 Good evening, everyone. My name is Louis Molina, the Assistant Deputy Mayor for Public Safety. For those of you joining us for the first time, this discussion is part of a series of briefings we hold about public safety in New York City. To let you hear information directly from the source, the leaders working behind the scenes to keep our city safe. Protecting public safety is a team effort, so each briefing brings features from different agencies, speakers, and topics. But that team also includes you, the public. My ask of you, if you are tuning in this evening, is to take something you learned here today and share it with a friend, a family member, a neighbor. We stay safe by staying informed. If each of us passes along the information we learn about what the city is doing to increase safety, we in turn help to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Today, I am joined by the New York City Sheriff, Anthony Maranda, and members of his team, Lieutenant Kenneth Matos, Sergeant Richard Lois, and Sergeant Francesca Rosa. The Sheriff's Office is a critical arm of the public safety apparatus when it comes to enforcing laws in New York City. One of the Sheriff's Office's responsibilities that has gotten a lot of attention over the past couple of years is to conduct inspections at smoke shops, including those that are illegally selling marijuana products, which the Sheriff will provide an update on in just a moment. But they also handle a wide range of enforcement efforts, such as enforcing orders of protections and mental hygiene warrants, getting ghost cars and unregistered vehicles off of our streets, and investigating scams known as deed theft or deed fraud. So while their roles vary, at the end of the day, the goal of the Sheriff's Office is the same, to enforce the laws and increase safety in our city. With that, I'll turn it over now to Sheriff Anthony Maranda. Assistant Deputy Mayor, thank you so much. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here again and give you a presentation, and welcome to all of you who are joining us. As was stated, the Sheriff's Office is the Chief Civil Law Enforcement Officer of the City of New York, in addition to the additional responsibilities that we have, which include preserving the peace and the orders of protection that we spoke of in the many other programs that are initiated by the Sheriff's Office. While we have gotten a lot of attention about the smoke shop enforcement, the mandate which the Mayor gave us in November of 2022, it's important for us to be able to share with you the important numbers that we have been able to do this so far this year. So in 2023 year to date, we have inspected over 1,400 compliance and intelligence inspections of smoke shops. There's over 211 arrests were made, 371 C summons were issued, 314 notices of violations. These are the civil penalties. Over 2,055 DCWP notices of violations with 8,011 DCWP violations, 45,755 DCWP counts. We have over $51 million in assessed civil penalties and over $21 million in illicit products have been seized during these inspections. Just alone in December of 2023, 135 compliance and intelligence inspections were conducted, which resulted in 23 arrests, 43 C summons, 229 DCWP notices of violations and $7 million in assessed civil penalties and over $1.5 million in illicit products that were seized in these efforts. Due to the efforts, not only the Sheriff's Office and the Joint Compliance Task Force is comprised of the Sheriff's Office, the New York City Police Department, DCWP, and we work with the Buildings Department, the Fire Department, and DOHMH, as well as state agencies, which is also the State Candidate's Management, State Liquor Authority, and Department of Labor. In that enforcement effort is a collaborative effort to address all the illegal issues that are happening inside of these locations. And the targeting of what we believe are targeting our youth with these illicit products that are catered to the children or mirroring all the children's products as well as the children's packaging. So the enforcement effort is extremely necessary to be enforced here in New York City while we are here to enforce the laws in which is to promote the illegal market. We are also here to ensure that the illegal market, the unlicensed market goes into compliance with the law and continues to help to keep our community safe. On that note I got today to talk to you about our cannabis enforcement. I want to be able to share with you the other efforts that the Sheriff's Office has been mandated to carry out. I'd like to introduce you to Lieutenant Kenneth Matos, who will be discussing further. Thank you, Sheriff. As Sheriff Miranda mentioned, our office works with agencies across New York City to keep all New Yorkers safe. In order protection is issued from the court to limit the behavior of someone who harms or threatens to harm another person. Depending on the severity of the allegations, the court may attach a search and seizure warrant to the order of protection in order to go ahead and seize some firearms. Now these orders of protection, they can come in all shapes and sizes, whether it be to limit someone's communication with someone, to remove someone from a home, or just again to limit the behavior of another individual. With these search and seizure orders, any illegal weapons that are found are to be seized. All legal weapons are to be also seized along with any ammunition and permits allowing for those firearms to be in New York City to also be seized. These search and seizure orders can be dangerous. We are going into these search, these homes, looking for anything that can be used in these allegations in the orders of protection. We also execute and serve extreme risk protection orders, which are issued to prohibit a person from purchasing or possessing guns and require them to surrender any and all guns that they own or possess. These can be petitioned by a DA, a police officer, a school official, anyone that believes that a person may be some sort of risk to another person. In addition to these orders, we also work with Department of Mental Health to go ahead and execute mental hygiene warrants. Now, there are different mental hygiene warrants, one of them being the 960 mental hygiene warrant, which assists patients who are not complying with their assisted outpatient treatment program, as well as Mental Health 943 warrants, where an emergency assessment is necessary for immediate observation and care and treatment for these individuals. I'll now pass it back to Sheriff Miranda. Thank you Lieutenant. The orders of protections and the mental hygiene warrants are where the Sheriff's Office intervenes with people who are in crisis and immediate intervention, and it's just one of the services that are provided by the Sheriff's Office. I'd like to now take you to a different area and introduce you to Sergeant Richard Lowes, the Sergeant of Road Patrol Unit, and tell us about the efforts that we are doing in different programs we have in enforcement on the roads. Thank you Sheriff. To keep our roads safe, Sheriff's Office employs various technologies to identify vehicles that have unsatisfied debt, unpaid taxes, and unregistered vehicles. Ghost vehicles has become a very popular term, and it describes vehicles that have temporary paper license plates or mismatched metal plates, which are used to evade tolls, traffic cameras, and impede law enforcement investigations. Our team conducts overnight joint operations and daily patrols to remove ghost cars from our streets and facilitate legal owners to properly register these vehicles. To date in 2023, we have impounded over 400 ghost cars from all parts of the city. We work with our partners at the New York City Police Department, the Tribal Ridge and Tunnel Authority, and the New York State Police to share information, facilitate operations, and strategize about future efforts as we continue to patrol the roads and keep New York City's streets safe. I will now pass it back to Sheriff Miranda. Thank you, Sergeant. Again, this is another important part of our operations, the enforcement taking away these dangerous vehicles away from the street, which endanger both the public and also result in a serious revenue loss to the city for the red light violations and speeding violations in New York. I'd like to talk to you about another area that's a great concern to our community. I want to turn it over to Sergeant Rosa, who will discuss the next topic. Thank you, Sheriff. The Bureau of Criminal Investigations of the Sheriff's Office handles all of the investigations that revolve around deed fraud. Deed fraud, if you don't know, is when someone takes the title or the deed to a property of someone else without the proper owner's knowledge or permission. There's two main or common ways that this actually occurs. One of them is forgery. When someone just outright forges a signature of the rightful owner and then files those documents. The other way is a scam where the person is tricked into signing papers that then files those documents to have the new person own the property with that forged signature. It's basically you're tricking the person to signing over the deed to their property. An increasing concern for deed fraud in the city is an heirs at law or the partition of heirs scheme. And this is basically investors acquire a fraction of interest of the property and then buy out the other living heirs partition for that property. Many times this happens when an uninterested heir of the property gets scammed or swindled into signing away their partition or rightful parts of their deed to that scammer. And then that scammer then goes and either forces a sale of that property or buys out the other heirs. The sheriff's office has been investigating deed fraud since 2014 and basically all of the referrals have come from the city registrar's office. When the city registrar's office reviews documents to be filed they'll find missing information or information that doesn't correlate with the previous deed that was filed. And then they'll refer that document to the sheriff's office to be investigated. Since the sheriff's office has been involved with investigating deed fraud we've worked with the attorney general's offices and the district attorney's offices in all of the counties to make it a holistic approach towards investigating deed fraud. In 2019 the attorney general formally formed the deed fraud task force which addressed all these issues in collaboration they work with the district attorney's office and our office to investigate these frauds. Some risk factors to know for deed fraud and for everyone to be aware to look out for for deed fraud is if your property is not covered in a will or if your will has not been probated. And if the property is in some type of financial crisis or in foreclosure those are some of the top risk factors for deed fraud. To minimize these risk factors we encourage you to take the following steps. You can sign up for notifications through the ACRES website and ACRES stands for Automated City Register Information System and that you can get through the city registrar's website. These notifications will notify the deed holder or the property owner that new documents have been filed on their property. Another way you can get notifications is to have a trusted third party also get these notifications for any documents that have been filed on the property. Also be sure to make sure that your property is covered in a will and that the property is in good financial standing that it's not in foreclosure. Since 2014 there were 450 deed fraud complaints citywide. But since implementing these safeguards and community outreach with making people aware of these risks and how they can make cover themselves so they don't become a victim of deed fraud. We've actually brought that number down to only 51 complaints citywide since 2014. In November of 2023 Governor Huckle actually signed a new bill that gave government agencies even more tools to combat deed fraud and actually help reinstate the property to the rightful owner. Deed fraud is definitely something homeowners should all be aware of. They should take these safeguards and get the notification so that they can protect themselves against this fraud and we will continue to educate New Yorkers so that they can protect themselves in the future. Thank you Sheriff. So from deed fraud with the Department of Finance has put many protections in place to notify homeowners of any potential fraud actions to the road patrol which enforces the keeps helps keeps our safe our streets safer to the orders of protections which intervening people in crises in the mental hygiene warrants. These are all programs that are run within the sheriff's office. So again we thank you for the opportunity assistant Deputy Mayor Molina to give us a presentation to the city and let you know these are just some of the services in the programs including the smoke shop enforcement that we're conducting some of the programs that we have running out of the sheriff's office. Thank you. And so before we open it up to on topic questions I just want to convey on behalf of Deputy Mayor Banks and the Deputy Mayor's Office of Public Safety. Our appreciation and congratulations to the NYPD on their double digit decreases in shootings burglaries and homicides. Like the mayor said we remain the safest big city in America and that came with not only a lot of hard work for precision police work to make that actually happen. Considering where the city was at the end of 2021. This is remarkable and we continue to trend in the right direction when it comes to public safety. With that we'll open it up to on topic questions. Charles. So first where does the NYPD fit into smoke shop enforcement on a day to day. Can you talk a little bit about how the two groups work together. And then second I'm wondering where is Deputy Mayor Banks tonight. So chef honey we'll talk about the joint. So the joint task force we work hand in hand on the daily operations. We also exchange intelligence information that's gathered from the reports of the officers in the street as well as community complaints. The police department is generally the first people that community complaints to. So those complaints are funded to the sheriff's office and we maintain that that information collectively for all complaints throughout the city from every agency that receives complaints as well as our elected officials and community residents that report that complain directly to us. And Deputy Mayor Banks is in here this evening but I'm covering for the public safety briefing like I have in the past. So my question is like since O.C.M. started giving out the license and there are still many people saying there are so many illegal smoke shop related crimes. So I was just wondering if there is a trend. If you know if there is a trend of like the number of illegal smoke shop are they like decreasing or increasing or do you have a rough number of like how many illegal smoke shop smoke shop across the city. We have documented over 2000 registered complaints about alleged illegal smoke shops. Again those are allegations that still have to be investigated. Where O.C.M. does what they're supposed to do in their shop. I believe that as legal shops open the illegal shops will also fade out. But there's a balance that has to be struck here between enforcing against the illegal shops and ensuring that the illegal shops that are regulated industry that doesn't endanger our community. Also has an successful opportunities to operate. It is how the city take down the shoplifting cases because it is still more than 100,000 cases in this year. Even though it's a little bit like 4.5 percentage down compared to 2022. So we're going to focus on Sheriff's Office stuff but I'm happy to check in with you after and we can talk to DCPI and O.N.P.D. about shoplifting and stuff like that. So if we have other topics. Yes. My name is Amin and I have a couple questions. A lot of people do not think that the Sheriff's Office has the capacity to crack down on the smoke shops. Do you really have the capacity and do you feel that you're well equipped to handle all the smoke shop issues that are going on across the city as they open up? The good thing about your question is and thank you for the question is that we are operating as a task force. That's where you get to leverage the services or the availability of staff from all the different agencies working collectively. That was the mandate given to us by the mayor that we will work collectively as a city problem. So all the agencies have an input into resolving the issue. Where does the search and seizure money go? Would you ask them all? Is that it? Yes. It'll go through the normal legal process and the courts will determine where the money is divided in the city. But it's a court process and we're just the beginning of the legal process in terms of enforcement. Thank you. Thank you.