Governor Hochul: “To bring down crime once and for all, we need to invest in programs that stop gun violence. We need to put more police on the streets. We need to invest in mental health... I believe that a multifaceted approach is necessary over time, will keep making a difference, but for now, my focus is on simply keeping New Yorkers safe and secure.”

Hochul: “This is a model for the rest of the nation. I'm proud of that. But the best model for me is when we finally drive the numbers down exponentially, and we're on path to do that.”

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced decreases in gun violence in Rochester last year and outlined her Fiscal Year 2024 Executive Budget proposals, which include more than $20 million for public safety initiatives in the City of Rochester and Monroe County to further drive down crime, reduce recidivism and strengthen the community. Data from the Rochester Police Department show a 13 percent reduction in shooting incidents with injury -- from 350 to 303 shootings -- comparing last year to 2021. Data also shows that murders were down 11 percent during the same period. There were also 67 fewer individuals injured by gunfire – from 419 to 352 individuals -- when comparing 2022 to 2021. Those declines continued through the first eight weeks of this year, with 14 fewer shooting incidents involving injury, a 42 percent reduction, and 20 fewer people injured by gunfire, a decrease of 51 percent, when compared to the same timeframe in 2022. Governor Hochul outlined the data during an event this morning at the Boys and Girls Club of Rochester, where she also announced $2 million in new state funding to community-based organizations through Project RISE and a $112,000 grant for upgrades to the club’s teen center.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Thank you. Thank you everyone. My friends, waving from the back, I’m delighted to be here. First of all, I want to acknowledge some of the individuals who’ve joined us, we have an extraordinary leader in Albany representing this area, and I want to thank Senator Jeremy Cooney for putting public safety front and center of his agenda, and you'll be hearing from him in a couple minutes.

Let's give a round of applause to Senator Cooney. Our County Executive has joined us, Adam Bello always advocating for his county as he just tackled me in the hallway and asked for more money. We also have our Mayor, who I'll be introducing in a couple moments, but Malik Evans, I want to thank you for stepping up in a tough, tough situation. We know you love this city. Your passion is so obvious, but you've been on the job a short time, as have I, and you've just really seized and embraced the challenges. And I thank you for all you've done. I thank you for all you've done too.

Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley has joined us. Thank you for being an important part of the conversation on keeping our community safe. Richard Allen, the Deputy Superintendent of Field Command for the New York State Police has joined us. Thank you very much for our State Police. Todd Baxter, the Sheriff from Monroe County is here, Sheriff Baxter. Thank you.

Our Chief of Police for the Rochester Police Department. David Smith is here. Thank you, Chief Smith. We also have John DeVito, the Special Agent in Charge of the ATF for all of New York State. John DeVito. Thank you. Thank you for all you do. We have Bob Duffy, the President and CEO of the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce, Bob Duffy, thank you.

Mark Troutman, the University of Rochester Medicine CEO of Rochester University Hospital. Thank you for joining us as well. Dwayne Mahoney, the Director of the Boys and Girls Club of Rochester. Where are you, Dwayne? Where'd you go Dwayne?

He is also known as a semi-pro ping pong player. I just met him in the hallway. Alright, rematch, I promise a rematch. Also, we have representatives from the U.S. Marshals, our U.S. Marshals, the U.S. Attorney's Office. Again, the FBI is here. An extraordinary group of people just came together as we met and talked about something that's been front and center since the beginning of my term as Governor – how we make our streets safer.

And to get together here, I want to talk a little bit about some of the historic investments we're making in our budget, because you have to put funding behind the initiatives. And also, you know, since we're in this place, I want to talk about what happens in communities – and a place like this Boys and Girls Club, since 1971 has been a safe haven for young people to come to and escape the streets and have a place where adults care about them so deeply.

And so, I want to thank them for hosting us as we work and talk about progress we’ve made in driving down gun violence, but also restoring people's confidence. And we just had a roundtable, and it was not the first time we've gathered, it's the first time we did it in person, but we've had too many shootings, too much heartbreak and too many murders in this community. And from 2019 to 2021, shootings were up in this community, 123 percent and murders were up 165 percent just in that two-year timeframe.

But what else happened during that timeframe? We experienced a global pandemic and literally, all that sense of security and normalcy was literally wiped out. And sociologists, years from now, can figure out exactly why this led to a spike in crime. I just have to deal with the fact that there was a dramatic spike in crime, not just in Rochester, not just in New York State, but all across the nation. And that is a statement of fact, but we don't sit back. We engage, we bring people together in a pursuit of solutions. So last July when the numbers were so frightening and people were afraid to walk the streets, and businesses were concerned about whether they should even stay in our city, I brought together the people I announced here. And at the time, our brand-new then, U.S. Attorney, Trini Ross, who couldn't be with us here today, she came here as well and worked with local law enforcement, state law enforcement. All the partners I talked about, we got together and said, “Something has to give here. What can be done differently?”

And I know from my husband's role as U.S. Attorney under Barack Obama, before that lifelong prosecutor, much of his work done here in Rochester, we also knew that there's natural silos that are created between different entities. You’ve got the U.S. Attorney's Office, you’ve got the District Attorney's Office, you have the Marshals’ Office, you have the Sheriff's office, you have local police, you have ATF, FBI, you have everything. And everybody has a role to play, and they have people that are looking to make sure they perform those roles, but there's never been any model that says, “Why are you all doing your work over here when the community is experiencing a crime wave of epic proportions? They need you to work together as one team.” One team. That's our slogan for the Buffalo Bills, isn't it? One team.

And so that's what I'm so proud of that happened right here in this community. Leaders of all these different diverse entities who have different roles played, came together and said, “How can we share information? How can we work together? How can we make a decision about whether a case should be prosecuted by the State, the District Attorney or by the federal government?” And those conversations began, and that was the beginning of something spectacular that John DeVito, who has seen it all, 24 years at ATF, said that this is a model for the rest of the nation. I'm proud of that. But the best model for me is when we finally drive the numbers down exponentially, and we're on path to do that. Not there yet, but we definitely have reversed the trend from what we saw just last summer.

Again, we met in July, we met in August, I think people weren't sure I was going to show up again. I said, “I need to know that you're making progress. I’ve got to stay on top of these.” And so, I also directed our State Police to get very involved. I know what the State Police is capable of. I’ve spent a lot of time with our State Police. I knew that they could actually be eyes and ears and hands on the ground, boots on the ground to help a city that needed our help at that time. So, I said to the Mayor, “I'll give you police officers. I'll give you State Police on the ground.” And they made sure – we made sure that Rochester had what it needed. And I would say this coordination, this effort, this boots on the ground, this willingness to this pull together has now resulted in something which could have been a very different outcome. We just saw our data from 2022. Shootings are now down 13 percent, murders down 11 percent. And this year, just looking in the last two months, 2023 – in 2022, in comparison, we had 39 people shot in the City of Rochester in that two-month period alone last year. So far that number is now 19. Nineteen too many, but the trend has been reversed. So, all of these have a ripple effect.

I'm not telling anyone that it's over, we should feel safe now. But my God, we could have been talking about the numbers going up another 100 percent or 120 percent, 165 percent – and they're coming down. And I want to thank everyone. Let's give a round of applause to all the people I mentioned who are out there every single day, some literally in harm's way on our streets, to make sure that we can sleep safely in our beds and night. Let's give all the members of law enforcement a round of applause.

You think about the effect of crime on communities as well. I look at everything from hospital admissions. I mean this number of cases; this means that there's a lot of people who are shooting victims. They show up in our emergency rooms – already overcrowded, already overstressed from what happened during the pandemic. And now we have even more people in life-threatening situations that compel the individuals in these emergency rooms to drop everything on a late Saturday night and respond to the next shooting victim in time for the next one to come after that and the one after that.

So, we also have to look at our emergency room capacity, and I'm very proud to announce here today, and you heard about it last week perhaps, but I'm going to go visit shortly, $50 million to help construct a $640 million new emergency room department at Strong Memorial Hospital. We're going to be tripling the size of the emergency room, as well as this will be the largest construction project in Rochester's history. So, that's what we're going to do. My prayer is that they don't need the emergency room for shooting victims. They'll be able to take care of everyone else who needs their outstanding care, and I'm focused on transforming our whole delivery system of health care. So, congratulations to the University of Rochester and Mark Troutman for this amazing announcement.

But also, I think about the effect on, as I mentioned, children, communities. It's not just a shooting victim's, younger or older siblings. It's also the perpetrator’s family members. Think about what that does when your older brother – you know, you're 10 years old and your brother's hauled off being accused of a homicide. I mean, that's about as traumatic as it gets for a child. And we have too many children who've been exposed to this in our cities, in places like Rochester and Buffalo, Syracuse, New York City, Albany.

And so, I think about, again, this organization, the Boys and Girls Club, how important this is. So, in order to keep your work going right here as this oasis for children, we're announcing today $112,000 for renovations at the Teen Center. So, I want to make sure that we get that money flowing right here at the Boys and Girls Club.

Also, we announced our budget just about six weeks ago. A budget can be boring, but it also is a statement of priorities. It's beyond the numbers. It's about where you're putting the money. And we've made progress. We've been driving down gun incidents, gun shooting incidents, but I'm not done. Last year we made a record investment in our Gun Involved Violence Elimination program, GIVE. Rochester's one of the beneficiaries of this. And I said, “Last year's record amount was not enough. Let's break records again.”

This year we're adding $110 million statewide, so we'll have over $337 million. And for the Rochester area, this means you'll be receiving $36 million, up from $18 million a year ago. Our State Police will be increasing our community stabilization units, literally the people on the ground, from 16 communities to 25 communities. Also, we need more law enforcement. I'm increasing the State Police Academies. They said, “We only have capacity for two.” I said, “Really? There's nowhere else in the State of New York we can have a couple more classes?”

So, we are now doubling it. So, we're now going to have four graduating classes every year. Because I want to make sure that we have the opportunity to train the next generation of people who are committed to public safety and also expanding our presence on all kinds of task forces. I've spoken before about how we are the first-in-the-nation to have a nine-state gun interdiction task force, and I've been talking to the other Governors who are not members and they're going to sign up. So, we'll have literally the entire Northeast pulling together, sharing data about guns that are being used in a crime in one state before it gets to the next state. So, we can protect our citizens even more. So, we also have to focus on what our local prosecutors are doing. People like Sandra Doorley and prosecutors all over the state, they need more assistance as well.

My budget is going to increase from $12 million last year to $52 million this year of support for our District Attorneys. That will help increase support for our District Attorneys. We also want to make sure that all of our law enforcement entities have the technology to be able to share the data in real time. And so, we're going to be increasing and bringing to Rochester $2 million in community-based organizations, to help with that as well. And Project RISE and other initiatives, the gun violence disruption organizations. I believe in them. I know the impact that they've had. I've met many of the leaders, the people who've been in the system themselves, they know the story better than anyone. They know what led them on a path that otherwise maybe they didn't have to be on, and they are the trusted voices that we need more of out there. So, we're going to continue identifying the programs that really work, putting money behind them and making sure that we support them anyway we can. So, those are some of our initiatives.

But there's another public safety initiative that doesn't have dollars attached to it. In fact, in my opinion, it's a very simple change in our law. And I've been focused on, since I became Governor, how we can improve our bail laws. And let me say this – from the beginning, I have supported the underlying premise of the bail changes, because we had a situation that came to light, and it's emblematic of many other situations where a young person was held, not because of the severity of a crime, stealing a backpack, literally stealing a backpack, but spent years in Rikers awaiting his chance to go to court. Now, if that child, that teenager, had parents with money in the bank account, or they had their own money, and they could have made bail. They could have been back in school, could have gone off and got a job, could have had a very, very different outcome. But the laws did not allow that. He didn't have the money. He had to be detained.

So, when you think about, did that really make sense for a society to hold someone for years waiting for their trial for such a minor crime? When someone else accused of the exact same crime would be back out home. The difference being the size of your bank account? Oh, that's not a system of justice at all. No one would believe that it was. But the bail changes from 2018 swept up too many crimes and covered too many situations, and ones that were common sense would say, "Wow, I can't believe someone could actually get out for doing that crime with a gun.” That they've hurt other people and they could do it again.

And so, we look back, we made changes last year. We put in standards for judges to consider that were not there before. Was there harm done to a person or an individual? Was this a repeat offender? Was it a violation of an order of protection? Guns involved? I mean, we said common sense says you should give the judges something to look at because otherwise all they had the discretion to look at was whether or not the person was likely to come back to court.

So, they are directed by the law to institute the least restrictive means to ensure a return to court. I guess they would look at risk of flight. Do they have a bank account in the Grand Caymans, okay? Do they have access to a private plane? They're probably not going to stick around, but it became an absurd standard that that's all you could look at.

You can't look at whether or not they're going to go out and hurt someone again. Or perhaps kill someone this time. And so, we said, you know, we had those modifications last year. Now we have an inconsistency in the law, the standards we put in last year to consider, which makes sense, but as long as that language – the least restrictive means – remains, and this is from our District Attorney, not just here, but all across the - then the judges have the discretion to opt for that standard if they want to do this.

To me that says, again, we're back to a system of unfairness. It depends on the judge and the political leanings or the philosophical leanings or the judicial leanings of a judge versus looking at common sense, commonly accepted criteria. So, we have felonies and repeat offenders that are bail eligible, and many times, the judges are not setting bail.

We just talked in our forum last night. Four cases come in, gun cases, gun possession cases where the judge says, “Go on. Come back another day. You're okay. Go back out in the street.” That doesn't make me feel safe. It doesn't make people of Rochester feel safe. And so that's what we're talking about.

We have this inconsistency in the law. Confusion is understandable, and I want to make sure that we remove that one standard, give them criteria to look at. And I want to make sure that our judges have what they need. So, removing the least restrictive means standard for bail eligible cases, which are the serious violent offenses, is what we're going to be looking for.

Again, we're not looking to criminalize poverty. We're not wiping out the standard least restrictive means for these other cases where you would say, “Why would they have to sit in jail waiting because they didn't harm anybody?” There's not a gun involved. That's what we're talking about, leaving that intact. I want everyone to understand that. We're talking about protecting society in a way that people would think is common sense, and so many members of the legislature have stepped up in support. Others have not.

And I want to say it's courageous when someone can stand up and say, “I know we need this change. I know it's hard, but I also know that it has to happen.” So, I want to recognize Senator Cooney for doing that, and he is one of our leaders. He's one of our champions.

So, I will let him speak in a couple minutes. I want you to hear from him directly about why this is so important to him and his influence in the legislature. But here's what we have to do. To bring down crime once and for all, we need to invest in programs that stop gun violence. We need to put more police on the streets. We need to invest in mental health. We didn't even talk about our bill - housing for sure. That's why we have a very aggressive housing plan on the books. We also want to make sure that people who are dealing with severe mental health problems have the resources they need and that there is reentry housing for people when they leave incarceration, that they are not thrown out in the streets, that they have a place to go, help lead them to a job, help them get the support they need and, also, community programs to help get our kids back on track.

So, I believe that a multifaceted approach is necessary over time, will keep making a difference, but for now, my focus is on simply keeping New Yorkers safe and secure. And with that, thank you. Let me bring up Mayor Malik Evans to talk about what we're doing on the front lines of fighting crime right here in the City of Rochester.