Well, can't you just tell me when you see them dealing drugs and I'll come and arrest them when the goal of the citizen is to get rid Of the drug market. They don't really care if the person gets arrested or not So you end up with this complicated Set of circumstances where there's a series of needs within a community the community attempts to address them with the police officer or the department sometimes that department is not well situated to do that You're not in the business of Teaching people black-and-white photography. That's really a community response So you end up fulfilling multiple roles sometimes that can be complicated So how we measure the that that interaction with citizens and the police becomes both very important and very complicated Right and I think historically arrests have always been one way that Officers have been assessed Right not unreasonable. That's Part of the goal. So how then do you change this in the new world where we're trying to assess them on soft skills? You know, it would be difficult for me to discuss The method Far above my What I can't tell you is what I know in 23 years of policing You know, it's for the department upper echelon of the department to come up with methods And the technology to evaluate police officers in the way that, you know, that the public deserves But it would be, you know, I couldn't say to you what they're going to do Frankly, the police commissioner has never called me to tell me how you want to To do things. So I mean, I'm sure it will come out the department is very transparent So I'm sure there'll be different Methods that will come forward as time comes out One thing that is an absolute Guaranteed to get the word out comms that still exists As we said, they're they're shifting some of the measurements there and now this is being a measurement So they're still obviously I mean, you can't ignore numbers Number of murders is still going to be out there But they're they're introducing these Community how many Facebook sets you first again and how many interaction having so this is becoming part of the comms that Dialogue so once that gets out the recent commanders It's an absolute priority them and then that gets kicked down to the officer So it's we're still trying to come up with the measurements But the fact that it is a priority of management is becoming clear and clear every day because once you put in comms that it's Amanda Hi over here Alex Vitale from Brooklyn College Danny had a question for you Have you had conversations with young people about these large-scale gang raids that have happened in the Bronx and some other communities? Are you hearing anything from them and also as part of that? Are you having conversations with them about how they use social media and what the implications of that might be? Yeah, um, I have not had a conversation about some of the gang pieces Some of these raids that are happening and we've seen some of them I know they directly impact some of our young people personally. I have not had a conversation But I would like to find out. Yeah, you know, I know that something that happens Actually enough time that I've been working in hunts point now We see maybe at least two major drug raids right on hunts point F In our community and and obviously a lot of young men We don't got arrested around that because Drugs and violence is obviously still a big part of the the culture in that community But I have not had those conversations Around social media. We actually do a lot of work around that as well. That is an area that Again, we find that a lot of the problems that young people are catching that a lot of the the beefs that are being born Again are being born on instagram on facebook, um, you know on twitter and 140 characters You know, and so we actually, uh, you know again in response to some of these things, you know In the summer in our summer camp We actually implement, uh, the young people do a tumblr account And so we're actually getting them To talk a little bit about their use of social media and getting them to see the impact of social media and how Again to use it positively to actually build themselves up as opposed to tear themselves down We talk about things like what happens when you go to a job interview and your boss is looking at your facebook account Or your future potential employer is looking at your facebook account or you want to go to let's say higher education You know the first thing people are looking at now again is that alternative world that your real world Um, and so we do a lot of work around that we try to train the young people again to Think about the impact of their use of social media not only how much time they're on it But what are they doing on it and if there's opportunities for them to contribute to social media How do they do it again in a way that's safe? That's positive That tells a story potentially, but that doesn't necessarily create opportunities for violence. So we do talk a lot about that. Yeah I Like the young man part I'm bob lily the rise back foundation I'm happy to say that we gave for a small foundation a substantial amount of money to the beginning of the real-time crime center Uh, and we we work with crime stoppers now, but lieutenant. I wanted to ask more about the uh, the gun stoppers Uh, in terms of you mentioned about how much money has been spent so far in that project Just how how how big is it if you could expand a bit more? Is it now and what are you thinking about how it could expand with more support? But it sounds like a wonderful way of Of addressing the problem It's a great program it's enabled us to Get a lot of guns off the street, but uh, you know listen with anything in society the best way to To make it better. It's probably through the media, you know, let people know that exists People aren't a hundred percent and and Aware of the program They're not aware that they could collect a thousand dollars for you know, turning over The guy they don't even like for carrying a gun You know, you see a gun in the street and you don't want to call 911 If you want to call gun stoppers, you know and give a description They'll get it out and you can get rid of the gun so to answer your question I think the best way to expand the program is probably to educate the public on exactly what the program entails that hey, you know Hey, we want to get the guns off the street for van vile to be The department's willing to pay you through the foundation For the guns that you give us It may not be the most moral or honorable way to do it, but it works and uh, It doesn't matter if it's honorable or moral. We'll do what we got to do to get guns off the street No, they're not Thank you I'm a chief with the new york city police department I come on in 1979 So it's 38 years and I'm alumni of john j college very proud of that Uh professor, we're looking for solutions and I think that's the reason I I come up here because I'm always looking for knowledge But the mentality has to be out there that the philosophy of snitches get stitches and wind up in ditches Has to go away the new york city police department is trying to embrace the community and back to civilian complaints last year We bought civilian complaints down and still reduce crime. So we're going in the right direction But we have to build a trust in the community where they're going to tell us where the gun is Because I've gone to hundreds of shootings and homicides where uh, I I knew the kid on the sixth floor was a bad kid You know, I knew he had a gun Well, you didn't tell us now the damage is done or they see one of their neighbors He never worked a day in his life and he's got cash in his pocket and he's driving around in the Alexis and everybody knows but they don't want to tell us So there's only so much nypd can do and our partners in law enforcement But it's the people that have a vested interest in their community. I'm a brooklyn resident my whole life I know what it was like to take the train up here. I worked in the 7 3 in the early 80s I know what you went through professor that and we still get the uh the uh Calls to 911 And it's anonymous. They don't want to tell us anything. It's vague information and a shot spotter We'll get them going off. We know their shots being fired numerous shots and not 191 call commit nypd So it's their neighborhood. It's their children So I think part of the solution is it's nice to go up to areas and demonstrate And hold signs But I wonder how many kids know who's dealing drugs. It has a gun. They call somebody about it You know Everybody Wants crime to be down. That's all we have children involved in this But we have to pick up the phone or we have to go to the nco officer Who you developed a relationship and said I really don't want to get involved But johnny jones is dealing crack or he's got a gun and i'm stepping away But now that the police officer it's on him now to do it He can't say well tell me when he's doing it. We build a case We can get search warrants and also to my last point is how many times we arrest people with guns and it's heart breaking They get out through technicalities or there's A particular judge that this case this guy had the gun He dropped it. It's not in his hands He beat the case and later on he goes and shoots somebody but we didn't see him with the gun So I think we all have to look at who are legislators are and who our judges are and You know just take hold of what happens. Thank you very much So just to kind of Put that in in more of a question form I think for both danie and and greg and mark How do you see these new relationships developing a different approach to criminal activity is is that One of the intended effects And do you see danie that as a potential effect of a better relationship with the police better reporting Better targeting of arrests better targeting of enforcement activity That's a good question again. I um I don't know again. I think it's too early to to talk about How the impact of the community of the neighborhood policing is gonna is gonna have on our community We do find that Again, depending on the situation And who you're talking to for example in hunts point. There's uh, there's homeowners right on moneda street. These are million dollar homes This is not night your housing. This is not, uh, you know, um, how do you say like, uh You know shelter the shelter system. These are homeowners, right? These are people that have A stake in the community in a different way when they call the police. It's obviously a different response, you know So they have a different stake in how the community and why they want the community to be safe You know, one of the things that we always question is again, how did these young people get these guns? Where are these guns coming from? I think that's a national issue. I think that um, you know In our community, you know, we we do see again I see parents coming in there that may be on a questionable day You know, you might have to think about them twice even in your own community But they're the parent of this child that's coming into my program. So again for us It's always about the individual walking in. I've never had, you know, considering how many gangs that might be in a Neighbor considering how much violence we've never had serious violence in our space young people come in They respect the space adults come in they respect the space where they're doing outside of the community may not be May be questionable But again, they're walking in respect to our space because they know what we're trying to do in the community So we see a lot of different people In a lot of different ways. Again, I don't know, you know Yeah, I don't know what it means to have to tell or ask somebody, you know, what do you have a gun or You know, what are you going to do with that gun? Or, you know Honestly, these are not things that we we talk about because these are not things that directly impact the work We are way more interested in again What are the alternatives and how do I get this young person who might have a gun at home? Or even in their pocket, how do I get them to do something different for x amount of hours so they can stay out of trouble? And that's a little more it's a little it's obviously a lot different than than policing But that's that's the type of conferences that we have because we have a very short window of time In engaging with young people and again, they're spending most of the day in school or at home They come to us for maybe three five ten hours a week There's only so much impact we can have there Again, if we can get them involved with things that are going to change their perception about themselves Then maybe they won't be doing these crimes, you know If they know that they can build up a skill that allows them to get off the streets and not sell drugs Then that's what we want to enter into the conversation with them. So again, it's very tricky And again, we've seen young people that we've been in our program You know, there's a young man for example that recently got arrested again You know, he shot somebody who was 14 years old. He came back into the community Originally, you know, he was trying to keep himself You know off off the streets and off of trouble, but again, he came back on his own You know, he was 14 15 years old. He probably did a one or two years He came out when he was like 16 17 years old He came back to community again still has no family. He left the community without family He comes back into the community. He has no say no safety network. No support system He was back on the streets from what I'm hearing in the last couple of months He's actually back in jail and now he's not a juvenile anymore. Now he's going in as an adult So it's a whole different series of of issues that he's going to have to deal with But we see a lot of that where the support systems and how do we serve as that, you know I have two children on my own, but uh de facto, I you know, I mentor I serve as a father figure for Several dozen young people in my life, right and in the space But I can only do so much, you know So it's a lot of these other periphery issues that we deal with that we have to talk about that we engage in Again, that's not just around gun violence But again that does address gun violence and just violence in general But we have to really look at where these young people are and and that's where a lot of our energy is spent Honestly, is where do we where are these young people and how do we keep them again going safely and successfully along the way? So it is it's very tricky But again, I don't I don't we don't directly talk like that, you know first person Question piggybacks off Danny Peralta's reference to the 2009 murder of member of his organization Which was a homicide by knife And as a historian when I look at the ratio of homicides by gun and homicide by knife It really hasn't changed in 30 years And that means that whatever drove down the homicide rate in new york city wasn't fewer guns on the street It wasn't the 400 guns a year that we collected by stop and frisk And it also means in regards to professor kurtis's comment that whatever is driving the problem isn't probably just guns And that the focus on gun violence On guns and yes, there are about 1,300 shootings a year in new york city now Isn't it actually the cause there's something else going on because if it were fewer homicides by gun We would see that ratio changing over the past 30 years and it's not So I guess uh the question here is A reduction in overall violence a reduction in overall homicides Um There's a different there's potentially a different mechanism here and uh, do we I think the question is is for uh officer morino Do you see a a Something specific to guns in the uh work that you're doing right now to reduce violence or is it more general? Where they try to target the persons that they believe are committed historically So that's the department methodology right now Attempting to have used guns previously in the community. Who are our known gang members who associate with people? Those are people who are going to use guns So that's kind of the uh The method that we're going with now I think we have time for about one more question Uh, ronaldo cologne on which cbs news quick question Is there a connection between The studies that you're doing And where these guns are coming from The survey said you're doing The survey said you guys are doing it collecting Is it telling you where these guns are coming from into the professor's neighborhood? This survey is not measuring that I'm sure the department is is doing other research I've been reading the genius seems to be where a lot of What do they share it with you? The other states Well, I've been reading about I think some of the laws that are coming up now I've seen the commissioner being concerned about the fact that they're getting more lenient Because we do see a lot of it coming from the south and those laws down there be more lenient the study We're doing now is measuring something different, but I I've seen other information coming out of the department That's determined where it comes from Historically guns have come from south where they're easier to purchase if I gun in a point shot They're not coming from new york you're not buying a gun in a point shot in new york buying it in a In a gunshot. It's not legal gun owners who are shooting people in the streets. It's people with illegal handguns. So Can't you question guns where are they coming from? They're coming from the south Let me add that my my interest here is not so much where they come from because I totally agree that we Pretty much know where they come from they're able to trace them back to the gun shops where they were bought or stolen very often But what I'm interested in in my neighborhood is what accessibility does the regular Of young person in the neighborhood have to those guns Is it widespread accessibility or is it a very narrow group of people who have access to those guns? That's a question that I don't really know the answer to but it's one that we're asking in my class um One question that we ask on our survey is if you wanted to get it Can you get a gun and if you can how fast can you get it minutes? Hours days weeks, or I don't know and we've got some pretty interesting results on that That vary as you might imagine The 19th precinct doesn't have a whole lot of you know accessibility But but the 71 and you know 73 and 75. Yeah So no surprise there, but that those the kind of things that I want to look at over time Does accessibility to guns increase or decrease? You know, I don't know the answer to that, but I'd like to know So, uh, we are about to wrap up and I'll hand over to rick in just a moment, but just to uh, mr. Cologne's question the new york state attorney general's office schneiderman eric schneiderman's office just put out a major report on The guns used in crimes in the last I think it's about 10-year data set and they've traced every single gun. Uh, they know where they came from they know how long The uh, how much time has passed between purchase and use they know how many times it's been used It's a great data set. It's transparent. It's online. I suggest if anybody's interested in it that you take a look Uh, but rick if you want to kind of wrap up for us here. We will take a 15 minute break after rick's done Okay, well Hopefully I don't fall off the stage and kill me. So here Um, well ladies and gents, I'm hoping that you're going to stay here for the afternoon session Um, I don't really have much to add to what the gentlemen here have had to say a very Pleased that you've shown up that I've learned a lot about what you've had to say and I hope the audience has learned something too And hope to see you at after lunch then this morning's panel as we know focused on uh, law enforcement and some of the Perspectives and solutions from law enforcement on the gun violence issue in new york city Uh for the second panel, we are going to talk about gun violence solutions from the public health realm and uh, this is a Uh a complimentary set of solutions that again the city itself is investing very heavily in Has been for some years and is is doing even more so And we're going to hear about that from some of our panelists here Please take the stage So introductions are in order. I want to introduce from uh from left from my left. Sorry, you're right to uh from right to left All the way on my left. We have eric cumberbatch Who is a new york city native born and raised? Eric is the executive director of the nyc mayor's office To prevent gun violence An office that serves to coordinate and amplify the city's anti gun violence initiatives across government communities and justice partners Next to eric. We have ife charles ife is the citywide coordinator of anti violence programs at the center for court innovation Where she's responsible for staffing managing and delivering technical assistance to the center's violence prevention initiatives Next to ife. We have jeff coots our very own jeff coots I should say who serves as the director of the from punishment to public health initiative that's based here at john j college Uh punishment to public health is a consortium of academic policy and direct service organizations joined together to design and expand systemic preventive interventions that reduce incarceration And enhance public health and public safety in new york city And last but certainly not least our moderator for this panel is sheila delgado Sheila is a senior research analyst and project director at john j college's research and evaluation center Where she leads the center's evaluation of cure violence in new york, so let's give our panelists a hand So just a quick reminder We will give each panelist about 10 minutes to talk about their own work and then our Moderator will lead a few minutes of conversation after which we will turn it out to the audience for q&a Thanks Okay. Good morning everyone Thank you for being here with us. Um, I've been looking forward to moderating this panel for Since since I found out. Um, I am very excited to be here on stage with this very distinguished guest Um, so I want to start up by saying just setting the stage About what has happened in new york city over the past 11 years So despite what we hear from washington Or from some people from washington New york city is safer today than it was even just in 2006 By two sources of data from the new york state hospital and from the new york city police department Crime has declined over the past 11 years by about 35 percent. Um, which is A really good thing. So those are that's the good news The bad news is that some neighborhoods in new york city are still experiencing Are still plagued with gun violence specifically and so, um We are here today to learn what the city's doing other than Um, conventional law enforcement strategies To bring down the level of gun violence So I am going to start with jeff. He is going to Let us know what this public health approach to gun violence is Which i'm going to just start saying that Um, it focuses on prevention rather than, um The criminal justice system's way of usually reacting to certain things. Um, so here we go Thank you. Shayla and uh, let me start by apologizing. I'm a bit under the weather But rested up yesterday so that I could be here With you all today Thank you to the reisenbach foundation and and to dan for organizing this and and for everybody else to come to To talk about this issue, which is a challenging one Um, despite the successes in driving down crime overall and and violent crime in particular We still see that there are some communities that are plagued by gun violence and um I'll try to set out a bit of how the public health community views this Uh, in my work often I find myself either in a room of of mostly law enforcement Or police oriented people and I speak about public health stuff Or i'm in a room of mostly medical folks and public health practitioners and I talk about law enforcement stuff So a lot of what I do is try to provide a a basic overview And and then set the stage for people who are more qualified than I to to talk about the details And so I play that role again today and look forward to hearing your comments I think any discussion of violence, uh In new york or anywhere in this country has to start with a conversation about the history of violence in the country One that was founded on genocide and slavery and the historic Pillars that that come through to today right, um violence against the native peoples and and the others That we have defined by race creed gender and sexuality And I think another aspect of that is the glorification of violence At the individual level when it's used for good Right and that may be protecting your personal freedom Yeah, as as captured in the second amendment the wild west our tendency to to hero eyes members of the military And often when people take actions to protect women and children That we see a utility in the use of force and at times aggrandize that And we see force as a problem-solving agent And when it comes to to law enforcement, we talk a lot about general versus specific deterrence Right the general deterrent being the legislation that we passed the tone that we set um and then um Specific deterrence when we try to intercept The cycle of violence interrupt the cycle of violence and that often plays out through the use of police enforcement And we grant the police department a legitimate use of force Right we say that this entity is part of our government structure that we say is allowed to use force for the for the benefit of the community at large and In many ways, this is very useful and things that we like i'll take the example of Groping on the subways something that's been in the news recently, right? When an individual is doing that generally a male perpetrating against a female we are Very pleased when a police officer Intervenes and forcefully if necessary removes that individual from the subway system, right? So it serves a purpose in our community Um, but it is still force and we have to recognize it as such um And I think when we when we look at the use of force as a specific deterrent And we see the benefits of what law enforcement can do with that specific deterrent that much as My colleague rick kurtis said There are other members of the community. There are other institutions in the community that need to come and fill the gaps that are left after police Use that and where public health And I think the health community writ large Fails is by ceding issues of violence to law enforcement We all need to address violence in our own Way and with our own expertise And when we leave the issue of violence to law enforcement alone We are we are going to end up with the challenges that we see with over policing um With communities feeling like they are being blamed for the violence that exists in their own community And we we are confronted with this dichotomy of Good good a person versus bad person and who's culpable and who's able to be Redeemed from the the global Health perspective and even Nationally where the centers for disease control looks at violence, uh writ large They they have developed kind of a four-part approach to this and cdc borrows it from global health Number one is to define and monitor the problem And I would say when they look at violence When they define the problem seldom is gun violence the one that they want to focus on more often It's domestic violence that health practitioners and public health Focus will land And I would also point out that law enforcement as we were just discussing Is the is leading the way in monitoring the use of gun violence And that the way that the health system does it is more of a passive way By monitoring who comes into the emergency room or seeks help in relation to gun use And then the second main strategy and this is across public health This is a way to pursue prevention is to identify the risk and the protective factors Right, so there are risk factors that are internal and external that make you more more prone to violence More prone to use a gun and then the protective factors are those things that when somebody has those risk factors How do we identify the things that protect those people? Uh and sort of buffer against that risk And then you develop and test prevention strategies something that I heard come up earlier We want to focus on what are the strategies to intervene and to prevent and then the fourth something That's more kind of clinical in nature But but can be expanded is to assure the widespread adoption of these strategies that work And that's one of the things that that shayla and her group have worked on and I'm sure My fellow panelists will we'll touch on And so from a public health perspective And in clinical health and in health education Um and I think as with the general culture as as I mentioned earlier We've ceded this issue of violence to law enforcement, and I think that is to our detriment My wife's an occupational therapist and we were she was driving me to the train this morning Lamenting how as she's hiring new New clinicians to work with her As they try to grow their their clinic to serve the adolescents that are aging out of autism services in elementary schools That most of the people that are applying for these jobs to work with adolescents have some type of law enforcement background And I said that wasn't surprising to me because they have developed through their education through their practice a certain comfort with violence and these adolescent Kids who are on the autism spectrum Will lash out because they can't communicate the way they want to and so when they're toddlers and they do it You can take the the bite or hit in the chest or sometimes being struck in the face But when it's a 15 year old and he weighs more than you do it's it's a serious challenge to employment there and so One of the things that I that I want to Encourage us to think about and I think that we have more law enforcement inclined people here But I say the same thing when I'm with my my health and public health folks is we need to generalize our comfort with violence and and kind of fine tune our own clinical and and uh To add a capacities to understand violence and develop responses to violence that aren't just around law enforcement But could be around access to mental health services I proposed this in a recent conference of you're gonna tell me when I'm when I'm running over time, right? Okay Um I was at a public health conference and it was actually a school In the city here and they were trying to kind of lead the way and addressing mass incarceration from a public health perspective And I raised this issue that we as clinicians as practitioners are going to have to become more comfortable with violence They looked at me like I had just proposed jumping off a cliff. They had no interest in Serving people who were involved with violence And often we hear this from the clinicians that we try to get to work with people who have histories of criminal justice involvement I'll say those aren't our clients. We don't serve those types of clients And that is uh, that is a challenge from the health community From a from a population health perspective, which which public health uses We end up with kind of a I'm gonna mispronounce this word a matryoshka effect the russian doll effect when we look at violence and when we look at gun violence in particular, right We cert we keep track of personal injury We keep track of use of force intentional Injuries then we keep and that would be violence and then we keep track of gun violence So for somebody from a public health perspective to really specialize Their focus on gun violence is quite rare um for somebody in public health to focus on Mass incarceration or something like that is quite rare That's how I have the job that I do When I was in public health school, I would everybody gives power points So my power point would go after the one about schistomyosis And before the one about childhood obesity and I would stand up and say here's why our community needs to care about prisons And jails and the impacts that they have on on individuals in communities Um And I think the uh the challenge that we have in in understanding the magnitude of the problem and the specificity of the challenges that individuals involved in violence face Um is laid bare. So this morning in prepping I admit I tried yesterday, but I wasn't able to look at my computer screen for more than five minutes um I did a search on uh the city department of health website And I typed in violence The first 10 things that popped were about domestic violence as I mentioned earlier I go to the second page and then number 15 was about childhood violence And so I thought I had it there, but that was really about zero to 12 And when I added gun violence to my search, there were only three things that came up And one was a report from From 2013 on gun violence in the city And so I think we need to talk more about gun violence We need to talk more about violence in general And I have three calls to action, but I'm gonna wait until My colleagues here get through their pieces and I'll try to do it in the q&a later So while everybody's um Getting better here um, so ife has um She planned and directed the first cure violence program here in new york city um actually in the state of new york and she also served on the um new york city task force to combat gun violence back in 2012 That centered the issue of gun violence as an epidemic in new york city um, so She can if she can tell us about um the task force that that's when the whole creation of the crisis management system started And she'll tell us about that and then we'll hear from eric about What the office of gun violence prevention and Or the mayor's office of gun violence prevention is doing to address all these issues from a different lens So like jeff, I am battling an upper respiratory infection and have been under the weather for a little bit And getting married on friday people And so I am drained and all my mother can think about is are you going to be able to have a drink at your wedding, right? Um after antibiotics, but it shouldn't stop me, right? Um, but I really just want to say thank you guys. Um, thanks jeff and john j and Shayla to have me on the panel sitting with eric and jav A little history about sharing eat bait charles I am a child grew up in brooklyn brooklyn has been home for me for quite some time Um, unlike some of my friends. I think I had a little pretty cushioned life Even though domestic violence was a part of my existence. My father was an alcoholic Um, and at times very abusive Verbally abusive and physically abusive to the furniture and things in the house, right? um Stuck my mother up a couple of times on the train to get her off with a knife Broken to the house chained himself to the to the house I tell you all of this because violence has been a part of my existence um He got stabbed on east of sunday morning when I was 15 years old And came into the vestibule of our house and my east address is a good old Catholic girl at that time Um, was all splattered with blood and I had to clean my father's blood off of the floor and Off of my dress. So violence has been a part of me I've had friends who have been shot and have been killed um Some in front of my face Others by phone calls that you hear about the violence So violence is part of who I am it is not who I am in existence with the work that i'm doing But it drives everything that we do and so When we talk about the violence and i'm glad that jeff mentioned we have to talk about the history of violence And this is what this nation was built upon And do we talk about the indigenous people the other folks are me the brown skin black woman out here That have to deal with the violence a society brings towards us and so I work for the center for coordination And and someone said to me you come from an accounting background that was when I first came out of school That's what what I was doing. I was in banking But it never really fulfilled who I was as a person because I knew that I had to do something like the violence that I lived with I grew up with and continued to see and so Opportunities came about for me to do this work because I was always doing it because one of the things that we've come to realize Is that they all of these labels crisis management system the cure violence the credible messengers those Definition existed prior to a term being assigned to their work and so The cure violence model after coming out of chicago and some people say well Why in the haven't got nations would you guys want to do a model That shows is showing currently that it's not Fulfilling the needs of quiet in the violence in chicago But amy ellen bowden and myself out in crown heights through the center for coordination for years been doing violence prevention work We've been doing it through the art of mediation. So we ran conflict mediation workshops We bought groups together. We worked in schools to help young people think about other ways to solve violence However, it still continued to exist in our communities in crown heights I don't know if you guys are from brooklyn. So I grew up in brooklyn on park place between washington and underhell Back in the 70s and 80s Two blocks away from my house It was a known group of gang involved individuals But they were also my friends. Do I turn my back on my people or do I continue to work with them and to To think about how their lives are going to change later on And so part of this and i'm saying all of this back history because it's what propelled me to do this work And to think about how do we bring this public health approach to community who don't think that it is an epidemic It's normal when you sit in your house and you hear gunshots, right? Because the routine for us was that as soon as you heard the gunshots You knew it wasn't firecrackers you hit the floor and then for some of us we get up and we feel ourselves and we see if We were the ones that were shot That was our existence. That is what we live in that is who we are And so when the opportunity came about to do the work around gun violence prevention Honestly, I wasn't really about doing that work at that particular time in the format that Chicago had it I guess I was rebellious about it because to me it didn't make sense Right, it didn't make sense that this was going to be aligned to an epidemic It was it didn't make sense that it was going to be used as a public approach To reduce gun violence because we didn't think of it as such We just thought it was normal for us to be shot and killed or to kill each other as people of color The conversation about doing work around Prevention and and how do we look at people who've been there and done that To go back into those same streets of violence To then make change Was a concept that I could not readily receive as I said before that's not the way that brown and black folks Was doing this work. All right, and I think sometimes we don't we you know, we get very antsy when we start talking about race and violence If I was to ask how many in this room right now How many in this room right now have experienced gun violence where your child Or a sibling has been taken down by a gun Would you raise your hands? All right, if I changed the format of this room There's going to be a bunch of kids that's between the ages of 14 to 21 That can tell you they've lost a sibling a father a brother a sister to gun violence So when we can't sit and I think Eric and they know me well and Shayla Know me well when it comes to talk about violence For me as a woman of color and people normally say well, what happened about the the children who were killed Um in in Connecticut And I often say I have my heart grieve. I've lost a son. My son died at sex He didn't die from violence. He died from an illness and as a mother I thank god every single day that my son was taken away from me from an illness And some might say why would you say that? because There's more consolation in my spirit that he died from an illness than somebody knocking on my door saying he was gunned down Which is what a lot of brown and black moms face every single day or father's face every day So when we started doing this work A dear friend of mine's son was killed right around the corner from my house where she heard the gunshots and her son was dead As she walked out the house her name is robin lyre Robin came into the office and she said we got to do something about gun violence and I said robin We are trying our best to do work around gun violence. It's like no, we really have to do something about this And so many years back we applied for all of these grants to do violence prevention work And it wasn't the in thing at that particular time because you know when there's in thing everybody wants to jump on a bad wagon to do the stuff and so our people brown and blacks Are usually those guinea pigs and test projects Around the in thing to see if it works and sometimes that's painful, but sometimes it's needed And so we were awarded some stimulus money to do the cure violence model And we started doing the cure violence model in the 7 7 precinct The 7 7 precinct where I grew up the 7 7 precinct where I met my first love People say to me you do this work and my my new love is also law enforcement So it's like a battle when we have conversations a rule is don't talk about your work I don't talk about mine, but they blend right and so We started doing this work and started realizing that In order for us to make change We had to change everyone in the community folks had to believe Not just it didn't because it didn't hit you that it had an impact on Because what Eric and I just experienced a couple weeks ago when a young woman goes killed in the Bronx shot in the head Our people didn't get to see the impact and this is part of this whole crisis management system And I'm rambling on because there's so many pieces to this before we got to where cure violence is right being on the task force And and talking about the issues about not just doing violence prevention But doing support work Because you can't tell somebody to put a gun down and not have nothing else for them to do You can't tell someone that what you're experiencing is trauma when they don't even know what trauma is Black and brown folks don't do therapy well We don't want to talk about it We don't want to experience it. It is not healing for us And so part of this work as we talk about the cure violence was that we started just to look at our people in our communities Because this was happening in the 7 7 to 7 9 to 4 0 to 4 2 the 113 precinct predominantly black communities and brown communities It wasn't happening in the first precinct Right It was happening where there was poverty so when jeff talked about that and we talk about the history Of the violence that we're dealing with we're talking about poverty poverty stricken areas Where there's no resources for individuals and if folks talk immediately and say oh well kids need to be in school Sometimes the school is more violent and it is on the street That's real for us Folks immediately want to say well, let's put kids into jail Let's lock them up the whole thing with the ms 13 and and making this a gang, you know Talking about putting kids for 20 years How many of you guys have been actually been in the prison? When those gates and those doors closed behind you Is reform actually happening? So when we talk about violence we have to talk about all those aspects Some of it is not nice for us to talk about because it makes us uncomfortable But the work that we're doing Is uncomfortable to a lot of our communities and so what we started to do Is to start to engage communities about changing their practices about changing their norm It wasn't normal to hear gunshots 24 hours seven days a week. That is not normal It is not normal. How do you change somebody's thought to think that? It's normal. It's not normal And that's a challenge that's part of the stuff that we're doing with kill violence And so as I pass this mic on to to eric The work that we're doing in communities and we've been doing in the challenges that we've had Is trying to change folks who have been embedded in the violence for such a long period of time That coming out of violence Is not easily received Because it's not the normal When we get up in the morning my normal routine is to go wash my face brush my teeth meditation say my prayers and then get on the train For some kids that doesn't happen for some communities They don't even have water and yes, we live in new york city, but some places don't have running water But those are the stories that we don't hear when we talk about violence prevention and we link it to the whole health approach model I don't mean to downhearten anyone But it's the existence that we live in I live in I see daily When a mother cannot bury her child and we a city have to come together To bury that individual that is not normal When I encourage parents to tell their to get life insurance on their children That is not normal When you choose to cremate because it's not your practice But because it's the cheapest way to bury your child that is not normal And so we talk about violence and we talk about it in that sense and we talk about cure of violence And we talk about the work and the task force we're talking about a city coming together and jeff said it best There's got to be a collaborative. I do believe that incarceration is needed for some right It is But reform has to happen there also It should never be police against community We should be working as a collaborative We should be working together to bring change And so often we hear that the cure of violence world Don't want to work with the police Or that the police are bad I'd be a liar Like I said, I was involved with a police officer before right there was love there before There is love there always It is part of the existence of our world. We can coexist Law enforcement I work for the center for court of innovation. We're a reformative justice project, right Testing approaches doing technical assistance implementing new projects to see if they work and then to be able to bring them out to different communities At the end of the day if we're going to make change and if cure violence is going to work And if all of these new initiative around prevention, we have to work together I am an advocate for working for and work with my pv I am an advocate working with the health department I am an advocate for people coming together and working for the better of our young people in our communities So now we're gonna hear from Eric Thank you, Shaila And can I just say something before so we actually have to leave this room by 12 45 Because they're gonna set up for lunch. So, um, I will I assume you guys have a lot of questions. So I am going to go into questions at about 12 30 to 12 35 Um Go ahead. Thank you. It first. I just want to try and add some levity and humor to the room I don't think I'll make it off of this stage without being sick That will be a miracle with everyone coughing and sharing the same water. So So it's just interesting. Um, thank you for having me Join you all today and I'm really honored and grateful just to share the space and and share energy with you all I thought it would be ideal if I could first give you background as to how and why I'm here And then kind of go into what we Actually have accomplished and what we aim to continue to do Across new york city. So I'll start from my childhood Born and raised here lived across the five boroughs. I think I lived in about over 20 Different places Before I even graduated high school my father battled addiction. We traveled around place to place The first time that I was harmed Physically But with a violent and through a violent act was by my brother. I was in elementary school and he stabbed me He stabbed me in my back That was a tough one and and I came close to actually losing my life Shortly after that, I would say around transition time from junior high school to high school was the first time that I was shot at Me and a friend were both shot at Six times. None of us were hit Person was up close and it was you know if they would say god and faith and I'll say luck But the bullets didn't strike us and then I would say Had the opportunity to go to uh undergrad to on an athletic scholarship um And that was the first time that I was arrested on weapons charges as well. So Violence and and that culture culture of violence was almost normal and it it wasn't normal because It was something pressing on me. It was the the the the environment and culture that I was in um, and I was comfortable with it And never in any of those situations did I think that this wasn't occurring or happening to other families or other people Uh, this was just what life was and was expected to be um When I was at undergrad I had the opportunity to uh meet a professor in Missouri Um, dr. Paula McNeil and she brought me to Missouri and you know really saw a lot of great potential in me We spoke a lot about exposure. We spoke about opportunities and and what do I mean to a lot of young people just like me So I had the opportunity to leave Went to Missouri and found my passion As a teacher and I felt like this is the best way that I could give back to young people was to be a teacher So I came back to new york city department of education As a teacher and I worked in one of What the daily news called the schools in the dirty dozen the 12 worst schools in the city And I said this is home for me This is where I want to be because if there's anyone who can reach these young children. It's me So I taught junior high school and beds died for about four years And in doing that I realized it wasn't necessarily the content that I was delivering in the classroom But the engagement of a male role model that young people can see as their brother their father their best friend Whatever it may be that made them gravitate and stay connected to me and a lot of my students I'm still connected to in many different ways So in realizing that it wasn't just about the content I wanted to be in the places that these young people were so I felt like I was reaching people The next piece was being in the places that those people Were coming from and for me it was public housing I was born in public housing beach beach 41st street houses in rockaway And I wanted to be in public housing with young kids. So I took on an assignment Really uh to work with bringing resources into public housing and working with uh as many cultural institutions CBOs it didn't matter Basically to strong arm and make sure that they were Direct in services to public housing and opening their doors in unconventional ways to young people from public housing I was very good at that In doing that I started to meet a lot of young people that were engaged In crews and gangs and and started seeing a lot of young people Whether it was being arrested whether it was being shot whether it was being victimized different ways Um Got me into a space Where I started working with groups like cci and and and meeting the e-fay Charles of the world and other people Um and like e-fay pointed to before they was funding There was a lot of people really engaged on the ground doing whatever they can to save young people and and to Present a different model on a different picture to young people As individuals and that was happening across the city And that led me to working with the citizens crime commission New york community trust And really looking strategically How can we identify young people that reside in specific areas and saturate those areas with services resources Every lever that we can pull from the city To to actually implement that and put it put it into practice So we began doing that and along that course I met our director elizabeth glazer at the mayor's office of criminal justice Um, I never looked at myself as working for the mayor's office of criminal justice mayor's office of anything Um, because I never met anyone from the mayor's office who reflected or represented me So I didn't see myself in that area I actually wanted to be a pediatrician But I never knew a pediatrician growing up and I feel like if I did know a pediatrician I would be working maybe right up the block at mount sinai or or somewhere else um But what I did know Was a lot of the people and come from Uh the culture uh or surrounded by the culture of a lot of people who are impacted adversely by violent behavior Uh, and that's how I'm in this field. Um, I feel like I've infiltrated my way into city government And as a young man With humble beginnings from public housing to then Really work with council members advocates Community members to build an office to prevent gun violence is a huge lift And and the battles and struggles that we've fought to just get To that point You know is it's huge Uh, and then looking at you know, it's not just the battle of convincing people that criminal justice is beyond law enforcement partners or beyond courts and in jails, but looking at Crime as as an act and that act occurs But then there's a tremendous amount of healing that has to occur After that act Uh, so when we have these acts of violence, how do we heal all of those impacted? How do we heal the community and how do we heal the individual that? caused that that action So really changing the lens from a historical criminal justice approach More so to a people centered focus Um, and that really led to the launch of the office to prevent gun violence and at the office to prevent gun violence We focus on three major bucket areas I'm not model centric by any means you'll you'll hear people say cure violence over and over again I believe the best thing that cure violence has done was identify A workforce that has been severely overlooked across the city and tapped into a network of individuals who have great reach and death in communities and networks and cultures that None of us will probably ever be able to reach and they could do that not just in the realm of violence prevention But in any field of work So in thinking with that mindset Coordination was the first bucket area. So there's several initiatives across the city In terms of driving down Gang and gun violence, but they almost act in silos But I believe that you know We are co-producers of public safety and we all need to be in some kind of alignment because we all share A common end goal and that's to have healthy safe vibrant community The second area is amplification in that we can never pilot into a community Helicopter from above and tell people what's wrong. What's right and how we're going to fix it that that can't happen It's not sustainable But what we can do is empower people in community to be the voice of change to be part of that change And give them the skill sets the toolkits To be empowered to continue to create public safety in their space through their lens One of the things I'm really grateful about We've been able to and this is like exciting because like I'm I'm like talking but also like bragging But it's like smoothly done. So you don't even realize it One of the things That we've done we're launching a safe in the city grant At the beginning of this coming fiscal year where community members will be given small grants to produce public safety events Uh Tasks whatever it may be in their community, but for the first time the city actually looking at Anybody that wants to do something in their community. Here's the dollars to do it And here's a toolkit of best practices from advocates across the country And this is what they're doing in their communities be part of producing public safety We've taken what began as just a violence interruption model with credible messages going into the street To strategically aligning them with acs at close to home facilities Insecure detention facilities In rikers island in the enhanced security housing unit We're looking to build out even further from there and in a lot of schools that are in some very vulnerable neighborhoods That have a lot of challenges. So we've taken These credible messengers these these this workforce that I speak of and really expanded And enhanced their skill set and and really opened other agencies to see that You can't operate in a silo and you have community as the backbone For your agency operations to sustain and meet the goals That that that you're seeking Ife spoke a lot about the police And the relationship there, but one of the first things that I've done when I came to this office was One it's not feasible for us to operate in the city I mean with this great political will from many places, but it's politically career suicide If someone champions community efforts without champion law enforcement as well so bridging that gap and You know, I work in a maze of I don't want to go too far. This is a slippery slope as is and just discussing but Bridging the gap between policing and community On the appropriate levels. So you have these organizations, you know, their credibility their street credibility is what makes them valuable and able to connect with a lot of individual amongst other things But we can't coexist in a neighborhood without communication and we can't coexist in a neighborhood Without helping each other attain and achieve the the same goals So we've been very Intense and direct in making sure that there is a relationship with pd and we've had several meetings with dc kasee and Secret chief secrito and chief gomez and Susan herman and other people from pd With these same organizations to make sure that we are building synergy Linking nco's to these organizations linking Commanding offices and so forth and letting them start to begin what that dialogue looks like and ultimately building out how how Both can play a valuable role in co-producing public safety We've seen precision policing with large-scale takedowns and our office is very direct in tapping These same organizations after a takedown to go back into community with police to work on how do we help heal This fractured community so 25 50 people are extracted How do we work with the families that are most impacted? How do we identify the next generation of young people that pd has their eyes on from filling the void filling the vacancy That was created. How do we put legal services to a lot of these families? So really doing that piece It's part of our overall amplification and just being creative in brownsville, for example looking at territories and gang lines where young people Literally in their heads can't go to another night to development Even though that development is across the street and we've met young people who need to take the three train but instead have to walk Across eastern parkway and come back around and get on the L train solely because they can't walk one block Down but we put these individuals together in the same room and Them not knowing that they're from different developments that are they believe at war with each other And these same young people started making music together And found that they all want the same thing and they all care about the same things But it's just the exposure and having the resource to Really put them together to see each other in a different light and to break a lot of the the self-proceed Myths that they have about themselves The identity crisis that they face as how do you define me? How am I defined? What does a black male black female? What does that even mean in society? What does my future outlook have but really breaking down those barriers? So, you know really being creative around Amplification and and getting community's voice involved Yesterday my office just released a solicitation for clergy groups to be more involved and engaged And doing community canvassing outreach work Occupying corners tabling resources all of these things in a six seven precent That's leading the city and shooting incidents this year and has led the city Shooting incidents last year The last piece I'll say is technology. I know Shayla is technology Really being smart about what we're doing I think there's a lot of great evidence-based practices, but again, I'm not particularly Model-centric and and exploring and letting community tell us, you know, what exists? What is out here? What are ways we can move in a different manner a different fashion? What are the best ways of engagement? Is it being on a panel and speaking through the microphone? Is that what's going to get the public's attention? Or is it something completely the opposite that you've been seeking but no one's listening? What are the right ways to communicate? How do we message? What are those Simple nudges that we can give to young people that make them think or see something in a different manner a different light Ultimately we we intend to create a safe empowered and interconnected community I don't believe and this is like lightning round. I don't believe that gun violence Really has much to do with the gun or violence. I think it's about levels of distress and disorder in people's lives community and their network It's our job as government and agencies and institutions and residents To do all that we can to make sure that all of those Issues and items are mitigated. I believe that if we can Help young people live healthy and in a healthy environment Healthy environments and healthy communities don't have gun violence So that's that's really the the pieces. I think that you know, I would like to touch on and we're about addressing All forms of violence in a holistic manner and it and it takes all of us. So thank you all appreciate it Thank you, Eric. All right, so um one of so my the research and evaluation center um My colleagues and I have been working over the past four years trying to um, Understand the effects of the cure violence model Which is the public health approach to violence reduction at least one of them the most popular one. Um, and so There's one piece of tension. Um The some of the media covers it as having Bad relationships with the police and I think they both have talked about it. Um, but can we Eric just said, um, we can't coexist if we don't communicate, right? We can coexist if we don't um, if we don't Embrace each other's existence, but in what environment can they coexist and what experiences you guys have Implementing the model. Um, where you've actually have good stories about the police being Um, collaborative and from both sides. Um, and we only have just as a we only have about Seven minutes and then we're gonna go into questions so coordination, I would say uh NYPD has Their eyes on a lot of young people. Um Where they've had encounters and Beyond cure violence. There's active people in community that can reach those individuals In many different ways and tapping into those people Can be beneficial The the street teams that out each work is violence interrupters that are on the street They also know those young people that PD has their eyes on and if PD recognizes the street team as An asset to them on the appropriate level of talking to the executive staff of that office and saying You know building four five six. This is what we're seeing every day How can we jointly move this because we don't want to arrest We actually want to see these young people pick up services and do something positive So that's one, uh example of how a model of that piece can or the operations of that piece can work and is working Um And an actual example would be in east new york, uh at cypress houses where a commandant officer Said these five guys are driving all of the violence in cypress Here's their name. Here's their address It's either going to be your guys getting to them or my guys getting to them after they do something So proactively sharing data is uh key and that is an actual example For us it goes back to that piece about communicating a lot of the examples that eric just shared It's some of the same things that we've experienced both in brooklyn and in the bronx where I um supervised the bronx teams Um, we've had police officers sit on our hiring panel part of the kill violence model Is to have community leaders be there when we hire those credible messengers folks who've been there and done that to um Bring them on the onboarding processes to have that um panel and hiring panel And we've had police officers from before oh and before to be present at our hiring panel, which has been unheard of in the past, right? Um, but again, it goes back shaler where the conversations around them saying to us We can be out on the street the team can be canvassing And there will be a situation or a conflict that might be taking place And we've educated the police officers and they are comfortable with us that they would say at times If you guys are out on the streets We're going to let you guys handle this matter And as eric says either you guys do the intervention or we will come in and do what we need to do If that doesn't get taken care of and so I think the language that we continuously use across the communities Is that this collaboration can work. We each have a role to play Right. I am not a police officer. I'm a community activist. All right. I'm a project director I am not going to go in there and put handcuffs on a young person But I can't talk a young person down from being involved in such violence And then if that doesn't take place, there are different steps So I think the fact that we are now starting to and it's just started I think about last year Where police is respecting the workers, right? They're not label is just formally involved or gang involved individuals or folks who don't have a degree There's a level of actual human respect That is coming from nyp right now Towards to cure violence workers and the credible messengers and that has been a change because when we first started this about Seven or eight years ago. That was not the case It was not the case So I think the evolution of us having those kind of conversations around who we are and the impact that we want Police officers want to go home and be safe They want to go home to their families and so do we We want our young peoples to go home. We don't want them to be incarcerated I think that mutual respect is what was seen across the city right now. So that's a plus for nyp Thank you So I I have not worked as much in in New York City And so I'm speaking more to kind of the national conversation I've had the privilege to sit in on a few of the meetings of the national network of safe communities That runs out of David Kennedy's shop here And I think one important piece about that and you mentioned it But I just want to highlight is that the information flows one way right flows from the police department to the Community providers and they're able to help them identify who may be in need or at risk in the moment And they're very clear about the information not flowing the other way because of the concern about Informants and snitches that was raised earlier And I think to touch on that I think part of that Is a realization or that's a manifestation from these communities that are steeped in in violence that They don't see incarceration As a solution to this problem And so they are less willing to involve law enforcement In the response because they see when the person goes away for maybe three years and comes back They're not less violent when they get back or they're not You know rehabilitated when they come back from that Three years in a cage And so Part of the value of this community-based approach is it like I was saying before it puts more tools into the belt of the of the practitioners And I think you know one of my calls to action that I was mentioning earlier was The need for data sharing across agencies But also a clarity of how that data is going to be used because there's a real issue of trust and as you were saying respect Uh Amongst the practitioners and the community members that has to be acknowledged as we seek to share data and kind of monitor What's going on in community Thank you. Jeff. Yeah, I think that's a that's a really important point the data the data part making data more open Collecting better information. It's something that will definitely inform us in Making the city even safer than it is now and now i'm an open the floor for questions And I think dan is going to bring the mic around Eric you mentioned that in the wake of some of these large gang Raids takedowns that your office is going in and trying to do some some repair work and one of the things i'm hearing From folks in some of those neighborhoods in the Bronx and in upper Manhattan is that With these large conspiracy cases, the prosecutorial strategy is to try to get everyone to testify against everyone else and to use the threat of these Really intensive Sentences to do that and that that is creating huge tensions in these communities Everyone looking over their shoulder worried about whose kid is going to testify against whose kid So how are you dealing with that and is that making your work a lot more difficult to do? So thank you. The work is always difficult What I would say is that we try to have legal aid services speak to all of the families that are involved give them all of their options Dispel a lot of myths Untruths that may be going on in that community by having debriefs. So the process After a takedown for us is more so about creating transparency We want everyone to know all of the facts around the case. Why did it happen? Who's involved? What they're facing? How are they being charged and what kind of recourse is available to them? Then we try to identify all of the young people that may be impacted and how we can link them to positive resources mentoring opportunities employment Education whatever it may be so that they can redirect and re-channel their energy in terms of People being concerned about Who's telling on who for a lesser charge or or those things? We don't really have much involvement or engagement in those areas other than Directing towards legal services, but the rebuilding I think is beyond It's beyond who is going to you know flip on the other person It's about your father has just been taken out of a household or your brother who's the breadwinner is now Not there and how do we support that family and uplift and continue to have some type of platform for them? and I think what we're doing is is really Revolutionary and that these takedowns they may be larger in nature or more frequent But they're not new and I don't think there was ever a concentrated effort Or a focused effort to go in and actually say okay Let's bring the the commanding officers the prosecutor's office An array of services in this area and saturate that community and I think that's that's a rich piece We want to create a springboard for young people to do positive things and that's what we're focused on when we Go into those communities Thank you. Thank you for sharing your stories Question I had I guess is in reference to the other spaces that you can kind of I guess reach out to young people and so if it's not a conversation is just about violence Like what other campaigns are you able to kind of talk about to to again empower young people? Or to have them again look at their communities in new ways. Do you guys? Beyond just talking about violence. Do you guys also talk about things like environmental justice? So do you guys enter into conversations? Let's say about I don't know a variety of topics, you know leadership in other ways, you know, uh, you know gentrification I know is also big in our communities right now. You know, how do how do these campaign how does your campaign address those other Issues that are happening in the community So I know one thing for the center for code innovation in the projects that we run We have a lot of youth councils, right? Which is not focusing on the kids who are at risk or disconnected We're looking at young people to build healthy communities. So we have leadership academies for them There's a youth council. There's an arts piece that we do because a lot of young people are talented We help them to think about to ways of promoting the act of non-violence. How does that come through? So do they have a speaking voice? They also run workshops a lot of them have been employed through the year-round anti-gun violence employment initiative So we work with a group of folks to help young people Think about ways that they can bring change right because normally the old heads are the ones that's always talking down to them And so what we've come to realize with young people is that that doesn't work anymore My generation where your mom would say sit on the table and don't say a word That is not the generation that we have now our kids are very vocal And so we encourage them to use positive language and to address those issues such as gentrification Such as bullying and such as some of the violent issues such about the same sex gender issues They're dealing with those conversations take place because we know if they don't take place What will happen it can end up in a violent act, right? And so we encourage young people to really think about where you live And where there's value I work in the Bronx I live in brooklyn and when I first went to the Bronx and this is why sometimes when we don't travel outside I mean I go to plays and do all of these other things But when I got to the Bronx on 149th street and 3rd avenue the hub I've always heard about the Bronx But the level of poverty was so very visible. I think I had reached out to you and to other people There were people K2 when I was coming out my building and the office I would cross over and actually shake them to make sure they were okay Right, there were amputees because there's diabetes and all these issues and for health There is no almond milk in the Bronx I can't get almond milk in the Bronx when I go to get some coffee Those are some of the issues that our young people are addressing because if we have a healthy Intake the outtake can also be healthy. So we're addressing issues as poor food qualities and we're encouraging young people Not just to look at the violence But all of the other pieces of the puzzle that makes up a community Thank you for a wonderful panel. My question is for Ms. Charles I was deeply moved by your discussion of violence And the minority community in New York City And I'm wondering about the reluctance to speak about it If you care about mass incarceration, you have to care about violence It's been about 20 years since drug arrests contributed to mass incarceration The vast bulk of the growth and mass incarceration Is overwhelmingly violence Why then the reluctance to put these two issues together? I I believe the despair Um to even bring them together when we talk about mass You know my table sometimes at home is glenn martin To mica mallory having conversations and sitting together as you know glenn is in this movement about close rikers There is If we are to think about how violence Plays a role and I go back to what jaffa's saying It's okay to the drug epidemic and to to incarcerate individuals under Rockefeller law and all of that stuff and riko however The issue about poverty And I hope i'm answering your question the issue around poverty and addressing the needs and the resources Of community is not something that is talked about whenever we talk about mass incarceration. It's all about punishment. It's all about punitive It's not about healing And I think that's why those conversations don't happen Right, we're fearful to start talking about how do we heal communities? Instead we talk about Lock them up and put away the key But eventually they come home to communities that are not healed What's that? Oh a balloon and it's purple. It's royal. Thank you. Um, but I think that's that's the reason there's a sense of Nobody really wants to address the real issues the existing history of violence in our community Nobody wants to talk about that Because then you're going to have to take ownership Of some stuff and folks ain't ready to take ownership, right? So it's easy to say. Let's let's let's keep them separate I think if that doesn't answer. Yeah, because that's the struggle I have sometimes people come to me and talk about Oh, well if they get reality check Do we really want to address the violence? In our community because then we got to start talking about some stuff That's going to stink and it's going to stink from here to high holy hell And we're not ready to do that because then people going to feel all in their ways. They're going to want to act as though Oh, it wasn't me But the trickle down effects is why we don't talk about it. We're not ready to deal with that stuff It's emotional So I think part of your question was about the conflation of of drugs with violence And I think the there's a reluctance to to persist in there because of the racial dynamics of that historically I think currently too one of the things and again, I speak more about the the national Discussions that I've been able to be a part of is that the conflation of drugs and gun violence I think is somewhat overwrought and and that what we are over Amplified Because what we see a lot is that or what people are telling me in other cities that they see a lot. It's about personal Conflict beef. It's not about territory. There's somewhat of a détente in terms of distribution territories And that's why the social media stuff is is playing such a big role, right? It's a slight against another group on on social media and that leads to To gun violence and that's where the police can serve it and communicate Hey, we caught this this group is at risk go talk to these folks make sure they're not going to get involved in that Um And and I think one of the real opportunities and we're and this I can speak to what I've seen in new york To deal with this type of stuff at the community level is around restorative justice practices and that there's real You mentioned earlier that that black and brown folks don't do well with therapy But I think restorative justice is how black and brown communities Over the long term have dealt as a community with these difficult issues And where it's taking root in in new york and it's gaining popularity There are dozens of agencies around the country that are working on this And I think they're really leading the conversation Around how we address violence Collectively and so that's a real real promising practice for us to look towards We have one more question Um, it's not a question. My name is Cleopatra. I'm from trinidad. I'm a survivor of domestic violence I came from a culture where you don't talk about it And only when I got to this country, I realized it wasn't okay And I got arrested for fighting back And I encountered an institution called sanctuary for families that helped me put my life back together It's part of the solution And as a result of my violence my Daughter is an angry 15 year old. She goes therapy a lot So I think domestic violence and gun violence are linked because it's just like an involvement of the violence from the fist to the gun And um, people just need to be more comfortable talking about it for things to really change And there are places like sanctuary for families that help you put your life back together And I'm from the Manhattan borough president office and I'm here to listen in and Go back and share and if you guys need funded Okay Everybody needs funding. I know right. Well, I gotta say to my fellow trinny, you know, I understand that, right? Um Yeah Right, we didn't talk about violence. I come from a trinny household also that was not part of it But there was a point that I wanted to make as we talk about When you talked about the restorative justice, please When I talk about brown and black, this is not an ignorant statement. I want folks to be consciously aware of this When black and brown folks get diagnosed with a mental illness It is a mark against them Right Distigmatism that is lined with that is real for us Right, you're ostracized by your family. You're ostracized by a community and then you're labeled As problematic We go to our faith as brown and black when I told you my son passed away. All I did was went to you know It was god. I was catholic. I was you know in my different paths of religion But therapy wasn't something that I thought about Even with my father and the violence that he created on our lives That wasn't a conversation because what we heard was you're crazy Right, and then you get labeled for the rest of your life We don't have dainty pockets and it's only now this is changing and this is why I say when we talk about Violence folks don't really really really want to talk about it because then you start talking about race and class and privilege and entitlement And that doesn't sit well with a lot of folks It's only now brown and black people are opening up to therapy Right So that we're not stopped from getting a job because we have a mental diagnosis That were now received in communities and it's okay To say that I go to therapy Because before that was a fear once you went to therapy it meant that you were no longer whole And so those are some of the issues This is not just about black and brown people wanting to go out there and hurt each other This is not what it is about If we're going to keep this real we have to look historically and we have to be uncomfortable to talk about it When black and brown children are disruptive They get sent to the dean's office. They get locked up When my white counterparts get are disruptive they get behavioral therapy They go to modification behavior modification schools where parents are paying 60 and 70 and 80 thousand dollars In prep school and I say that to you because my daughter was awarded the privilege of going to a prep school Right and when she would come home from me and she's like mom Many of my colleagues many of my students are on medication And they flunked out of school, but their parents could afford to pay $50,000 for high school Where there's only 12 students in the class Eric and I both worked with the department of education Well, we're in a classroom and there's 40 students and where 22 of them might be diagnosed With a behavioral problem They don't get the opportunity to say you know what My dad or my mom is going to write a check for 60 000 and put them in a school And no longer will they have that kind of racket. They'll change Let's be real and sometimes I you know shaler and they they know The reality for me is if we're going to talk about violence We have to be uncomfortable and we have to understand that black and brown people are not always awarded The privilege and the benefits that our white counterparts have because if your child picked up a gun and shot somebody You'll be able to afford an attorney Our kids can't Our parents have to go to legal aid and legal aid attorneys as much as I love them. They are Inundated with paperwork We don't have those privileges We don't have those entitlements And when we try to usurp them Then we're looked upon and frowned upon As being out of order That still lives in america. It still lives in new york It is still something that we deal with I said it before and I'll continue to say this when a black child dies And their mother or their father cannot afford to bury them And they have to stay above ground For 15 or 20 days because people are gathering money for them We're not all on the same playing field We're not all on the same playing field. And so opportunities like this opportunities where we can come and talk about How do we deal with mass incarceration? How do we deal with violence? How why is it? We talk about police officers Our brown and black babies when they go to police officers, they don't feel safe And so what are we doing? We're changing the norm. We're trying to change the ability for them to understand that they're not Going to get shot or gunned down I tell my white counterparts all the time. I like the fact that you can say I empathize But can you really feel what a black mama feels or a brown mama feels? Oh black father, thank you, eric. I keep forgetting the brothers in the room, right or a black father Can you really feel that? Because when I see a little brown and black child immediately I think about my 25 year old daughter Who's got a delgone good college education? George washington pay hello? But at times even though she has that when I see a little 17 or the 21 year old kid that got kid In the development that we work in that we just saw her two days ago before she was shot in the head My eyes immediately go to my daughter That is a difference between my white and brown counterparts That I can align my children as being someone who is going to be killed or shot Then when I say to her walk and be safe I have to say to be safe not only from the brown people and the black people but for white people also That's real for me And so if we're going to talk about violence, we got to get uncomfortable We've got to get uncomfortable We got to feel uncomfortable And at the end we got to come together and not just talk about because I love when people have all these meetings And talk about oh, we're going to go to meet into meeting. What is the strategy? What is the strategy? Are my white counterparts willing to stand up and say when gentrification is happening We're not going to rent that apartment until you make it equal for everybody else or are you going to move in? What is the stand so the same way I tell my brown and black people to take ownership I tell my whites Take ownership if we're going to make a change. It ain't a brow the fact that it's nypd against Communities it's about communities and nypd working together It's about john j. It's about mock j. It's about a collaborative, but it's also acknowledging That we're on two different playing fields Okay, so that does have to be our our powerful ending statement there from ifa and thank you so much for that Now let's give a hand to eric ifa jeff and shayla I really appreciate the opportunity to number one be here in the presence of all of you and in particular jeremy travis who Was elevated to deity status last evening at the plaza hotel for his support and involvement here at john j I'm unbelievably privileged to be a trustee of john j as well as chairman of the reisenbach foundation where I monitored that you know many of my colleagues and fellow board members of john j are here When I was asked to just say a few words like very few words You know today You know, I thought you know gun violence, etc. What you know, what can I say about you know gun violence and I can only start by saying I grew up in the south bronx in the 1950s where There was a shot or two going on and it wasn't just You know an italian neighborhood outside of fordham, but it was where the The fordham baldies had their residents which it was a group that owned the bronx at the time And then to assure I would get You know some safety away from the bronx. I I spent four years in the marine corps and couldn't including two years in vietnam, so You know the whole idea of You know, I guess guns were embedded in my you know early existence You know the most important, you know notion. I just wanted to import before everyone got back into their Sandwiches, which I am looking forward to do myself is that you know, how do you make a difference and and I think you make a difference by you know participation and I got involved in so many of these Entities that you were you know beginning to hear read off because I worked for a guy that You know, I hate to say many of you probably don't know but at least google him So you understand who he is and a television producer who is still alive and very active by the name of norman lear And norman lear created all in the family and moad and and I worked for him and while I was there we produced Uh three movies stand by me princess bride and fried green tomatoes. So his track record was kind of kind of good you know television stations And I he and I had lunch one day And he created something called people for the american way Which exists very actively today and I asked norman. I said listen. I said, you know, I put you on a pedestal because of you know, all the things that you do And uh, I said, what's the secret of your participation? And he said something to me that I you know think about practically on a daily basis, which is why You know, my bio is too long in terms of involvements. He he said jerry said You know, let me tell you one thing. He said life is not a rehearsal and man did that You know resonate, you know, and uh, it just said, you know Life is not a rehearsal, you know, it can end You know in a heart attack. It can end with a gunshot. It can end in so many Ways and and to Waste the time that one has here Uh, it would be just a terrible shame. I mean the comments that were made In the last panel that I was listening to Were great because I listened to you know, four people who were on fire about You know issues and finding answers and and kind of like the reisenbach foundation Which was begun over 25 years ago, you know in a random act of violence when uh, a young man that Many of us were friends with Uh, his life ended on the corner of hudson and jane street when he, you know Didn't have a cell phone because they didn't exist wound up on a telephone booth on the corner and In a random act of violence Gun violence. I add was uh taken away from us and then a group In the advertising marketing media business came together to create this reisenbach foundation with the whole idea of you know Making new york is safer and better place Very very simple and to find organizations that we You know can and will you know support Whose mandate is exactly that make new york a safer and better place and we have have the privilege to you know support many organizations and Have the double privilege of here at john jay, you know having you know scholarships attached to Individuals who are deserving recipients so Our engagement and involvement with john jay is something that we have great pride in You know and many of the areas that were outlined You know you you may have noted or not i'm very involved with veterans because of my time You know in the marine corps and uh, you know what will be announced very soon is that we're creating john jay Fordham and all the other Colleges in new york public and private a consortium that's called veterans on campus And you know, why are we doing that because believe it or not in new york city? There are 12 000 veterans attending new york city schools undergraduate and graduate 12 000 veterans and uh, i'll give you another crazy statistic Uh, those 12 000 veterans for the city of new york are worth close to a billion dollars 12 000 veterans new york city won billion dollars. That's because of the gi bill money They bring in their families who come and reside here And these are veterans who Will indeed make a difference so the idea of the schools coming together, you know led by john jay Uh, it it's important because these are you know young men And women who indeed will make a difference for the city of new york And but in a broader perspective just so you know, you look at 12 000 individuals and think that that's still a small number Uh, you got to remember that there are 23 000 veterans in the united states There are two and a half million on active duty And the family unit is about four Now you do the math that's 110 million people. That's not one half of one percent. That's one third of the country So, you know the thing that i'm very proud of is you know with john jay and you know as A member of the reisenbach foundation that we've recognized a community that you know can and will make a difference Uh, which I think again is what you know, you know norman said to me at at lunch that you know You know life is indeed not a rehearsal. So I I promise to be brief and mercifully brief And I I thank you for being here. I thank you for Making sure that life is not a rehearsal. I want to thank my colleagues at reisenbach for you know being here And and jeremy travis who we elevated like in today at his status last evening and Who has been an inspired leader here at john jay for being here and taking You know a few moments that I feel very honored by your presence. So thank you everyone