Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks at the Cops Office Director's Forum

April 4, 2014

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you so much. I was going to say it was Ron's vision that inspired me. So, I think very fondly back to that meeting and I have to say, I was struck instantly by Ron's expression from the work he had done in California. I think, if I remember, Ron, your origin is in Philadelphia? Yes, so you have both coasts in mind that – I thought you had an extraordinarily clear sense of what we had to do – both to deepen the ties between police and community, but why that was the only path forward that would work in terms of safety in the long term. And I'm just so thrilled that you're able to spread that notion across the nation and that you're someone with such believability because of your own experience – that you can really move people because you've actually played it out and lived it out, so thank you. Let's thank Ron for all he does.

[Applause]

I'm going to be brief, but I've got some people to thank first – Pierre – excuse me, Rose Pierre-Louis – Rose Pierre-Louis, our commissioner of the Mayor's Office to Combat Domestic Violence. I believe she's here with us, and thank you, Rose, for the great work you do; Loretta Lynch, US Attorney for the Eastern District; my fellow mayors who are here from around the country – Mayor John Cranley of Cincinnati and Mayor Steve Benjamin of Columbia, South Carolina. Both wonderful towns I've had the honor of visiting. And I want to thank, of course, Reverend Sharpton, who you're going to hear from in a moment. I'm going to reference him very briefly in my remarks because he's played such a pivotal role in some of the changes that we've made here in New York. I want to thank all of the public servants who are here to be a part of this important discussion. And of course, you're going to hear from our Associate Attorney General Tony West in a moment. His legend is well founded. He's someone who has done a lot to further the notion of a different approach to safety and civil rights. I want to thank him for the great work that he does.

And I have to now say, I – just a moment of humility. I have come to some very strong views on these matters and we're now putting those views into action, but I know who my teachers were, I know who my influencers were. And first and most important was a man I turned to for advice over the last few years – what we should do at our police department, how we should approach a more progressive vision of policing. I liked what he had to say so much I thought, hey, he should be police commissioner – and that's Bill Bratton.

[Laughter]

Who – thank you Bill for –

[Laughter]

I said, I think this guy could do the job.

[Laughter]

It's been an extraordinary pleasure getting to know Bill Bratton over the last few years, learning from him, understanding his extraordinary sense of all that is possible. And boy, talk about taking a vision and putting it into action time and time again. And he's doing it again here in New York City, making this place even safer while deepening – profoundly deepening the tie between police and community.

So, Commissioner Bratton was an extraordinary influence. Jeremy Travis was an extraordinary influence – John Jay College of Criminal Justice. I don't know if Jeremy's with us here today. Yes, okay, there you go. I'm saying nice things not even knowing you're in the room. David Kennedy – it's kind of hard to miss you in the crowd, David.

[Laughter]

Who really helped me – David, I want to thank you publicly – it’s my honor to – helped me to understand what was possible in terms of a proactive approach, connecting with communities, with families, with clergy to change the whole discussion around our young people in particular. And you’ve done that to such great effect around the country. And someone who really helped me from a very human level to understand a lot of these issues, because our children were friends and he slowly but surely started to help me learn about policing while we watched the kids play on the playground or the ball field – that’s Dean Esserman, the chief of police in New Haven. Dean, thank you for all your help and guidance along the way. So, there’s an all-star team of good influences that have gotten me to this point. I want to tell you, I'm thrilled that this conference is here in New York City. I want to welcome you all to it. I want to thank the Ford Foundation for taking a leadership role here. Not surprising, because it's consistent with Ford Foundation's extraordinary history of fostering social change and progressive vision in government, in the civic sector in general. And I think Ford Foundation – I'm just going to have to brag on it for a second because it's one of the jewels in the crown of New York City, and a place where so much good happens that affects the whole country and the whole world, so I'm honored to be here.

Look, let me – let me speak simply about what we're trying to do and why we're trying to do it. And I would say this – and again, I'm lucky because I have all the influences in one room, so I can just liberally borrow from all of them and then claim it was me. That's what we in public life are very good at doing.

So, I think what came to me over the years, and particularly from the grassroots – listening to everyday New Yorkers, understanding what they were feeling about their relationship with the police. By the way, talking to a lot of beat cops and asking them to honestly express themselves about the work they do. Here's what I found time and time again – everyone wanted to work with everyone else. Everyone wanted a bond and a deep connection. Communities saw their futures intertwined with their police officers. Police officers understood how much they wanted and needed a partnership with communities. It was a matter of mutual safety. It was a matter of mutual success and the absence of that connection made a lot of things impossible.

And you know, I often feel that the people lead and the leaders follow. And certainly on the ground in New York City in the last few years, that was quite evident. The people understood that we were starting to lose our way – that a rift had developed between police and community. And it wasn't going to take us where we needed to go – people spoke up.

I remember very vividly – we all know those moments when we sort of have the epiphany, the thing that draws us to an idea. I started to hear more and more about the problem of the overuse of stop and frisk. One day, a very prominent minister from Queens addressed this topic to me. He said, look, I really need you to understand, you have to focus on this. I said, well, Reverend, explain to me the extent of the problem. This was about five years ago – I said, explain what you think is the extent of the problem. He said, let me put it this way – he said, some senior members of my church started raising this issue to me – talking about what was happening to the young people and their families. He said, one of them came to see me to talk to me about it – happened to be a middle-aged African-American man. He said, on the way to come see me at my office at the church, he was stopped by the police and frisked.

And it was stories like that that came to typify for me that it wasn't that the community didn't want to work with the police and the police officers didn't want to work the community, it was that the policy was broken. And we had lost our way and we had to reset. Once you start down the road of resetting, once you open the door to a deeper and more positive relationship between policy and community, extraordinary things happen. And I can tell you, because again, I've heard it over and over from beat cops – when they have that opportunity to work with community members, to have that mutual trust, that mutual respect – what starts to happen? Community members are the first to come forward with information, the first to come forward with that intelligence that the officers need to do their job, the first to help the officers do all that they were professionally trained to do.

We're so proud of our police force here in this city. And the professionalism of this police force is outstanding. And I keep hearing from beat cops that they want to do that which they're trained to do. And they know that requires a partnership with the people they're serving. And every time that door is opened a little more and that becomes a little more possible, everyone benefits.

We had a situation a few weeks back – very troubling moment where an officer – Officer Lee in Brooklyn, in Crown Heights – rookie cop – commissioner, I think about nine months on the job if I remember? He did everything you'd ask of a cop. He acted like someone who'd been on the job for many, many years. Pulled a fare evader off a bus and suddenly found a gun pointed at him – gun fight ensued. Officer Lee did everything his training told him to do – tragically shot. Thank God, he's going to be okay. What happened next? As some police officers pursued the suspect, community members immediately gathered around to help Officer Lee as he was on the ground wounded. Other community members, up ahead, pointed to the officers in pursuit where the perpetrator had gone.

And it was one moment – I don't want to overstate – it was one moment, but it was a moment that really evoked a lot of what I think people in this room understand or trying to build in your parts of the country and all over the country – that kind of sense of we're all in this together, and that there is a mutual need to be there – police for community, community for police.

And I have to say, it gets back to a bigger sensibility. Which is we – we have to deepen our sense of shareholder – stakeholder culture in our society. You know, no one in this room is a stranger to some of the realities we face. It's a society where there's been deepening inequality on many, many levels – obviously, most profoundly, income inequality. It’s a society in which it's not unfair for a lot of people to wonder if they belong and if they have opportunity.

And I think what we all are charged with doing is recreating that notion that everyone is a stakeholder in this society, that everyone has possibility. And for our young people in particular, you can't blame them if they look at the economy and they look at the dynamics of our current life and they wonder if there's anything up ahead for them. You can't blame them if they might tend to lose a little hope. And it's our job to re-instill that hope. And that is in every part of public life, but policing is obviously one of the front line elements of what we in government do. And policing also can be – must be a tool for showing our young people that they count, that they belong, that they are our bright future.

In this city, we had to show young men of color – who will be the majority of the future citizens of this city – we had to show them, that once again, they were our future. We believed in them as our future, as our future leaders, as our future stakeholders. And that meant showing a different, more positive approach in the relationship between police and community.

After I named Commissioner Bratton – and he is brilliant in many ways and one of his most brilliant attributes is the ability to say so much in so few words. And at one of the first events we did together, you said a couple of things, commissioner, that I know resonated all over this city. You said, policing has to be constitutional, respectful, and compassionate. And that alone, sent a word to the vast majority of New Yorkers that we're all in it together. And you said another crucial thing – you said, you can't break the law to enforce the law. And again, that said to everyone there's one set of rules. And when there's actually one set of rules, then you can have that stakeholder culture, you can have that buy-in and that sense that there's possibilities for everyone.

I'll finish just a couple of quick points. The fact is the people spoke on these issues, in this town. It was a very powerful march on Father’s Day a few years ago – a silent march down Fifth Avenue. Reverend Sharpton was one of the great leaders of that effort. And the idea of that march was to talk from the perspective of parents in particular – about our feelings for our young people and our desire for them to know that they mattered. And certainly, to not send the contradictory message that a law-abiding young man of color walking down his own street, going to his own corner store, shouldn’t be stopped and treated like a suspect for a crime he didn’t commit and never would’ve thought of committing. Parents spoke up. I was honored to be there with my children and my wife. And it was something very compelling, because it was people saying this is our town and we want it to be a place where our young people can feel their possibilities – they don’t feel held back.  And as we’ve now been in this role, all of us, the last three months, we’ve also seen – I hope this is a hopeful point you all take with you – we’ve also seen a little bit goes a long way. We’ve shown already in three months that, yes, you can keep driving down crime while repairing the relationship with police and community. The facts are there. The statistics are there. I can only give the greatest thanks to Commissioner Bratton and all the men and women of the NYPD. They do this work so brilliantly but they have proven, already, that the concept of deepening safety while improving police-community relations – that that is a consistent, coherent combination.

And finally I want to say that when we think about building that more unified society, it also comes back, of course, to what we say to our young people about their hopes and possibilities. Taking away a negative – taking away the notion that they might be treated unfairly because of what they look like or who they are – that’s one part of the equation, but the other part of the equation is consistently investing in our young and showing them that there is a path for them. And I always say, if you want to convince someone they matter, you have to visibly invest in them. That’s what really sends the message.

So, here in this town – I’m so honored to say, just in the last few days, we won an extraordinary victory in our state capital, in Albany. We’re now going to have full-day pre-k for every child in this city over the next few years, and then that’s going to be a permanent feature in this city. And something I know a lot of people in this room care about – we’re going to have afterschool programs for every middle school child who wants them. And I think – as I look around the room of great law enforcement professionals and leaders – I think we know that every child – sixth, seventh, eighth graders – and we’re going to go farther than that over time – but every time you take a sixth, seventh, or eighth grader who could be on the street, and might be tempted by a gang or a crew, who might feel like they don’t have possibilities, and instead, you surround them with warmth and support. You have them in a safe, secure place. They’re getting tutoring. They’re getting homework help. They’re getting arts and culture. They’re getting recreation. One thing I learned long ago – the biggest supporters of afterschool are law enforcement professionals, because they understand the multiplier effect. And every kid that’s in that positive setting is one more kid on the right path – one less kid that you have to deal with in ways you wish you wouldn’t. And we’re committed to that path here. So, it’s early in our journey and commissioner and I have a running joke, that whenever we’re talking about any public matter, he always says to use the word preliminary. So, we have preliminary results, commissioner. I’ve been taking notes. We have preliminary results, but hopeful results that encourage us in the notion that those investments in our young people – that supportive, positive relationship between police and community can yield extraordinary results going forward. I can feel it – I can feel it when I talk to the people of this city. I talk to so many community leaders in the last few weeks – I said this to Commissioner Bratton – something he should be proud of, something all the leaders of the NYPD should be proud of. I talked to community leaders of all kinds and all communities, and let me assure you of one thing, there is no such thing as a shy New Yorker. There is no such thing as a New Yorker who does not have a strong opinion. So, if they felt we were on the wrong path, commissioner, they would let us know and I think we can agree on that statement. But what I hear from people is they appreciate the changes that are happening. They appreciate the sense of progress and possibility. They believe it will be lasting. And they believe it will make it a better city for all of us. And I hope that our small example here can be helpful to everyone around this table as you build a better society all over this country. Thank you so much.