 Thank you. I just want to first off to thank everyone for coming today. It's great to have the community leaders. You people always have the concerns. You listen to the concerns. We want to have three parts to this meeting here today. We want to bring you to get fully engaged in around-table conversations for the first hour. Then have no takers from the mayor's office at each table to ensure that we have proper follow-up with each and every one of you. Some people come to these town hall meetings, seven people ask a question that everyone doesn't feel engaged. The mayor wanted to make sure that we listen to everyone's concerns. Make sure that we have these round-table conversations. There are no cards in front of you. So in case your question doesn't get asked, there will be proper follow-up within 48 hours. Everything will get recorded. We'll have proper follow-up with everyone that raises an issue or concern. We'll give a copy to the police headquarters, the agencies that have those concerns, as well as their local precinct. In this way, we have proper follow-up directly with the mayor's office as the middleman. Again, and now this third component is having your questions, the main topics, two, three topics per table that were raised, asked to the dais, to the mayor, and we're going to start off with the mayor with some opening remarks, the district attorney, and then open it up, go table to table to take your questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I was told Assemblywoman Annette Robinson is here somewhere. She left. Okay. Okay. Real legend in this community and to the team that's here, State Senator Jabari Britsport, Assemblymember Stephanie Zimmerman, Councilmember GOC, and as I stated, Assemblymember Annette Robinson, who really groomed all of us that's in this business, in this game. And so I know we are sat at tables, but at the same time, before you leave, just introduce yourself to at least 20 more people who were not at your table so we can get to know each other more and more. And let me say this. I want us to lean into what we agree on. We have really started leaning in too many times on the things that we disagree on. But when you sit down and do an analysis, you can find the person you disagree with the most and tell them right now 20 things you agree on and you write down 20, you're going to find out that you agree on more than what you disagree on. We are spending too much energy on the numerical minority number of things that we dislike instead of the things that we like. All of us in this room believe that we were successful in the 100,000 summer youth jobs that we put in place. Everyone in this room agree that we should be doing dyslexia screening with all of our children and dyslexia screening to Rikers Island inmates. Everyone believes that we should have put the hundreds of millions of dollars into childcare. Everyone here agrees that what we did about maternal mobility, particularly with black and brown children, everyone agrees what we should do with our education and investing in education. And everyone agree we have the best police commissioner in the entire country. So I'm saying that to say when you really look at it, we agree on some so much. And we all agree that this gun violence is taking too many family members. We can't live in the city where 50 people are shot. We can't live in the city where young people pick up a gun fast and they can get an iPad. We can't live in the city where we are seeing this violence every day. Every day the commission and I are stopping at hospitals meeting parents just about every night picking up our phone going over the number of young people who are losing their lives if they are the victims of the violence or losing their lives if they inflict the violence. Because there's a loss on both ends of the spectrum. And when we speak to the parents of their children who commit violence and the parents of the children who are the victims of the violence, you see the same level of justice spared. And that's what we want to accomplish and that is why we're here today. It is time for the adults to engage in this conversation. And we're going to do this again with all young people. All young people. They're going to all come in the room. They're going to sit at the tables like you're doing. They're going to engage in the conversation. And they're going to speak to the top end of our administration. And if you haven't noticed, you see how diverse my administration is. You see how diverse it is. We need people who have gone through a lot to help people who are going through a lot. Everyone of the men and women who are at this table have a life story to tell you. You see them now in their glory, but you need to know their story. You need to know about Adonis Rodriguez coming here not being able to speak English and going through the CUNY system, fighting on the CUNY grounds and taking over the campus to fight for CUNY students. You need to know about Gary Jenkins who's in charge of HRA, but formerly lived, formerly lived in a homeless shelter. You need to know about the work that Sheena Wright did in the United Way. You need to know about the work that our Park Commissioner did in Prospect Park to equalize the park. So you won't have one part of the park having great trees and great benches, but she went to the other side of the park to make sure it was fair. Everyone here has been vetted to make sure they're going to carry out the agenda that we want. But we can't do any of that if we are living in fear. We can't live in fear in our city. And we're not going to go back to the days of heavy-handed policing that just because of your ethnicity, you would stop, search, frisk, throw it up against the wall. No, we're not doing that. But we're also not going to tolerate the over-proliferation of handguns and violence in our city, the robberies. We were out in Bed-Stuy the other day with a grandmother walking across the street with her grandson, was struck by a vehicle and killed. That's not the city we want. That's why we're doing this, to hear from you on how to come up with the ideas to make sure the city is a city for all of us, a fairer city and have the right partnership. We could not ask for a better partner in the area of public safety than my friend and partner in the district attorney's office in Kings County. Eric Gonzalez has been a close friend, a partner, and brings the same level of energy that we all bring to this conversation. So we're going to open the tables for conversation, but I do want to turn it over to district attorney Eric Gonzalez. Good evening, everyone, and let me start off by thanking Mayor Adams for hosting today's conversation to our police commissioner, to all the deputy mayors that are here tonight, to the public safety team, to all the commissioners, and most importantly to all of you, thank you for engaging in this conversation. You know, as district attorney, I've been very clear that the obligation of public safety is a dual mission. The police, the prosecutors, we play an important role, but the community has to play its role. And I believe as district attorney that we often need to listen to the community better and have a public led conversation about what safety and fairness and justice looks like. And so I'm here today to introduce myself, but really to listen to the conversations. I also think it's important to acknowledge what we've accomplished in Brooklyn. I think Brooklyn is going through a renaissance. You know, gun violence spiked nationwide in 2020. And it definitely hit my beloved Brooklyn really hard. But last year, at the end of 2021, we were down 20% in shootings in Brooklyn. Most people don't know that. In fact, 20 of the 23 precincts were down. This year, as we're continuing to face the gun violence epidemic, this public health crisis, half of the reduction in non fatal shootings took place in Brooklyn this year. And so we're continuing to make progress. We're down another 17% so far this year. And it's important that we acknowledge the successes that we do have. Also, you know, the work that's been happening behind the seams, the coordination between my office, our violence interrupters, our crisis management systems, but now also with the mayor's office and his public safety team, it's conversations that are taking place every day, figuring out how do we keep Brooklynites safe, New Yorkers safe. We all understand that it's really a really small number of people who pull those triggers. It's less than 1% of our population. And so we're working really hard to do intelligence, gathering and sharing of information so that we can do and be effective on how we do this. Last week, I put out a plan. It's on my website. I asked all of you to look at it. It's my stop violence plan. It's doubling down on the things that have worked in this county. It's a compliment to what the mayor has released on his gun violence plan. And it's also to do some of the additional work that my office is doing. I really ask you to take a look at it. But it's adding more senior prosecutors to deal with gun violence, fast tracking our cases through our gun parts, but also looking at data and technology. And in Brooklyn, we have a program that's coming out in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area in the 7981. It will impact this community directly, a restorative justice program where $2 million is being done so that we can get young men to put down guns and work on building life skills. It's in here. I ask you to take a look at it. We're going to talk about it more, but these are kind of the other solutions to gun violence. These are things I'm very proud of. We also have the first of its kind digital evidence lab in Brooklyn. We spent $1.7 million of forfeiture money, money taken from drug dealing and other bad actions to build a state of the art digital evidence lab that's going to allow us to work with the police, to do gun trafficking cases, to figure out and help solve past historical shootings. This lab is one of a kind. It's been certified by the Secret Service and other labs. So far that lab has led to 16 convictions in the county, but also for people who had been wrongfully charged by my office. Those cases were vacated dismissed so that we prevented wrongful convictions. The evidence proved that they didn't commit those crimes. So this is not my host. I'm going to sit down on this issue now, but I want you to understand that every day the mayor's team, the police department, my office are working to solve some of these problems. I'm real clear on this. We know how to do this work. We're going to continue to drive down violence in the county. We're never going to be satisfied just by lowering the numbers. We're going to be satisfied when our children can go back to our parks and play without gun violence. They can go to schools without guns going to those schools and we can be on our subways and trains. Thank you mayor for hosting us and giving me an opportunity to say hello tonight. Excellent. Thank you. And now we start off with the Q&A portion. We'll start off by table one and we'll start off with a no-taker starting off. Well, before we do that, before we do that, we cannot, we in the house of three amazing principals. So Chancellor Banks is not going to allow me to sit here without acknowledging them. Please stand up. Principal Harrison, Farrington, Anderson and Ms. John. Ms. John, you know, these are amazing principals and just to hear the stories of what they're doing for students in the school, we just want to thank you for just really being connected and allowing us to use this space. Thank you. So we'll start off with table one with Malcolm. Good evening, Mayor. How are you? I'm from this table. Most of the issues were, well, the two hot topics is the NCO roles that NCO roles are changing. How do we make sure that they are there for the people? That's one. And the other one is how much of the budget can be used for the betterment of our people knowing that one point billion dollars is for the police, and yet one million is for job training program. The commissioner will go into the NCO program, but when you look at this budget and the amount of money we allocated to unprecedented resources going to children and families, the increased dollar amount in the reduced fare metro card program, never before numbers were reached. As we stated, everyone allocated for summer youth employment, first time in history, we have a hundred thousand summer youth employment jobs. The amount of money we put in earned income tax credit, first increase in over 20 years, first time it has ever happened. The amount of money we put into childcare resources, our numbers are the first time in history it has ever happened. What we have down as I indicated dyslexia screening, when you look at this budget, you are seeing that this is a budget on behalf of people who have been in need and ignored for a long time. The police budget remained flat. And not only that, this commissioner has done something that has not been done before. She's looking at how police officers are deployed, particularly around overtime at friendly events, utilizing our auxiliary police and others to save taxpayers' dollars. And so we are using taxpayer dollars appropriately and putting it on the ground where the services are needed. And police commissioner, you want to talk about the NCO? So thank you for that. So the NCOs, while some of their responsibilities are enhanced, their true role never changes. NCOs took that job and we put them in that position because they want to work with the community. That's what they're best at and we can't do anything without our community. So while our initial mandate and our role is to fight crime, our NCOs will still be connecting with the community because they play a vital role in our connection to the people that we serve. So while we are redeploying some assets, please rest assured that these NCOs want to do this job and they will continue to do that job. I'm in a very fortunate position and I know it that I have a tremendous chief who works here, Chief Judy Harrison, who's at the end of the table. Absolutely one of the most compassionate and dedicated chiefs I have the pleasure of working with. So we will make sure that they are where they're supposed to be and we do not lose that connection with our community. Excellent. The table number two, Anthony. Good evening, Mayor. This was a very energetic and interesting group who are very active and have taken more of the approach here in the city of New York of fighting and not fleeing from what they're experiencing. So I want to commend them for their participation in civic responsibilities. Many issues came up, iron pipeline, quality of life issues, drug homelessness, mental illness. So if we had to really try to put it into the form of a question that they had with a common theme, it seems like they want to find out are there any plans to open up more lines of communication to orientation and services where the communities can help to combat quality of life and enhance and assist with public safety concerns through the administration and through the NYPD. Can you just drill down on that? Hold on, Conor. Drill down on it just a little more, like give us some ideas on what you think we could do to enhance that communication. From the group. From the group. I hope so. Well, you're speaking on behalf of the group. I was going to pass the mic, but no. You can pass it. If one of them have the idea we would love to hear from the group. Just some ideas on what we could do. I would love to pass it and I'm not playing favoritism, but the term activism came up and there were long time residents within their neighborhoods. I want to pass it to you. I would like to know what we can do to help you get to a point where all of us feel safe in our city again. Thank you. Thank you. And I like that question. Number one, we have a large number of crisis management team members here. Can you just raise your hand if you're not standing. These are all of our crisis management team members who have been on the front line doing that thing for a long time. But to answer that question specifically, and I appreciate that question. Number one, communication. What our communication director is going to do. Every week we send out a video. It must be a 45 second video of everything we have accomplished for that week. We want to now get that out to block association, community groups, etc. To keep you up to date. Because the sensationalism sometimes that come across on our front pages is not the reality that's playing out every day. We begin to believe that we are in a defeated place when we're not. There's some great victories we are making and we want to start allowing you to get information that's unfiltered that's coming right from the administration. Number two, we have something called breaking bread building bonds. We did it in borough hall as the borough president. We want to do it again. Ten dinners, it was a hundred dinners across the city. Ten people at each dinner. Every person come from a different ethnic or cultural groups. And it is something revolutionary. It had people talk to each other. We would like to have a thousand dinners across the city. Different places, restaurants, parks, at your homes, wherever. And just have us get together and talk to each other. Many of us don't know who lives on our block. We don't know our neighbors. We don't know people who we stand next to all the time. And so we want to encourage the good people of this city to actually interact with each other. Third, see something, say something, do something. Something simple as you see a car parked in your block with paper plates. You see what we did the other day about these illegal plates that are being used for guns and for crimes and for robberies and other dangerous things. Just reach out, speak to your NCO and allow him to, you know, use the intelligence to identify, you know, the criminal element that is living among us, which is the small number of people among us. And the more you volunteer participating in your precinct council, participating in a community board meeting, participating in the block association meeting, startup a block association, the more organized you are, the more organized we are going to be. And so you participate as a citizen and inform and communicate with us. We can turn around, not only crime, but turn around the conditions of our city. And I like that question that you answered. And everyone should be asking what can we do for each other to make this a better city? Thank you for that question. Excellent. Table number three, Lamona. Hello, Mayor. As you see, I'm sitting at the table with the educators you mentioned. So of course, this table is focused a lot on the youth. Number one, they wanted to know why weren't any of the youth at this town hall, but I think you answered it earlier. You're going to have your own. Also, they're concerned. They said that the police see the effects that the cause of crime against youth. However, the educators see the effects of it. And a lot of, they don't have programs in the schools. They want to know what you're going to do in terms, some of their budgets were cut. So they wanted to know how can they get programs in the school. And also how can they protect children coming from and go, coming from school and going home when they themselves can't even afford to live in the neighborhoods where they're teaching? Police had said something to one of them like, oh, the kid was shot. Where were you? So they want to know why are they being treated like this and they can't even afford to live here. And can we change the language? One of them said from public safety to stewardship, stewardship, because public safety sounds like we're reacting to a lot of things. Stewardship sounds like though we're in a preventative mode. And can we have a conversation about that? And lastly, street lights. They're saying the street lights are dim. The police lights that are on the corners are too bright. They're facing in people's houses. The children can't sleep. So what are we doing with the street lighting situation? Not only in Brooklyn North, but in New York City. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Lamona Knight, who's in our CAU unit, did a career in the police department. Thank you for your service there. Affordability is crucial. Do we have anyone? Is Jessica here? Affordability is crucial, particularly housing. We're trying to get the federal government to do what they did years ago, the officer and teachers next door program. My home on Lafayette Avenue, I got because I went through that program and we were able to stabilize the block. We would like to see officer, teachers next door program and first responders, our nurses, our doctors, etc. We have been meeting with some of the business leaders and we try to navigate the politics of accomplishing it. But there's some large business leaders that are looking to do reduce rent and some of their units for first responders in the city that want to live in the city and we're trying to navigate the politics, I mean navigate the legal aspect of it and if we're successful, we're going to roll that out. But we also want her to get in our federal government to reintroduce of the officer, teacher, first responders programs to encourage of those civil servants to remain and live in the community because affordability is crucial. We are hemorrhaging black families in this city. That's the largest population that we're losing in the city because the city is no longer affordable to them and we want to do everything we can to make sure the city remains affordable. We have an amazing housing program through Jessica Katz, the chief housing officer to make sure we build as much affordable housing as possible, but not only for civil servants, but for all New Yorkers and we're focusing on that. Words matter and so we would like to get a focus group to sit down with the commissioner and others and see what words we're using that are antiquated. If public safety is antiquated, let's think of other ways to do it so we want to hear it and we need to share that success together. I thought I heard you said there was an interaction with a police officer about after shooting. If someone is not speaking with you appropriately, don't suffer in silence. Don't suffer in silence. Don't sit back and say well that's just the course of doing business. No, we don't accept that. Reach out to the CEO, the commanding officer, reach out to the police commissioner, reach out to our office, our CAU. We must know customer service. You are our clients, you pay your taxes, you deserve that level of customer service and that's what we're going to foster that customer service. So don't accept anyone treating you in a disrespectful manner or interacting with you in a disrespectful way. That stops, that stops in this administration and I hope every administration that continues we rebuild that customer service that's needed. Next table, we have Muhammad Bahi. Good evening, mayor. Had an amazing conversation with our table. Actually there were some tears shed, very passionate, emotional, amazing group of people. One topic that seems was the main issue here was that communication with NYPD and our city agencies. A question is that the table and the group was very concerned on the lack of community-minded agency liaisons to help local communities connect with agencies and resources. A lot of them have made amazing examples that they'll just call 311, they'll direct them to a number, press a couple numbers and they'll get a voicemail or a robot and a lot of them don't even know who to connect with. That was one question. The second question, Mr. Mayor, is the concern for zero to little programs and funding for the youth which in turn correlates to drugs, gangs and crime. One of our brother here mentioned actually a local culinary school in building where it was open use to feed thousands of peoples every week but now it's closed. That was the question. Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright. Good evening and I also want to acknowledge our commissioner for the division of youth and community development Keith Howard and I'll kind of also turn it to you. We are making unprecedented investments in this administration and this year in our young people. We've invested over 100 million dollars in the summer youth employment program over 240 million dollars in summer rising which just started this week. We are increasing our Saturday night lights program. We're adding 25 additional sites. We're going to be looking to build new community centers. We know a lot of the community-based organizations were hard hit by COVID and so we're also increasing and strengthening our nonprofits. We're creating a new mayor's office of nonprofits to give them more technical assistance capacity building and resources. It is one of the keys to the upstream prevention activities is our youth development. So we are squarely focused on it and we want to welcome your input, your ideas if you see opportunities in the community where you think that there would be a good activity that would be enticing or developmental opportunity for young people we want to hear from you and partner with you to create those opportunities and experiences for young people. So one of the things that you said that was very critical is that we have to open up communications okay and this is one of the focus that the mayor and the deputy mayor has charged with DYCD and we're going to go around to all of the CBOs to make sure that they are messaging programs and resources you know to the parents and to the stakeholders. So I agree with you we need to open up communication we need to do a better job as the deputy mayor stated there are a lot of programs a lot of investments that we have done and that the mayor and our team has done you just haven't heard about it and that's our problem and we need to correct that. And you know I remember my brother um over the summer months he was out in Brownsville uh what was that park? Betsy Head Park out there in the summer months you had around about 200 children out there playing football soccer etc it wasn't not it was not a city program it was his program he took his time to come out and say I'm going to create a safe space for young people I went out there one night it must have been about 11 o'clock at night those children had a safe space to be. Oftentimes we make these suggestions but a suggestion starts with you people although we're going to have a program like this for just young people there was no sign on the invite that said you could not bring a young person with you think about it so when we start asking Eric what are you going to do it should start with Eric this is what I'm doing because this is a partnership and if we want young people in our midst then we need to invite them in our midst because we all know young people on the block that many of us may be walking by not even saying hello to or not handing out a summer youth employment job too or not finding out are you in school what are you doing we have become afraid of our young people people who see me walk the streets I stop and engage them and so yes we want our young people engaged but it's not the city's job alone it is all of our job so start a little program on the block with 10 young people teach them financial literacy teach them how to tie a tie teach them how to shake a hand it starts on a granular hyper local level not this 20 000 feet because they're not going to see the mayor on every block but they're going to see you on every block so let's get local with this now here's what we're doing also we did it as the board president we did the extended use programs some of you may remember what we did we went to the small local non-profits and said you should not have to pay to use our school buildings you should not have to pay to lose public spaces we're going to pay for you and you just give us your human capital you come in you want to do a small program for young ladies or young men we will pay for it we're going to do that again so if you want to use a school building you should not be paying for the school safety officer for the janitor for the insurance no all we're asking you is to volunteer get the program make sure we vet it to make sure it's right and we will give you a assist you in using the space of our school building that's how the chancellor feels about using this is your space also not only for seven to three but throughout the throughout the entire year and from a community of fair standpoint our office the person who is the brooklyn north director tony herbert is our brooklyn north director we have a deputy commissioner that could david lewis and we have a whole staff in the mayor's office community affairs unit that's fully engaged the first thing i did when i became commissioner community affairs i reached out to every single community board throughout the city is the first act because this was true partnership with the local based communities that listens to concerns like this room is filled with leaders who run organizations and you are so committed you need to know you have a partner in the mayor's community affairs unit that listens to your concerns and make sure is that the leadership in the city of new york listens to your concerns and that's why we're here and we'll move on to the next table uh caron charry good evening mr mayor and on behalf of this wonderful table with these pillars and kings and queens they would like to thank you and your administration just for coming out this evening to start this dialogue and conversation so should we turn some of our themes into questions one can we create tailored approach to policing for each community utilizing community voices to guide process that's one two can we look into how to fund the precinct council so we can track be effective and be more effective to the district can we examine each neighborhood lighting tree positioning to create more visibility to be safe in each and every neighborhood and last how can we strengthen the partnership between the schools the nco's and the cbo's thank you i'm gonna take the police question so thank you for that and to your point that's why we're here to get the voices of our community far too often we go to a community and we say hey this is what we're going to do for you but we need to ask you what you need from us and that's why we're here so every community is different i mean we all want the same things we want to be safe we want to be able to go to the store we want our children to be able to go to school we don't want to have to worry about someone accosting us on our way but that may look different for each community and that's why we're coming to you to find out what you need from us because i can tell you the resources i have i can tell you my plans but you need to tell me what you need and i will always listen for that because that's how we make this work there's no other way to do this to your other point i'll answer the last point and you can talk about funding or the schools as well where you talk about i talk about all the time and that's pretty much like crime fighting through environmental design community enhancement through environmental design making it more difficult to get out of a park in case you want to do harm to someone in that park so that's something we definitely want to look at on our end and we can work with the communities and the construction to be able to make that happen so about the schools or the funding i'll turn that over to the chancellor if he wants to discuss that uh hello good evening everyone don't everybody answer at the same time good evening everybody family it's it's it's a pleasure to be here i just first of all i just want to say that um i'm very appreciative of uh this mayor to lead this city at this time um leadership matters when you're in the middle of a crisis and we are in the middle of a short enough crisis uh particularly as relates to uh gun violence you need to know that you have the right person at the helm that everybody else can rally around and and i believe truly that uh we have the right leader that's the reason i came on board to be a part of this administration and to lead the work at the department of education so the mayor has set the tone an engagement like we're doing here tonight is the first step um but what the mayor also holds all of us as his commissioners and his administration to is what's step two and what's step three that you are doing after an initial meeting like this and so the police commission and i are engaged in conversations but what we want to do is take this work to an entirely different level we will never be able to police our way out of the situation that we're in the police play a role but as the mayor has said it's about how we engage as a community and as the largest school system in the world we have a major role to play and so as i heard from table three i think all of the the ideas that came up we have to activate on all those ideas so the mayor acknowledged that the three principals are here i wanted to also acknowledge and ask to stand the superintendents who are also here tonight please stand up we've got at least three of our superintendents who are here and it's important and the reason that is important is because they are overseeing the work of the principals each one of them has at least 30 to 35 to 40 schools that they oversee and so what i would say even to the police commissioner is what we want to be able to do is to make sure dr. khalid kirkland right who is now the superintendent in charge of ocean hill brownsville right but dr. kirkland stand up again because the point i need to make is important it's but what's more important than the applause is we have to make sure police commissioner dr. kirkland knows chief harrison right so that the police and the heads of our schools all know each other and are in further conversations that happen after this meeting where they can go much deeper in creating the solutions that are needed where the students are actually at the table and are part of helping us to create the solutions because the young people themselves will tell us the way out of all of this but it's up to us as an administration to lay out the framework for all of that to happen that's what the mayor has charged us with doing and that's what we are committed to doing communication and collaboration will be the key for us creating the solutions that will help to resolve all of this well i'll go back to i just if i can jump in here for just a second because the chancellor is absolutely correct because the mayor has said that we're not working in silos so we have to coordinate we say all the time that public safety is a shared responsibility and i goes back to the point that was made here who can the cbo's contact when they need something from the nypd and you should have a person a name a number an email address that you can reach out to to get an answer and that's what we have to do and if that's not happening and that's a phone call to my office because that needs to happen at the ground level a hypo local with the chiefs with the precinct commanders with the supervisors with the community affairs officers you should have someone you can reach out to when you need assistance my amazing chancellor has given me a mandate he and i agreed that the work of brownsville cannot be done at a desk very clear only thing that he's not doing is giving me gas money which we're going to talk about privately but i would be remiss if i didn't shout out to you terrell anderson inspector terrell anderson day two day two of me on the job we sat down for over an hour and a half we have a plan for district 23 and brownsville stay tuned see see that's the that's the that's the quality terrell anderson came from brownsville now he's back in brownsville and so i don't want i don't want it to be lost what the commissioner and uh the chancellor are saying i don't want this to be lost because historically if you were to ask previous administrations how many times the chancellor and the of the police commissioner communicate communicated they probably could count on one hand what we are saying is that the community stakeholders the commissioner must know the i'm sorry the superintendent must know every precinct commander within his superintendent space they must know who's in charge of the department of sanitation to clean the space they must know who's acs they must know every doctor president every president of every hospital they must know every clergy if you an nco and i go to pastor so-and-so and he says he doesn't know you as an nco you should not be an nco so what we are saying you need to proactively go out and know who are the what's the team we're all one team so when when when chancellor banks go and speak to his superintendents and he can't tell you every precinct commander within his superintendent location something is wrong if he can't tell you every community leader if he can't tell you all the the reset the resource asset mapping that he should be able to tap into and that's what we are giving the charge of all of our leaders my my precinct commanders when principal walks into a precinct they should not be saying who are you they should already know who she is you understand what we're saying we're saying it's time for us to unify unify all of our assets and work as a team not these silos where everyone is territorial and everyone is saying what's not their problem no this is all of our problem we're all in this together and we need to use all of our resources to solve this problem all of us are together those are the teams that we are building the next table we have superintendent jenna schwas i don't know how i got the mic but i got this job and i'm grateful to have this job good afternoon good evening everyone my name is janice ross i am the proud superintendent of brooklyn north high schools which is boys and girls nelson mandala our two principals over there so welcome to our home i had the amazing opportunity to work with this gentleman mark rampus and as a facilitator i'm sure you guys all know him uh when you want to talk about safety and security this is the gentleman for new york city department of education how it has been leading how many years you've been in the system oh oh sorry i was told i shouldn't embarrass him but i do want to say mayor adams that we have a student at our table we have emily who is a not an honor student who her grandmother brought who her grandmother brought with her today so there you go right yes let's all clap for emily because i think so that's okay so we have two questions the first one is what is being done for the oversight of the homeless shelters in the neighborhoods there's a lack of oversight in the homeless shelters which is resulting in want to make sure i get this correct the residents of the homeless shelter who require the mental health and the community services not receiving those from the very people that are supposed to provide it to them or who are being paid for it so there's two issues it's the oversight of the providers to the homeless shelters and the oversight of the actual homeless shelters okay so that's number one and the second one is um supporting our seniors in our communities and so um this was a very big talk big around seniors being priced out being bullied harassed by landlords the safety and security of the seniors in the neighborhoods that i had the pleasure of speaking with these individuals here thank you commissioner jinkins hra good evening i'm gonna stand up because i'm stretching my legs really good you guys look so good out there give yourselves a round of applause so so seriously looking at the the homeless shelters you know since the mayor appointed me on january 1st i've been making sure that i personally been going out to those shelters unannounced to actually ensure that the services that are required by our providers are being served right sitting down and not just walking in the locations and then walking out i'm speaking directly with the residents really understanding how can we do better not walking and looking at the contract saying this is what they're supposed to be doing but how can we do better what services are needed from the city so we're having those conversations with the providers i'm doing on a day in it you know day out it's not it's not as though it's a one time i'm hitting the shelters when i leave here this evening i'm going out and i'm really drilling down to speak to our homeless brothers and sisters it's not can't lead from an office can't lead from four world trade center i actually to be out there because i actually understand what it takes and how it feels to be homeless because my family was homeless at one point in time the issues was not that the services are not there they're there but there's no accountability to the services of the homeless shelter and the oversight of the providers that are giving the services and the actual homeless shelter individuals or workers there's no accountability that's the issue so they recognize the resources are there it's who's getting the resources and who's holding folks accountable to the resources and to the individuals so if i may i'm holding them accountable we are looking at the the activities that's occurring there and i'm me the commissioner for dss i'm holding those shelters accountable so the bucks the buck starts and stopped with me i know that i know it stopped with the mayor but trust me when i say this i'm holding the providers accountable and listen and we agree there are some some providers that we're not pleased with the quality of their service the product they're producing and that's why the commissioner and i we have been doing spot checks at homeless shelters seeing what's going on outside of so we want to make sure that these service providers are given the right product and we also want to reach out to we're trying to look at how we can pull in our faith-based leaders and allow them to be a part of providing the services for those who are dealing with mental health issues homelessness because we believe we can get a good product make sure that we're paying them for their services and so we have been meeting with faith-based leaders to do something differently but the mental health is a big piece and we have a doctor uh for son that's here who used to be with fountain house doctor you want to talk about some of the um mental health stuff thanks so much for the question and you know it is truly an honor to be here with you in community and thank you for welcoming me and welcoming us to your community the intersection between homelessness and mental illness substance use is real and the numbers are clear it is on the rise both before covid and especially exacerbated due to covid and the isolation that we've all felt to some degree but that has really fallen on those folks disproportionately and so you know one of the reasons i'm proud to be a part of this administration is that dealing with the issue of serious mental illness requires stubbornness it requires a consistent engagement there are no quick solutions it is not about opening up more psych beds and having more teams and there isn't a quick fix it's about continuously trying and trying and trying again the subway plan and the street outreach plan that the mayor launched from the beginning of the administration under deputy mayor williams isam and in collaboration with so many of the agencies uh around here and especially uh commissioner jenkins team is really the embodiment of that stubbornness tens of thousands of interactions with new yorkers living on the street living in the subways many of them facing challenges of mental illness and over the months that we've been in office thousands of those people have decided to come inside and stayed inside the yield may seem low but it's because it is an incredibly intractable and difficult problem to solve it's why we haven't solved it yet and it's why administration after administration has kicked the can down the road and this administration is not doing that it stops with us you heard the accountability um that commissioner jenkins just spoke to and that the mayor spoke into this is going to stop with us but it's going to take time and it's going to take stubborn persistence it's also going to take us building alternatives and the kinds of projects that the mayor just mentioned i worked at an organization fountain house that provides a place for people living with mental health challenges to form community to break isolation and to heal to whatever extent that they can heal it may not look the same for you and i but for them it's a better alternative to living on the street and it's a better alternative to being in and out of our hospitals certainly it's a better alternative than being in and out of our jails and so over the coming weeks and months you'll see us making those kinds of commitments and those kinds of investments in building out more of those projects and combining that with our street outreach work to really start to make a difference in a really intractable and stubborn problem that we're all facing across this city and across this country thank you for that doctor and i believe um our commissioner of the department of aging is here lorraine are you we are your partner in addressing this issue of housing affordable housing for older adults and and we are your partner in that but our best partner has been the mayor so far because the mayor put together a housing plan which included for the first time of all of the housing plans that this that this city has put together it is one that asked what are the housing needs of older adults and how could we address them and give us some innovative ideas so we're on it that as dr ason said this will take time because it's been kicked down the road for too long but we are your partners in that and if there is any landlord any landlord any organization that is harassing older adult tenants i'm going to give you a number and you call that number we will take them on and we will take them on with the full force of this department as well as our partners in public safety and the number is two one two two four four six four six nine and when you call that number you will never get an avatar you will never get a voicemail you get a person and you get a person to help you navigate anything you or your family member needs for aging services we're committed to make sure that this is the best model global age inclusive city in the world and we're gonna you know i don't know if we have something now do we deal specifically with um those landlords i know you had something those landlords who was harassed i believe that um you had something in your office but we're gonna take what you just shared with us and we're going to go back and see how we use the human rights division the police department of the age's office to target those who are harassed who are harassing older adults because you know it's it's against the law to illegally evict it's against the law to harass and i don't think there's enough attention on zeroing in on those bad acting on landlords if we have a couple of them do perp walks i think a whole lot of them will stop doing this and so we're gonna zero we're gonna zero in on that and also i think we're gonna change the department of aging to the department of older adults you know change that name excellent and the next table we have andrew good evening sir we had a wonderful conversation with parent educators ta presidents and even a basketball star the first question we have for you is how can the city be more proactive rather than reactive to new and emerging issues that are affecting the community the second question is how can we more efficiently and effectively get services out to those most in need that's that's a sort of a broad question so what we should do we said this over over and over again tonight we want to be partners and so we're hoping that some of you will break off into little subgroups and give us recommendations on how we can do it better you're the recipient of ours of delivery of services and if we're not delivering those services better we need to hear from you what is the better pathway for us to carry it out for example it blows my mind how many people who are eligible for wick and snap don't sign up for it we want to find an easier way to sign people up we want to become mobile in doing so we want to become mobile and those who are eligible for a reduced fare metro card but they're not applying for it so we want to figure out how do we deliver those goods and services are better to you and if you have a response can we get the microphone back over at the table you can share your thoughts good evening hey lisa how are you oh you still remember my name thank you no i i had to come um but one thing i have to say this boxing and learning center been fighting for the longest time and it started with sergeant woods at ps a2 and now he got a promotion so i still have to carry this fight so you're trying to say about stop gun violence and stuff a good way is to get the boxing and learning center in the old daycare center at van dyke the money is there this way we save a lot of kids we can take the kids from seven on up you don't have to wait till they get 15 and 16 and try to tell them something you got to tell them when they little so i had to get up here somebody got to listen you know i ain't come here talk about my intercons and the lights throughout the the that's important but this is more important if you talk about saving youth not just boys girls too so i had to say this so all this talking let's do some action i'm tired of talking you know i've been talking for a long time i'm tired it's time for some action thank you so uh lisa lisa lisa stay with me they this is that this is a center that's currently has been given back to mic for a moment this is a center that has been closed this is an old daycare center that has been closed for years and there's underneath probation um probation post they have it they have the money um and there's underneath neon um so the money so we have we have we have anna you know know about it and notice you said this has been a fight for years i've been mayor for months yeah but you've been the borough president but i just didn't hit you with it okay so you know what i'm saying you know so you don't know what you don't know you don't know what you don't know but now you know yeah that's right and and being that we have the general manager from night just sitting at the table with us what they have to do at first and i've been telling them mm-hmm they got the gene the f-line got a leak so fix the leak and then you can fix the place so let's find out let's we have i want people to start doing some work if they do some work we can get some work done and i guarantee you will save a lot of children lives love it love it you familiar with the commissioner uh yes i am um we are dying to get this going as well so i what i will do is go back i don't know charon do you have any specific info on this um we have my deputy commissioner here yes give it a give the mic yeah it has been it has been stuck on a couple of things that i know i know but let me let me move this forward because we're dying to do this hold on he said he said he said we're gonna get it done don't you worry about it because it's really it is a very important project for us to do it under our neons and for our youth absolutely no question about it so no um lisa she's one of our stakeholders for probation for our neon we are in the process we're still working on it um i'll talk with katrina but from what i've heard my update with her on her 101 is that it's starting to move again so i'll get with you so i can give you a better update okay and then charon listen yeah we will find out what's what's holding it up because that you're right this has been in the works for years now so lisa we need to move it lisa this is what i want you to do tomorrow we're gonna talk and you we i'm gonna bring in the team we're gonna list out what's preventing it from being open we're gonna do a list because i'm a list guy we're gonna do a list hit it four five six things and we're going to dismantle each item on the list and we're gonna open the center it's gonna get done under this administration you're gonna get the center open yeah we're gonna listen i'm gonna say thank you now now say thank you later right we're gonna get it open we're gonna get it open so um really it will change a lot of kids lives and it'll make a lot of parents happy too right so we got nitra here uh commissioner so let's we're gonna we're gonna hop on the zoom tomorrow we're gonna dig down and what is the issue we're gonna list out what the issues are and we're gonna dismantle each one of those issues and if it's a if it's a leaking pipe that makes no sense it's gonna get fixed if it's the whatever needs to be done we're gonna get it done we're gonna get it done okay you have my road we're gonna get it done okay next table we have ed table number eight read a tremendous conversation over here uh in the interest of time i'll keep it just one question the question is education and school program is key to public safety and healing our youth why are we seeing public schools a budget's cut especially in bedside and the chancellor chancellor can speak with the programs and we need to really get this clear on what's happening with the budget because we heard it over and over people say okay our budget is cut here's what happened and what here's what's going on we've had a substantial decrease in student population that determines what's called the fair student funding every fsf is 100% is going to be funded every amount that's allocated per child is going to be funded last year we stated the substantial drop in student population is going to change the allocation that is given to us as a city for fair student funding so we told everyone the previous administration told everyone the numbers are going to change there's going to be less money because you have less students if you have the same amount of students you will get the same amount of money we didn't cut it completely we said nope we're going to only bring you down three fourths of the way instead of 100% of the way we're going to bring down three fourths so you can adjust we can wean you off of the new numbers and we're saying next year we're not going to cut you off 100% we're going to cut you off 50% of the way but the reality is our numbers have dropped we've losing students they're no longer in the system and so we have to adjust to what the new amount is based on your students and we're giving our principals our superintendents the time to make the proper alignment because the real danger is the federal government is going to look at how many students we actually have and they're going to change the entire federal government allotment and we are going to have no control over that that's why we have to get our students back into the school system any school that is in an emergency state the chancellor has made it clear we're going to be there for them but we all are going to have to adjust based on the number of students population we have in our school I don't know what we're down to how many thousands we've lost we've lost 120,000 students in the last five years from New York City schools so I mean you heard the mayor say earlier that the black community in New York City the numbers that we have lost over the last several years it's reflected in our school population as well so it's an unfortunate reality that we're dealing with so we've got to do everything we can to try to work to get those numbers back up and we're going to be doing that and one of the things that we're doing is we're engaging dozens and dozens of community-based organizations who are going to be starting real work with us next year in September and these are a lot of black and brown organizations who have kind of been on the sidelines in the past they had not been any funding really provided for them to do this work and a lot of them are just doing it volunteering their own time but we've lined up ways to help those organizations lean in a much bigger way and you'll start to hear you'll hear more about that the mayor will be making uh having a press conference as we get ready to start the next school year there'll be a lot of other organizations from our communities we're going to be leaning in to help excellent the next table is uh Tony Herbert Mr. Mayer how you doing first let me just say I'm honored to serve as your Brooklyn borough director right here because we know this is going around the city but it don't move unless it move in Brooklyn first so to all of the leaders here I'm honored that you guys are a part of the borough that I have to represent and I look forward to serving you all under this mayor and his community affairs unit so Mr. Mayer our table is pretty engaged because we have some stalwarts who have been around for a long time the likes of Mr. Bruce Green and Terry Cokesom and then you have the organization Bebo that also sits at our table and they've been in the street and we've been in the struggle as you know we've turned in guns with some of these very organizations out in front of the presets so one of the biggest concerns was definitely the kind of like the synopsis of what's happened here public safety officers also in our community the question was how can we get our community officers I know we have our nco's and we have our community affairs officers how can we get our regular officers engaged with the young people in our community and not stand on one corner while they're on the other and actively engage them so that they can be some positive dialogue then also how can the city affect the negative behavior on social media because that is actually what's working against the positive that we're doing if we can't get a hold of these individuals that have these particular sites and then also they talked about youth engagement civic internships with some of the city agencies they call for the city to work through these agencies to get our young people engaged so that they can understand how the city works and lastly active grief counselors that can come into our communities and you've always said it to get out there and deal with the victims in our society who are actually the families of victims are the families of individuals who have been either killed or are subjected some type of form of violence how can we work with those families that everybody seems to forget so I'll take the first question I was going to do this at the end but we can do it now because I think it's so important that people know who represents them know who's responsible for their community so I'm going to ask the commanders of the brooklyn north commands to stand please seven three precinct I know we all know and love terriel anderson but he's not here I think carol hamilton is here please stand up seven five uh harridan mehrillion I think he's here as well no gone all right make an excuse to swarm I'll look for him later on seven seven tony brown di brown stand up please seven nine inspector scratch eight one glenn eight three captain sanabria eight four di rana eight eight malcom nine oh vazquez nine four phahey housing boroughs we have inspector jesse lance I should be here ps a two gillipolito ps a three birchwood stand up stand up all of yous please stand up now I want everyone with collar brass a patch a blue shirt on any representative of the nypd to stand up because the mayor mentioned that when a principal or superintendent walks into a precinct that the that we should know who they are but you should know who we are too because we're your nypd and we are charged with making sure the youth have someone to talk to making sure that they are engaged and these co's these community affairs officers are responsible for that and we hold them to that standard we have a new deputy commissioner for community affairs we are holding them accountable to make sure they're out of these programs make sure they're at saturday night lights make sure they're accountable to these communities but you should know who they are because they work for you so we intend to make sure that's well known we intend to hold them accountable thank you wolf for standing up and thank you guys for coming I appreciate it I want to just mention one thing as well just to connect with what you just did police commissioner um we want to ensure that all of our students particularly at our high school level it'll start earlier than that but certainly our high school students should be civically engaged brother tony hurbert you were spot on they need to understand how city government works but they won't do it if we just say it we have to put a system in place that will inspire them to do that think about it very few young people very few these high school students who ever show up at a precinct community council meeting those meetings are held every month that's what they discuss all the issues that are happening in that precinct and the people who are usually there are seniors folks who are a handful of folks who just really are very engaged you rarely see young people at any precinct council council meeting we're going to change that so the DOE we're going to be putting systems and structures in place working through our superintendents and our principals to ensure that our our young people are actually showing up at those meetings they need to understand what's happening their community planning board meetings they don't even know that those things even exist but once they do and they begin to understand how does city actually functions get ready that's when you will see change when young people understand we're sending them to school and they do the routine of the day-to-day stuff that they don't even know what this stuff even means but if we start to measure their success in school based upon their understanding of how this city operates they start to understand not only that they need to vote but why they need to vote why they need to be engaged and we can do that through the school system being directly connected with the city government with nypd and all of these other agencies young people need to understand how all of this works and I can tell you right now they have no clue about how this works but if we can change that that's how you change mindset that's how you'll change behavior that's how you change the city and and and that is part of deputy mayor right is doing with our hundred thousands some youth employment jobs and you know if you could just talk about you know what we're doing with the all of these all these youth are going to go through due to some of youth employment so one they get paid which is great and they're going to be working across the city we have across all of our agency 5000 spots we have 800 people working at the nypd our parks commissioners hiring hundreds of people just across the board they're getting financial literacy training once a week they're going to get exposure they're going to go to the un they're going to go to brooklyn navy yard and do a tour they're going to do one of the nitro farms they're going to have a wonderful enriching experience so we want to continue to build that and grow that as we move forward yeah i just want to add and i want to give the nypd a real major shout out literally they have 800 some of you participants the largest in city history that are going to be working for the summer youth program at nypd so the investment is there what i said uh tony speaking on behalf of what you were talking about the um social media let me tell you something social media is destroying destroying our children destroying our children and they're doing it from afar you know when when when people heard me talk about um drill rap it wasn't drill rap it was the form of drill rap where a rapper would kill someone and then belittle the friends and family members of who they killed and force a retaliatory shooting because of that that back and forth is really tearing the Bronx apart you know a lot of these shooters that are connected to what social media is doing now social media says we're going to take Donald Trump off twitter but you're not taking people off twitter that's killing young black and brown children so where's the urgency we have to be consistent with our urgency and that is why we are saying we're holding social media accountable for what we are seeing on social media and how it's being used all across this country to fuel a lot of the retaliatory shootings and retaliatory violence that we are experiencing it's tony you're dead on for that question and we need to zero in on it we y'all know me i'm up all night but you know we know we got a bounce you know so listen this is one of many we're hoping that many of you will break into smaller groups in relationships and know each other because this is you know brooklyn we're going to do another with just the youth but we we are encouraging you no matter what we do we should bring one or two young people with us because it's hyper local to make this happen and so on behalf of my entire team that's here we want to serve we're committed to service and we're committed to making sure that we put the city on the right path particularly in the area of violence specifically but in general to make sure that our agencies are producing the quality product that you deserve as citizens of of the city so thank you for coming out for spending time with us to today i know that the air condition was a little too cold today but uh we we want to thank boys and girls high or for a great job make it nelson mendella academy thank you appreciate you and also it's going to make sure that the note takers will collect all the notes from each table and there's going to be a follow-up and accountability so i'll ask all the note takers to bring up the forums