 Good afternoon, everybody. How are you? Very quiet today, I say, huh? Waiting for all this good information, huh? OK, Marsha. Keep it loud. I got you later. Welcome to the One Police Plaza here. We are here, and you're all gathered here, to hear very important information on issues of public safety that affect all New Yorkers. And joining us, of course, the honorable mayor of New York, Eric Adams, police commissioner Kishan Sul, First Deputy Commissioner Edward Caban, Chief of Department Ken Corey, Chief of Patrol Jeff Madry, Chief of Crime Control Strategies, Michael Lepetry, Assistant Commissioner of Legal Matters, Oleg Sherdniowsky. Oh, and by the way, before I do anything else, we're staying on topic only, OK? Any other questions that you may have, they can be addressed, not related to this after this press conference. We'll have people available for you. No repeat questions, as I said before. I'll take them if they're creative. Come this way. Good afternoon, everyone. In a moment, you'll hear from Mayor Adams and then our Chief of Crime Control Strategies, Michael Lepetry, is going to describe in detail the challenges we are facing in New York City every day. This is about recidivists who cause New Yorkers to suffer needlessly. Every day, as hardworking New Yorkers start their day or night of work or school or to simply enjoy what this city has to offer, recidivist criminals are planning or taking the opportunity to commit their next larceny, robbery, burglary, or other crime. Their efforts are increasingly aided by the fact that after the NYPD has arrested them, the criminal justice system fails to hold them appropriately accountable for their actions. These offenders face very few, if any, repercussions, despite committing crime after crime. And the number of victims continues to go up. Your NYPD officers speak to these victims. We support them and proudly go to work for them with every resource we have. But for too many of these victims, justice is elusive. Justice and fairness go hand in hand. Public service has to work together on behalf of all of the people we serve. We are seeing tragedies every day on the streets of this city we love and serve. People are suffering, and more and more are unnecessarily becoming victims. Victims of repeat offenders who have shown that their criminal behavior is given no consequences. They see that because they've been through the system before. Sometimes dozens and some even more than 100 times. And they are allowed out the door, back out onto the streets. New York remains the only state that prevents judges from considering the threat to public safety when making custody determinations. That doesn't serve the next innocent victim. It doesn't serve our officers, and it doesn't serve quality of life. We can and must do better. We always say that public safety is a shared responsibility. It cannot just be the NYPD. We know how to do this. We are continuing to address the needs of New Yorkers. The NYPD is out there helping people, protecting the public, in their homes, in the streets, and on the transit system. We need to do this job together with the right tools and with a focus on our victims. Mayor Adams. Thank you, Commissioner, and thank you to the team of New York City police officers who are doing the right things for our city. It is crucial that the police department and our administration, we have made a clear decision that we are going to give the information to the public and let the public make the decision of the four components of the criminal justice process. Police, judges, prosecutors, lawmakers. They have to operate in unisons. Public safety and justice of this administration's top priority are something that I decided to run on. That is something that I am committed to do as the mayor. They are the alpha and omega of our North Star. It moves us in a direction. And the four components of public safety must do their job to reach that North Star. Is the police department doing its job? Let me change that question mark into an exclamation point. Over arrests have increased by 24% for a total of 109,000 arrests by August 1st of this year. As compared to 87,794 arrests remain during the same period in 2021. Arrest for seven major felonies are up by approximately 29%. Firearm arrests are at a 27-year high. NYPD has taken over 4,300 illegal guns off our streets by the end of July. And the numbers of murders and shootings are down for the year. What's not working are the other three pieces. They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing repeatedly but expect different results. Our criminal justice system is insane. It is dangerous, it is harmful, and it's destroying the fabric of our city. Time and time again, our police officers making arrests and then the person who is arrested for assault, felonious assaults, robberies and gun possessions, they're finding themselves back on the street within days, if not hours after arrest. And they're going to commit more crimes within weeks, if not days. We want to be clear here. This is not merely a reform of laws action and call. Every piece of the criminal justice system must use the tools that are available to them. And this is not attacking some of the needed reforms that we had. This is about a small number of people that are taking advantage of the existing laws to endanger our city. Under the current law, judges are not allowed to consider whether someone is a threat to public safety when deciding whether or not to hold them in custody. This is a big mistake. New York, as the commissioner stated, is the only state in the union that is not unified on the power of public safety as a prerequisite to how we judge these cases. As a result of this insane broken system, our recidivism rates have skyrocketed. And those who say that the predictive wave of recidivism wouldn't happen in the studies that claim to show that the rate of arrest for violent felonies has not changed since the reforms were passed. Have one word for you, wrong. You are wrong. Let's look at the real numbers. In 2022, 25% of the 1,494 people arrested for burglary committed another felony within 60 days. Within 60 days. That's 393 people who did the same. In 2017, however, just 7.7% went on to commit another crime. For grand larceny, in 2022, the 60-day recidivism rate was 16.8%. 310 people compared with just 6.5% in 2017. For grand larceny auto, the rate is 20%, 125 people. In 2022, compared to 10.3% in 2017. Look at that graph, look at that chart. Burglary's almost tripled. Grand larceny, look at the numbers. Grand larceny auto, petty larceny. So from the days of the reforms to where we are now, these numbers are not lying. And it's just a small number of people who are abusing the righteous call for reform. Then when it comes to guns. This year, 2,386 people were arrested with a gun of those approximately 1,921 are out on the street. Rested with a gun, out on the street. Gun arrest in custody, 19.5%. Out of custody, over 80%, over 80% are out on custody. How do you take a gun law seriously when the overwhelming numbers are back on the streets after carrying a gun? This year, 165 people were arrested with a second gun charge of those 82 are out on the street. Not one gun arrest, but two gun arrests back out on the street. In comparison in 2019, we arrested 80 people for a gun crime who had an open gun arrest. And in 2021, the number was 259. In 2019, we arrested 20 people for shooting who had a gun arrest. In 2021, the number was 77. Triple. Between 2020 and 2021, all of New York is arrested and charged with a gun crime. One in four were ultimately re-arrested or at least on at least one occasion following their arrest. The numbers get even worse when it comes to more serious crimes with repeat offenders, numbers in some categories having doubled or tripled since we put in place the call for reform. And let's not forget the everyday New Yorkers. Lost in this entire conversation, I keep saying this over and over again. No one is talking about the victims. No one is talking about the victims. All we hear is how do we ensure those who commit crimes get justice? How do we ensure those who are the victims of crime get justice? Can we have that conversation? And unlike other studies, our analysis does not artificially lower the recidivism rate by counting in low level, one time offenders or by looking at short windows of time to determine whether an individual reoffends. Our analysis focuses on the drivers of crime and the drivers of violence. Sadly, each crime as I say over and over again represents a person. And it's not just about the laws. And I wanna be clear on that. It's about every piece of our criminal justice system. 100% of our system needs to be focused on keeping our children safe. The children who have committed most crimes should not be treated as adults. We said that over and over again. But repeated offenders must be identified and removed from harming other children. There's a real increase in the number of young people who are the victims of some of these crimes. This is not about 90% of the offenders who benefited from the reforms. This is about a small number who are using the reforms to continue to inflict violence on our city. And what's our plan for them? That's the question. No one is talking about that. No one that's making the laws, no one that are sitting on the bench, and no one that should be aggressively prosecuting these cases. When it comes to violent repeat offenders or offenders who have multiple serious arrests, we have a situation that is almost unsustainable. This is unsustainable as a city. And that makes us less safe. It also undermines the morale of our communities and the police department that's sworn to protect them. And I know about proper policing because I fought for proper policing as a police officer and a member of 100 Blacks in law enforcement. We could have safety and justice. They go together. We are going to recognize the progress of the system that reformed our criminal justice system. But we have to be honest about acknowledging how do we go back and make the necessary alterations. Soon as we mentioned those alterations, people believe we are attacking the true reform that was needed. And that is not what we're doing. We have a relatively small group of people who are recidivists and they are exploiting these reforms every day. They're making us unsafe. They're taking advantage of a system that does not adequately account for their criminal records. We acknowledge this and we must adjust to this. That's the only way we're going to deal with this crisis. New Yorkers demand a higher standard for safety and justice. And we're ignoring the calls of New Yorkers. I promise to listen to those calls as we govern the city and as we protect the city. But we cannot do it alone. And that is what we're doing right now. NYPD is doing their job. They're fulfilling their obligation in the criminal justice system. Every other piece of that system must do their job. That is how we move towards a safer, more productive citizen. These repeated offenders are dangerous to our city, they're dangerous to our recovery, and they're dangerous to the children and families of the city. And we need that message to be clear. This is not a battle against those who saw the need to reform a criminal justice system. This is a battle against those who are exploiting those reforms. Our laser focus are on those repeated recidivists dangerous and violent people. That is what we're focusing on. And we cannot turn our backs on New Yorkers as we pursue them. I'll ask Chief McLeod Petru to come up and give some details, please. Good afternoon. So I'd like to build on a little bit what the mayor and the police commissioner talked about when it comes to the drivers of not only crime in New York City, but the drivers of violence in New York City. And make no mistake about it. We focus on the worst of the worst and that is the NYPD's precision policing model. And I will explain what the precision policing model is about and how we do it. In New York City, we've identified 716 individuals, 716 individuals who are responsible for approximately 30% of the shooting incidents since 2021. So I'll say that again. There's approximately 2,400 shooting incidents in New York City since 2021. 716 have been responsible for 30% of those shooting incidents. We know who they are. Each one of those individuals are under investigation. But you know what? Each one of those individuals, 54%, almost 385 today have an open felony. That's 0.008% of the New York City population responsible for 30% of the shootings in New York City over the past year and a half. And it is important to talk about the highest levels of gun arrests in 27 years. But what's even more important is to talk about the quality of gun arrests that the New York City police officer is delivering to the district attorneys and the federal prosecutors throughout New York City. And that is by not mistake, it is with a coordinated effort between those five district attorneys and two federal prosecutors. We are at the lowest levels of decline prosecution when it comes to gun arrests in New York City. That is relentless, precision, evidence-based policing doing the most dangerous job in New York City. When we talk about seven major arrests as the mayor alluded to, 21 year high. When we look at who we're arresting, we are arresting individuals that have been arrested sometimes 100 times since 2020, 100 times. We like to talk about credible messengers. When we work with our social service providers, when we work with Cura Violence, we're working on that credible messenger to deliver the message to the crew member about stop the violence. Well, unfortunately, the credible messenger today in New York City is the crew member that was arrested with a gun yesterday that's out today that's telling that crew, well, look at me, I can carry a gun in New York City and I'm out today talking about it with the individuals or the individuals that continue to account for more than half the shootings in New York City. I like to get into some individuals that have long arrest histories. So we'll talk about recidivist number six. And I just wanna let everybody know that every recidivist that I'm gonna talk about today and it's not gonna be all of them. They all have extensive benchmark history. 10, 11, 12, 14 times they were supposed to go back to court. They never returned. And most of the time a bench warrant isn't even issued. Recidivist number six has an extensive long arrest history going back two decades to 2002. He has 71 career arrests. He's a commercial burglar who targets commercial locations and he continues to target the same locations. 57, five, seven arrests, mostly for burglary, since 2020. He's also convicted predicate felon as most of these individuals are. Most of them have multiple felony convictions and multiple misdemeanor convictions. You know who impacts the most? The community of Manhattan and the Bronx that continue to be victimized by this individual. I'd like to talk about another individuals. We recidivist number one. 101 career arrests. 15 convictions. Three for felonies, two of those violent. 10 misdemeanor convictions. 88 arrests since January 1st of 2020. We all know what January 1st of 2020 was. He's considered a chronic pedilarsiany, grand larceny recidivist. He's hit one location 20 times, the same location 20 times. And again, we're talking about arrests here. We've arrested that individual 100 times. How many crimes do you think he really committed? 200, 300, 1,000? Guess what, there's a victim behind each one of those crimes. We always talk about grand larceny auto, right? It's a crime that we always talk about. You're not just victimizing the owner of that vehicle. What about the family that's dependent on that vehicle to get to school, to get to work, to go to the store? We forget about that. We don't, the NYPD does it, because we've arrested grand larceny individuals. Gave them a desk appearance ticket. They walk out of the precinct station house and guess what? Two blocks away, they stole another vehicle. These are real life stories. This individual I'm talking about, recidivist number one. I'm gonna get to 10, but I'm still on one. He has 14 failures to appear. And guess what? He's walking around the streets of New York City today, probably committing another crime as we speak. And we'll arrest him for it. Recidivist number 10. He's got 63 arrests, including assault on a police officer, as we had another assault on a transit police officer yesterday. Five-time convicted felon. Five-time convicted felon. 13 convictions on misdemeanor. 39 arrests since January of 2000. He is a GLA recidivist. He is a crime wave. And guess what? He's walking around the streets of New York City today, probably committing another crime right now. And hopefully in handcuffs. So again, these are just some of the highlights that the mayor and the police commissioner were talking about. But we are laser-focused on precision. And we will continue, continue to relentlessly arrest the individuals that prey on the most vulnerable New Yorkers. Thank you. I had a conversation with a Senate member, Carl Hasty, who raised his concerns. And I shared the information with him. We're gonna turn over this information and more information. I told him I would turn over some information based on our studies. My chief counsel and deputy mayor Banks, we meet repeatedly with the district attorneys and show them this data and continue to engage. And we're gonna turn over this package to them as well. We want people to see exactly what we're talking about. There was just a study, and this is something that many people don't understand. There was a study that was released that says, well, only 2% of individuals are repeated offenders. Yes, but 2% of what numbers? If you have 2% of thousands of people, you're coming down to a substantial number of repeated offenders. You heard the number that Chief Petrie stated. We're talking about a small handful of New Yorkers that are repeated offenders. And that is what we are continuing to explain to the DAs, our prosecutors, our law makers, that this is not about destroying the reforms that were put in place. This is about going after those small number of people that are exploiting those reforms and they're dangerous. There's specific parts of the legislation we're asking them to modify. And we put it in writing and we're going to continue to communicate that to them. No need to step, no new data. To answer that question directly, yes, we've had a number of conversations about that. But I think we're making a big mistake as the public, particularly the way this is being portrayed. I think there are three areas we're making an error. Number one, that we are attacking reforms that were put in place. Much needed reforms, we're not. Some of the reforms that were put in place was something that was needed. We're specifically going after the dangerous repeated offenders, particularly around gun possession and gun violence. Number two, it's not just what happened in Albany. It is what the other parts of the criminal justice systems are doing. The failure to use the tools that are currently available. And so that is very important. And lastly, I think it's crucial that we are trying to distort this conversation that it is about going after children who commit crimes. That is not what this conversation is about. This conversation is about the small number of dangerous people who are repeated recidivist, who have made up their minds that we could do whatever we want in this city and nothing is going to happen to us. My cards. No, I think Governor Huckle and I are aligned on the public safety issues. We have been in total alignment on public safety is important in spite of what people are tempted to say. Lee, Zeldin and I are aligned at the hip. We must have a broken hip because he clearly doesn't get it. He had voted against all of the responsible gun laws in Congress. He's voted against that. We are not aligned. I'm aligned with Governor Huckle on this issue. That is who I endorse. That's who I support. And that's who I believe is a real partner. Her belief that the judges have the tools they need. Yes, they have tools that they need. They're not using them. They need to use all of their tools, but they need additional tools in the process as well. No, I think it's, and that's why we're going to continue to not only educate the judicial system, but we need to educate our lawmakers so they can have a full understanding of what we're saying and everyone that's involved in this process. The judges have tools that they are not using, but they do need more tools, such as public safety. If public safety is in jeopardy, based on the actions of someone, judges need the tools that 49 other states currently have to make sure that person is not dangerous to our communities. All right, Dana Rose. Yes. Well, first, we're not doing this now. I've stated this over and over again, over and over again. So for anyone that states that, Eric started talking about this conversation now, that is just untrue. The numbers continue to trend in the wrong direction, continue to show that these repeated offenders are coming out. It would be irresponsible of me to ignore what is happening right now on our streets every day. Every day we're seeing these dangerous people repeatedly committing these actions. And so this is not a new conversation for me. This is a conversation that I had over and over again. And dangerousness is important, but we also want to look at several other aspects of allowing dangerous people to continue to carry out these dangerous actions that we're seeing on our streets. But I'm going to say this over and over again, hope that it resonates. It's not just about Albany. It's about prosecutors, prosecuted. It's about our criminal justice system becoming unbottled neck. It's about judges making the right decisions. We keep going back to Albany. No matter how many times I say this, we keep talking about just Albany. Don't let others off the hook for not doing their job. They must use all of their tools that are part of the criminal justice system. The way the police is doing it. The police, they're doing their job. Marshall Crayons here. Yes. No, I differ with that. This is how things happen. Every major change we've had in the history of America came from people not remaining silent. If I just had a press conference when I was running and never talked about this again, we would have not gone back up to Albany and look at the criminal justice reforms. It was that constant drum beat. And that is how change is done. We must continuously educate the public. There's nothing wrong with Ms. Jones who was robbed. There's something wrong with the person that robbed her. There's nothing wrong with the 11-year-old girl that was shot in the head just trying to move through our streets. Something is wrong with the person that shot them. And so what I must do is use the full scope of my powers. One scope is my police department. The city's police department is making arrests. We're at a high. We're taking the guns off the streets. Then I have to use this, this bull pit, to talk about these issues and educate the public so they can reach out to their law makers to be in line with them. And think about this, Marshall. Yesterday we had a congressional debate. Sounded like everyone that was debating at that debate talked about the issues that I'm saying right now. They weren't saying it before, but that's outside my span of responsibility. But what's within my span of responsibility are those judges I appoint. And I'm going to make sure the decision I make of appointing judges is going to be on behalf of the people of this city that our city is safe. All right, I'm gonna take a few more. For gun arrest, Draco, gun arrests are always a bell-eligible offense. As far as the five in a car with one gun, I'm just gonna tell you this. We are at more incidents, more incidents of gun arrest than we've ever been at. So we're arresting more individuals with a gun than five in a car with a gun. And the data that I did give is all gun arrests. So that would include everybody within that car with one gun. But I like to say it again, we are at the highest number of incidents, which shows we're laser focused on the individuals that are carrying the guns. And again, now you're getting away from gun arrest and you're talking about all of it. Okay, so the vast majority of the worst of the worst that I talked about were arrested for non-bell-eligible felonies, right? So only one subdivision of burglary would be bell-eligible, or another subdivision of burglary would not be. As far as grand lossening, grand lossening of an auto, petty lossy, those are non-bell-eligible offenses. There is, but it's not exactly how you're explaining it. I could explain it offline to you. It has to be, you know, a violent felony, a felony move it forward, there's more to it. All right, we're gonna do two more. Bridging, CNN? To empower judges to use utilize public safety as an aspect, gun arrest crimes involving juveniles stay in criminal court. It's very important. And the team will list off for you some other specific alterations that we are requesting. But that is a huge part of this conversation. A judge has a person in front of them who has made up their minds that they're going to be a criminal, a violent criminal. That judge should have a determination on the public safety that we are putting that criminal back into our society. Gina Moore. Hi, Mr. Mayor. Yes. Trust me, I want to, you know, sometimes I don't know why we hire lawyers. You know, they say we can't show the name in faces. So I have to abide by the rules. But people in the public need to see the names and faces of these individuals who are repeatedly creating violence in our community. But I am restricted by the rules of my counsels. Who's it for? Who's the question? I didn't quite understand. Do I believe just locking people up? Part of public safety is sending a message. You know, as chief, the chief just talked about the five people in the car with a gun. You know, that's a new hustle now. You know, hey, I'm carrying a gun. I'm in with five people. Let me leave the gun on the floor so they can't pinpoint it to any one of us. You know, that's the new hustle that's going on. Let me let the young person carry the gun and I'm an adult. This is what we did during the drug trades. And so our goal is to create the right climate. Our goal, we don't want to lock up all New Yorkers. We don't lock up the dangerous people that are among us. You know, people, you have to work really hard to get to Rikers right now. Let's be clear on that. Because of what we have done, if you are on Rikers right now, you didn't steal an apple. You didn't just did a innocent crime. If you are on Rikers, you did something really bad. That is what has happened. Well, if you were to part of their analysis, if they were doing analysis with me while I took office, if you were to do an analysis of how many press conferences I did on crime, and then see how many stories the media wrote without me doing anything else on crime, then the real question is, is the media driving the narrative, not am I driving the narrative? I do press conferences every day just about sometimes to a day. And the subjects of my press conferences have nothing to do with crime. Putting the ferry system in place, that's not a crime. What I did yesterday with the heating and air conditioning, that's not a crime. So it's not that is Eric driving the crime. The real analysis should be, let's look at how many press conferences Eric did on crime, which is an important issue for our city, but look at how much coverage the media is doing on crime, doing analysis of how many front page stories talked about crime in the city. So what's driving the narrative? Is it Eric or is it Bloomberg's LP? Hi, we do a Sony report. Great question. Crisis management team, what we're doing with probation, with youth tool offenders and how we partner them up with almost a mentorship. What we're doing around dyslexia screening, you heard me say over and over again, almost 40% of the inmates are dyslexic. What we're doing with employment, 100,000, first time in history, 100,000 summer youth in jobs, keeping our schools open, 110,000 summer rising. We didn't close the schools. There was a waiting list to do so. What we're doing around paid internship program. Young people that live in shelters, if you grow up in a shelter, you're less likely to graduate from high school. If you don't educate, you're going to incarcerate. There has not been an administration that has been more forward thinking with upstreams way of dealing with preventing crime like this administration. But we have to be intervention right now. Someone is doing a stick up with a gun. I cannot try to convince him not to rob this person. Police got to do their job. And so, yes, we're a big prevention group. My administration is a big prevention and we have some great programs that we have rolled out and we're going to roll out to continue to erode what is creating some of these young people to be criminals. All right, Zach, we'll be our last question. What's up, Zach? We're saying this again and I'm glad you raised that question. This is not an attack on righteous reforms. This is an attack on those who are exploiting the reforms. So leave what's in place for 90% of the people, those first time offenders, they made a bad mistake. I know what it is to make a bad mistake as a child. I made bad mistakes. So let's leave in place of that. Now let's zero in on those 10% that have made up their mind they're going to be repeated offenders. That's all we're saying. Let's alter what you've done. Let's do an analysis and we've done this before. Let's do an analysis of what has been done and go after those who are exploiting the righteous reforms that were put in place. We did this with sex crime offenders. We went back and say, listen, there are folks who are exploiting this. Let's adjust it. So we have to get it right. We're talking about public safety. And when you talk about public safety and justice, you can't be ashamed to say, let's tweak to get what we want to get. No one is arguing with the numbers we've shown. There's a substantial number of repeated offenders who have made up their minds. They are going to offend and they're going to create crimes and carry out crimes in our city. These are the numbers. Before we even took this position, we reached out to our statisticians and we said, show us where we are losing this battle. Are we losing this battle because our police are not working? They said, no. We have an increase in felony dangerous arrest. We have an increase in gun crimes. We have an increase in all of these areas. Here's where we're losing this battle. And that's why we're here. And that's why we're going to continue to push forward on this issue. All right, thank you everyone. Thank you.