Transcript: Mayor Adams Makes Public Safety-Related Announcement with NYPD Commissioner Sewell

March 30, 2023

Deputy Mayor Philip Banks III, Public Safety: Good morning. I'm joined here today by Mayor Eric Adams, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell. We also have with us Inspector Victoria Perry, the executive officer of the Community Affairs Bureau, Lieutenant Spiro Papavlasopoulos, who is the commanding officer of the NYPD's Crime Prevention Division, and Detective Tom Kelly from the NYPD's Auto Crime Unit.

We are here today to sound the alarm on a very concerning trend that is driving up car thefts, not only in New York City, but across the nation. It's a trend that's being popularized on social media, and it involves Hyundai and Kia vehicles, like the ones you see behind us during very specific years. The mayor and the police commissioner will provide more details in a moment on how the scheme works, which cars are vulnerable to this type of threat, and most importantly what the city is doing about it and what members of the public can do about it.

So our message today is we are aware of these thefts, the NYPD and the city is doing what we are doing to apprehend these car thieves and to prevent these car thefts, and we are making sure that the vehicle owners are aware of what they need to do to assist us. And together we can put an end to this. Now I just want to note that it’s just stealing vehicles, it's not about joyriding. It's not a victimless crime. It has other ramifications. It's very important we can curb this, and as a city we certainly will. Right now I would like to introduce the mayor of the City of New York, Mayor Eric Adams.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you so much, deputy mayor, and thanks to the commissioner who brought this trend to the administration's attention, and this just really emphasizes my continuous call of the responsible behavior of social media and what social media is doing to a generation of our children. Just yesterday we had young people who climbed to the top of one of our bridges and they were noticed taking photos. The challenges that you see on social media is creating challenges for parents to raise children in a proper environment, and many of these challenges are spreading throughout our country. This challenge in particular with Kia and Hyundai, we see it as not only stealing a vehicle, but it's stealing the future of young people. When you are arrested for a grand larceny auto, it is a felony. It remains on your record, it impacts your life in a real way. And in some of these cases, the vehicles are being used in crimes.

When we continue the pursuit to have this city stay as the safest big city in America, we don't need social media to contribute to social disorder. These two vehicles here, both we need the corporation, the car manufacturers to put in anti-theft measures. It could actually be done by returning to the auto dealers so that they can improve on the anti-theft measures, but we also need to educate the public, and that's what we want to do on what they can do to ensure that these vehicles are not stolen. And we want parents to play an active role in these types of social media challenges, that particularly, we want to emphasize many of them are coming on TikTok. And I've discussed this over and over again, I need my social media companies to play a more active role on how we don't put out dangerous social media challenges like this.

It starts out as a joyride. Some of these vehicles are abandoned. Some of them are used in crimes, additional crimes. But grand larceny auto, that crime in particular is driving up some of the increases that we see. And the commissioner will go into the exact numbers. So as we continue to decrease crime and move crime in the right direction, we don't need aggravating factors such as what we're seeing in the social media challenge of this magnitude. It started in another city, it spread across our entire country, and landed here in New York. Some of the juvenile behaviors that we witnessed in yester-years would stay localized, but now with social media, it can spread throughout the country at such a fast pace, and it impacts cities in a real way.

Stealing a car, going on a joyride, speeding through the streets, that is not a game. That is a dangerous way for young people to carry out the activities that young people have done for so many years. But this is a major concern for us, and that's why we're taking out today to talk about the crime that's attached to it and what we can do as a city, what parents can do, what young people can do, what car dealers can do, and most importantly, what social media must start doing and not continue to promote behaviors that would impact the lives of our children. I want to now turn it over to the commissioner and I want to thank her for bringing this to our attention based on her crime analysis team and seeing the patterns of these grand larceny autos in general, but particularly for these two vehicles, Hyundai and Kia.

Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, deputy mayor. Before I begin on this issue, I would just ask the media's assistance to amplify a message to the public. Yesterday we have a 16-year-old autistic, nonverbal male who is missing from the vicinity of St. Patrick's Cathedral. He is visiting here with his parents from California and he was separated from his family. We need him to be located. I'm going to hold up his picture, but you can also go on NYPD News to see the picture and the missing person flier. Please amplify this message. Please look at the picture. He is 16 years old. Again, he is non-verbal and autistic. His name is Connor Lian, but as I understand it, he answers to the name of Red. So if you see Red or you know where he has been, please contact your local precinct or 911 immediately.

As the mayor stated, today we are highlighting an issue that impacts people not just in our city, but is an increasing problem across our country. Viral social media videos from last year demonstrated how quickly and easily certain Kia and Hyundai models can be stolen. As a result, Kia and Hyundai thefts rose rapidly in communities nationwide, including here in New York City. In response, the NYPD took immediate steps to educate the public about the problem and to provide New Yorkers with resources to address it. And there are further measures that every vehicle owner can take to prevent auto theft: use a steering wheel locking device, always turn off the ignition and remove the keys when leaving your vehicle, close and lock all windows and doors, activate your vehicle's alarm system, and park in high traffic, well lit areas whenever possible. In addition, we want to stress along with the mayor that Kia and Hyundai offer free software upgrades to anyone who owns an affected model.

So please, if you have any of these model vehicles, contact the manufacturer or dealership to get this free software upgrade as soon as possible. For the NYPD's part, our Auto Crime Division, Detective Bureau, Crime Prevention Division, Community Outreach Division, and local precinct officers are all focused on this issue. We deploy our personnel to areas of increased auto theft, enroll community members and anti-theft programs like our catalytic converter etching program, and investigate every incident. There is no such thing as a victimless crime, as the mayor said, and anyone who steals a vehicle in New York City will be pursued, arrested, and held accountable. That's our job, but we know we cannot do it alone. Our neighborhoods are made safer, our communities grow when we work together. So New Yorkers, this is no exception. Be vigilant, and if you see any suspicious activity, call 911 or your local precinct. And now we'll take some questions.

Question: Mr. Mayor, do you support efforts by federal lawmakers to potentially ban TikTok in light of this?

Mayor Adams: I think that it is imperative for Congress and the federal lawmakers to do a deep dive and come up with the right way to monitor social media, not only TikTok, but all of our social media platforms. I've talked about this over and over again and I am surprised that it took this long before we did a real deep dive into how social media is impacting our children, the level of sites that promote depression, sites that promote these challenges. This is not the first challenge that we've witnessed that we saw crossover. My feeling about those types of drill music that promoted violence, social media has altered the impact on the lives of our children. So I'm happy that they're looking at it, but it's not only TikTok. We need to do a deep dive in all social media and see what should be placed out there in the universe for our children to look at.

Question: Yeah, Tom [inaudible]. Do you have any information about how many cars have been stolen in New York City, what the locations are, stats?

Police Commissioner Sewell: So chiefly we're seeing the greatest numbers in the Bronx, but Northern Manhattan is also seeing a rise as well. Last year, probably around September is when we started to see the trend hit New York City. Before then, we were averaging probably 10 to 12 thefts of these cars a month. And by December we were up to about a hundred.

Question: To pick up on Tom's question, do you know how many of these impacted vehicles are registered in the city? How many owners it conceivably impacts?

Police Commissioner Sewell: Well, for the most part, most of the vehicles that we've seen have been registered in New York City, so those numbers are consistent with what we're seeing as the stolen numbers.

Question: You don't know how many that are impacted are currently registered in New York, how many this would affect?

Police Commissioner Sewell: I don't have that exact number, but any one of them that are in New York City obviously are what we're concerned about.

Question: Commissioner and mayor, my question is, do you know whether these vehicles are being used in the commissions of crime or is it just because it's the challenge of trying to steal the car, or is it both?

Police Commissioner Sewell: So for the most part, we're finding them abandoned. We believe teenagers are stealing them based on the video for joyriding, but we cannot ignore the fact there's a possibility they are being used in the commission of a crime. Obviously the stealing of them themselves is the crime, but there's a more dangerous crime that can happen down the road that we want to prevent.

Question: Commissioner, could you kindly tell us whether this trend is more prevalent in New York City or whether when you talk to your contemporaries, it began somewhere else in the country?

Police Commissioner Sewell: It's absolutely a nationwide trend.

Mayor Adams: What the commissioner stated, and that's the dangers of social media. You no longer localize the problem. This social media spreads so rapidly, and that's why it is happening on the federal level. We must address, to see how do we address social media. And when you look at that simple charging cable that we use to charge our phone devices now could be used to start a vehicle, to start a car. So this technology is moving extremely in a rapid pace and the police agencies across the country are making a valid attempt to keep up with it, but what's advertised today on social media can get two million views and it can crisscross the country at such a rapid pace. And we've never witnessed this historically.

It impacts our young people, and now we're seeing a crime like this. These vehicles can be used in vehicle crashes where people are injured. It could be used in robberies, it can be used in other larcenies. And that's why we're really zeroed in on this. And then I want to thank the crime analysis section of the New York City Police Department for bringing this up to our attention so we could bring it to the attention of the major networks.

Question: This question is for the police commissioner. Does the NYPD, do they investigate… I know obviously you have the data on the cars abandoned, but do you use TikTok, does the NYPD scour TikTok itself to investigate… Maybe see videos to get clues about maybe there's groups of people doing this, or I don't know if you want to talk about that if they do have some, I don't know if it's cyber crimes or whatever it is.

Police Commissioner Sewell: Well, we use all avenues to conduct an investigation. Social media is absolutely in our toolkit to investigate these, but mainly we use TikTok for community engagement, but if there is some information on TikTok that can help us solve these crimes or prevent them, we certainly will use it.

Question: So are you like looking at the videos and then maybe saying, all right, this is here, maybe we could ... the challenge videos, because if this is what it's stemming from, I don't know if you're using and watching these videos as part of the investigation.

Police Commissioner Sewell: Yes, we do use the videos as part of the investigation. So we have to know what the methods are and what they're using and how they do it so we can stop it.

Question: These cars are abandoned. How are you able to find out who actually stole them? And have you charged any people, how many people have been charged with stealing these cars?

Police Commissioner Sewell: I can actually turn that over to the auto crimes unit for investigation. Could you hear the question? I'm sorry. She wants to know when they're abandoned, what are you doing for the investigation?

Question: They're actually stealing the car, so how many people have actually been arrested and charged with grand larceny auto for stealing Kias and Hyundais?

Detective Thomas Kelly, Auto Crime Unit, Police Department: So far this year, I believe we've made 109 arrests for Kias and Hyundais up until March 26th, as of last Sunday. As with any recovered stolen vehicle, if the conditions are right, we'll request our evidence collection team, they'll dust for fingerprints in the commonly touched areas. Between that and video canvassing, those are our best bets with recovered stolen cars.

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