Remarks, as Prepared for Delivery, by Police Commissioner Dermot Shea at the New York City Police Foundation's State of the NYPD Breakfast

January 29, 2020

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for being here. Andrew Tisch – thank you for that warm introduction. For years, you've been a great friend to the men and women of the New York City Police Department. The NYPD and the Police Foundation depend on you, just as we rely heavily on the Foundation staff, and the leadership of President and CEO Susan Birnbaum and Executive Director Gregg Roberts. So, thank you Andrew, Susan, and Gregg.

Thank you, also, to the Board of Trustees, and to Vice Chairman Ben Winter, who is not just a true friend to the NYPD, but is the Police Foundation's honoree at this year's annual Gala on April 30th. And, especially, thank you to each of you, the Foundation's generous supporters, for joining us here this morning and for being invaluable partners in our ongoing mission to make our great city even safer.

The collaboration between the NYPD and the Police Foundation has proven effective for nearly half a century now, and our work has ushered in an era of unprecedented public safety in New York City. By making our city's security a priority, all of you have played a vital role in this success, and every New Yorker is grateful for you. In addition to an incredible NYPD executive staff, many of whom are here this morning, actually, NYPD executive staff, please stand up. You deserve so much recognition.

Also joining us are some of our strongest law-enforcement partners: U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District Richard Donoghue, Bill Sweeney, head of the FBI's New York Field Office, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, and Bridget Brennan, the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for New York City. Thank you all for being here.

Right at the outset, I want to talk about those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their fellow New Yorkers. We lost Detectives Brian Mulkeen and Brian Simonsen last year in the Bronx and Queens, respectively. Both were killed while doing exactly what we asked of them and that was keeping people safe. Their service, what they did for this city and its people, and what all of our line-of-duty families continue to endure will never, ever be forgotten by any of us. And that absolutely includes our other heroes, also: The active or retired officers who it seems nearly every day, unfortunately are still getting sick and, in some cases, dying from 9/11-related illnesses, nearly 19 years after the fact. I can tell you that after each tragic loss, the NYPD seeks to learn and evolve so that we can effectively, efficiently, and safely move forward with our vital work.

And, with the Police Foundation's help, we often have tangible ways to demonstrate our progress like last month's roll-out of 550 lightweight ballistic vests for our Detective Bureau members. These new vests can comfortably be worn over a shirt and tie unlike patrol vests, which are traditionally worn under a uniform. These will undoubtedly help save lives by ensuring that the greatest detectives in the world are well-protected out in the field. And I'll remind everyone that it was the Police Foundation that provided the very first bullet-resistant vests to the NYPD, back in 1972.

More recently, the Foundation enabled us to acquire and train Explosive Detection Canines, funded our Crime Stoppers and Gun Stop rewards programs, and supported scholarships and professional-development awards. The Foundation is also behind our International Liaison Program, which places seasoned NYPD investigators with law-enforcement agencies in more than a dozen cities around the globe. It's about information-sharing, and it enables the NYPD to react here in New York City to situations that are unfolding in real-time, anywhere else in the world.

Importantly, in the wake of NYPD suicides last year and our ongoing efforts to improve access to mental-health and other types of counseling and assistance, the Foundation also supports "Finest Care," which is a collaboration between the NYPD and New York-Presbyterian Hospital that connects cops with free, confidential services. It's an initiative built upon the "COPE" program, spearheaded by the Foundation after the September 11th terrorist attacks. And, as Andrew mentioned earlier, a completely unique idea launched 12 months ago with Foundation money uses virtual-reality technology to teach young people emotional intelligence and sound decision-making skills.

You probably saw the cops and kids in the lobby using the virtual-reality headsets – the program is called "Options," and it realistically explores the relationships between police officers and youth on the street. Impressively, each video game-like scenario was written and acted out by the kids. In the year that "Options" has been up and running, more than 5,000 young people throughout the five boroughs have gone through it, and more than 300 NYPD members are trained to teach it.

Without a doubt, we're all learning from one another, and the NYPD is building trust and strengthening the relationships that are so incredibly important to the future of this city. It's really just old-fashioned communication greatly enhanced by cutting-edge technology. Let's hear from some of the people involved.

I want to say thank you and truly outstanding work to all the kids who are helping the NYPD with this important program. Some of them are here this morning, at a few tables. Please stand up and be recognized. Incredible stuff – engaged, highly-intelligent young people. That's how we're moving forward as a city.

Indeed, 2020 presents an entirely new possibility for us. It's now possible to think about how we can equip and enable our cops to help kids avoid a first interaction with the criminal-justice system. In fact, I think that everyone who works in criminal justice in New York City is acutely aware of the importance of dealing effectively with our youth. The teen years are the vulnerable years both for the young people likely to be victimized by crimes, and the young people likely to commit them. Sometimes, kids fall into both categories.

I can tell you that from police records, we can chart a course in many young lives. From children exposed to domestic violence, homelessness, trauma, and other abuse to the same children, a few years older, turning to robbery and other street crimes, and gang violence, or kids who flee abusive homes to wind up in the clutches of human traffickers. At the police department, we encounter some very troubled teens. Sometimes you have to ask yourself: "How is it even possible that we are re-arresting a 16-year-old who has 20 prior arrests?" You also have to ask: "Are we doing everything in our power to prevent another kid from making the same self-destructive choices?" I think the answer to that last question is, largely: "No." We can do far better both within the NYPD, and in coordination with a range of city agencies and community-based organizations.

That's what the NYPD's new youth strategy is all about: drawing on our talented, committed personnel, and on the accumulated previous encounters with these young people, to make a lasting and positive difference in their lives. At the same time, we will establish and institutionalize far closer cooperation with our law-enforcement partners and community-based service organizations, to identify the opportunities for intervention with young people early in the progression that risks turning them into criminals.

Here's what I know for sure: One: We have the information. We can identify these kids and assist them early in their downward trajectories. Two: We have the services. By and large, we don't have to reinvent programs that reach out to and engage young people, but we do have to connect the programs better with the kids who really need them. And three: We have the people. There are cops throughout the police department who will jump at the chance to work more effectively with young people. And there are experts working in our partner agencies who care passionately about young people, as well.

What we have to do is organize and focus all of these resources so that a troubled kid doesn't go from 12 years old to 18 years old without us ever intervening in a life going wrong. The first step is to redefine what our NYPD youth officers do. We're establishing a new role in all of our precincts and Housing Bureau police service areas on the model of our Neighborhood Coordination Officers, called the Youth Coordination Officer, or YCO. As the title implies, YCOs will play a critical coordinating role, maintaining awareness of troubled youth, and connecting better and sooner with them. They also will coordinate with the other cops in the precinct and with city agencies and local community-service groups that have a stake in improved youth outcomes which, I would say, is everyone. There are really three groups of young people we have to reach.

The first is the group that's already far along on the path to career criminality. Most people don't realize that there are 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds in our city with lengthy criminal records. As it's currently set up, the criminal-justice system doesn't do much to deter them, or to help them, either. We want to change that with a better-informed and much more vigorous system of intervention. Our YCOs will be fully conversant with each precinct's most-troubled youth, helping to guide the appropriate criminal sanctions and social-service interventions in each case. Any success we have with these more-difficult cases will begin with a thorough knowledge of who each one of these young people is, what they have done, and what we can do to help them.

The second group is the young people who are beginning to drift into criminal activity: shoplifting, stealing from other kids on the street, brawling with rival groups, and committing other, mostly-petty crimes. As I've already said, many of them come from troubled homes and are being shaped by domestic violence and other stresses. For these kids, we have to bring the full capacities of our social support and service networks into play. That isn't happening as much as it should be now. The YCOs will be the nexus of this effort, identifying the kids on the cusp of crime, finding the right programs, and making the critical connections.

The third group is the large majority of young people who aren't committing crimes at all. In fact, some of them might even end up as victims. We should be engaging with them too, partly because it's the right thing to do, but also because without hope, today's victims can be tomorrow's offenders. We are determined to breathe new life into programs all across the city. Everybody, every city agency, every faith or community-based organization, everybody has programs. And our new Youth Coordination Officers will be the force multipliers who bring people together, citywide. We must bring everyone to the table to lock arms.

To shepherd all of this for the NYPD is a person with a proven track record of cultivating strong partnerships between community leaders, law enforcement, and other government agencies. We created a new position on our leadership team for this: Deputy Commissioner for Community Partnerships. For those who haven't already met him, let me introduce: Chauncey Parker. Please stand up, Chauncey. Chauncey is spearheading our youth-strategy efforts, identifying new and stronger opportunities for public and private partnerships, and working closely with other city agencies to help us build trust and strengthen relationships in every neighborhood. As such, he's overseeing a few important areas: the NYPD Community Affairs Bureau, our Office of Collaborative Policing, and a new Youth Strategies Unit. Chauncey understands that public safety is a mission everyone must share in, and he'll absolutely help take Neighborhood Policing to the next level.

The NYPD, as you know, already tracks crime, and detects crime patterns, in ways that are second-to-none among the other police departments on Earth. And we know that our new youth strategy is a real step forward, also, that will allow us to measure in some manner crime prevention. To measure assists, if you will: crimes that did not happen, lives that did not end, families that were kept intact because young people were helped every step of the way.

Our city will always face challenges. Some are long-standing. Although crime has declined across all neighborhoods over the past quarter-century, there are still precincts where the rates of violent crime are more than twice as high as the city's rate as a whole. Just in the past six years, though, we've seen a decline of 14.4 percent in overall index crime, citywide, led by a 30.2 percent decline in robbery, and 38.4 percent decline in burglary.

New York City has easily sustained its ranking as the city with the lowest overall crime rate among the 25 largest cities in the nation. Contemporaneous with these crime declines were parallel and huge declines in police-enforcement actions as we sought to direct our enforcement less on minor offenses, and more on the drivers of serious crime, especially violent crime.

Since 2013, arrests have declined by 46.6 percent, and criminal summonses by 79.7 percent. The NYPD has been focusing on the main drivers of violence in this city, the relatively small number of people responsible for the majority of the crime. And when you have precision policing accomplishing the lowest crime levels that we've ever seen in New York City and, at the same time, we've got the lowest arrest levels, that's a very good thing.

Let me be clear: The NYPD supports many parts of the series of criminal-justice reforms passed as part of the state budget last April, which went into effect January 1st. Precision policing relies on, among other things, protecting the public from repeat and dangerous criminals, cultivating and protecting witnesses and victims, and maintaining the integrity of longer-term criminal investigations. Above all else, and I'll repeat it: Let us never forget about the victims. And so, we're going to work with Albany to make modifications to the laws, to make the reforms fairer for all New Yorkers.

We have some serious challenges ahead of us, to be sure. And our hope is that our youth strategy will be a major factor in sustaining and improving upon the incredible results NYPD cops have achieved over the years on behalf of all New Yorkers. Through all of this, NYPD cops show up each day, put on their uniforms, and go about the critical and often very dangerous business of keeping people safe. Every day and night around the five boroughs, guns are taken off the street that will never again be used to threaten or harm another person. Our Neighborhood Coordination Officers work hand-in-hand with the community to identify and solve problems at the most local of levels. Detectives provide closure to families by meticulously investigating and tracking down the person responsible for hurting or killing their loved one. And patrol cops monitor alerts on their department-issued smartphones and, using keen observation skills and an ardent sense of public safety, bring violent criminals to justice.

Such was the case in late December, when officers from the 32nd Precinct in Harlem spotted the man wanted for carrying out the atrocious Hanukkah attack in Monsey, New York. Calm and professional in the face of danger, the two cops removed the man from his car at gunpoint, and took him into custody. That suspect is now facing state charges of attempted murder and burglary, and multiple federal hate-crime charges. But, I'll tell you: We wouldn't have known he was even in New York City if not for our license-plate readers that triggered an alert for the wanted vehicle. Our Domain Awareness System tracked him to the Bronx and back into Manhattan where NYPD video cameras recorded his movements, and body-worn cameras recorded his arrest.

Jessie Tisch was the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology who developed these systems from their infancy to where we are today. She's now commissioner for technology for the whole city, but we should certainly acknowledge her for what she contributed to us.

So, all of that same, incredible technology helps every NYPD cop fight crime, even if it has to be from home, or a hospital room. I'm talking about Police Officer Ross Dichter, who is, right now, battling a particularly aggressive form of cancer. Amazingly, he insists on keeping busy by continuing to crunch numbers as part of his crime-analysis duties. So, on any given day at home, and even during his weekly treatments at Sloan Kettering, you'll find Officer Dichter remotely logged onto his NYPD laptop, if he's not already on the phone with a precinct commander discussing crime patterns. In fact, I bet he's working on something like that right now – let's check in on him.

I can't think of a better way to portray the remarkable dedication to service NYPD cops possess. This is their calling, and they owe it to every single New Yorker. But this job can only be accomplished in partnership with the rest of the city, inside and outside government. The nearly five-decade partnership between the NYPD and the New York City Police Foundation is an example of all the partnerships we must now bring to full fruition. How we get there is how we take Neighborhood Policing to the next level in New York.

That means continuing to fight, in partnership, for every block, in every neighborhood, every day. And the question is: what can each of us do to advance this noble effort? New York needs everybody in this room and beyond, throughout the five boroughs to share the responsibility. Crime, fear, and disorder are not just police problems. New York needs all of our ideas, and all of our actions now. And that goes for the entire public safety spectrum, from traditional crime to terrorism, to the seedbed-activities that can draw the young into lives of crime.

Our aim is to keep raising the bar for fair and effective policing in this country year after year, again and again. And we're doing it with the help of New Yorkers in every neighborhood, and with the Police Foundation's support at every turn. Again, I commend you for your investment in public safety, the many innovations you have funded, and your commitment to the NYPD's core mission. And I ask you to continue to think of ways that together we can make every corner of our city as safe as our safest neighborhoods already are today. Thank you for your time and attention this morning, and I'm happy to take your questions.

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