Office Of The Mayor Of New York City: Transcript: Mayor De Blasio Appears On Inside City Hall

Press release from Office of the Mayor of New York City:

August 30, 2021

Errol Louis: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. As we reported before the break, Mayor de Blasio is pushing for a full reopening of the city's court system as the city sees a rise in crime and gun violence. The Mayor joins me now from the Blue Room Inside City Hall to talk about that and more. Welcome, Mr. Mayor. Good to see you.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good to be with you, Errol. How are you doing tonight?

Louis: Very well. Thank you. I wanted to ask you about your comments this morning at your press conference, where you said the court system not functioning is having a bigger impact than almost any other factor right now when it comes to the rise in violent crime. And I was wondering how you reached that conclusion? Who in your administration gave you this idea that the speed or frequency of court trials would influence the crime rate on the street?

Mayor: I'll tell you it's deeply felt within the NYPD and in my Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice. We're all looking at this really in shock that all the other pieces of the equation are moving, except for this one. This number I used earlier, I want you to hear it again. In the first half of 2019 pre-pandemic, 405 trial verdicts in New York City. In the first half of 2021 only 18, 1-8, 18. It's not even close. It's ridiculous. We had school open last year, we're bringing back school full strength in a couple of weeks. The NYPD, FDNY, all sorts of first responders have been out there. You know, hospitals have been running. The court system is an outlier at this point, Errol. They have not overcome the logistical hurdles and the different complaints of their constituencies when the rest of us had to figure out how to do that. And they're pointing fingers all over the place. Well, you know what? It's just irresponsible. They need to open fully. If you do not have a functioning criminal justice system, you don't have accountability. You can't get plea bargains. If a defendant thinks there's no trial coming, they have no incentive to plea bargain appropriately. You don't get outcomes so there is no consequence. It does not punish those who have been found guilty of a crime. It is gumming up everything.

Louis: But that, I wanted to ask you about that in particular, because I'm sure your criminal justice coordinator informed you that 96 percent of felony convictions and 99 percent of misdemeanor convictions in New York State are the result of guilty pleas, right? So, I mean, trials are the rare exception. They are not the rule. Which is a problem in and of itself. But do you have numbers or facts that support the idea that, you know, this tiny sliver of felony cases is driving the whole crime rate?

Mayor: I’m not saying it's driving the whole crime rate. I'm saying it's the factor we can do something about right now. Look, Errol, first of all, I said it a moment ago, and we can back this up easily. It is the fact that trials are happening that drives pleas to happen. If there are no trials, there's no reason to plea. And again, you're right. There's pros and cons to the police system, but it does keep things moving and adjudicate cases. Right now, we have lots of cases that just aren't moving because there's no prospect of an outcome. And that's a fact. And second, the other elements that are needed, we're seeing aggressive work by the NYPD, the most gun arrests in 25 years. We're seeing the gang takedowns, we're seeing extraordinary community work, the violence interrupters doing great work for example. We're seeing our prosecutors to their credit, really focusing on gun cases. And I said, this morning, the one area where I think the courts have really come to life, it took a long time, but they got there is the gun cases. Prosecutors have been great on that. The missing link is the rest of the court system. Why on Earth should it not be open? It doesn't make any sense. Everything else is opening up. Everything else in many cases, many things have been open. Why are people apologizing for a court system that's in many ways dormant right now? If it is so irrelevant, then why do we even have it to begin with bluntly?

Louis: Well, let me, you know I'm sure you saw the statement from the Office of Court Administration. They say yet again, the Mayor demonstrates his glaring lack of understanding of the criminal justice process in this state, his gaslighting rhetoric regarding court operations in an attempt to shift the public safety discussion continues. The court system has been back at full strength with all judges and staff fully back in-person in the courthouses since May. Trials are being held. But for cases to be tried, you need the prosecution and defense to have their cases prepared, which isn't occurring in a number of counties. I wanted to get your response to that?

Mayor: They're not getting the job done. That's my response. That's a great comment. This guy, I don't know him, but he loves to come up with grandiose defenses, except for one thing. They don't have a product to prove it. They haven't gotten anything done. 18 trials in the first half of the year have been completed. Give me a break. So, you know, with the rest of the world, the agencies that I control, for example, I don't control the court system, with the agencies I control, I didn't let them have excuses in 2020, let alone 2021. Everyone had to get their work done. Somehow the Office of Court Administration thinks it's okay, that trials aren't happening. And they let everyone do whatever they're going to do. And we're not getting results. I don't understand Errol, honestly, why the conversation isn't flipped right around? Why are people not saying this is ridiculous? How on Earth is the court system failing the people of New York? And nothing's happened to them. They have no accountability. Do you think if my agencies weren't showing up to work and getting the job done, people would let it go? Of course, they wouldn't. So, this was something that has to be addressed.

Louis: I mean, there is, you know, of course the Association of Legal Aid attorneys are planning to demonstrate in front of City Hall this week, asking you to, your administration to fix the conditions and the ventilation in the courthouses. You know, that's a DCAS function.

Mayor: And we will do anything and everything. We've said this to the Office of Court Administration at the beginning. We've offered them space. We've offered them help with the vaccination, whatever is needed. But let's get real. We are out there in a fully functioning society, right now. God bless anyone who wants to protest that's their right. But what everyone is doing, who's not finding a solution is they're simply prolonging the return of a criminal justice system. Again, Errol here's the basic fact, if it matters, if it matters to have trials, if it matters to have a fully functioning criminal justice system, then there should be outrage that it is taking so God damn long. If it doesn't matter, if you or anyone else who comes to the conclusion that trials don't matter, and having courts open doesn't matter, then we should be talking about a different system. But right now it is the missing link. Everybody else is functioning. The courts aren't. We have to be honest about that.

Louis: The notion that trials are the indexes, I guess, where I have a little bit of a problem. Just because, you know, again, 96 percent, 99 percent of the cases never make it to trial. So I don't, I wouldn't fixate on that. If there was a problem, it might be somewhere else. But then on this issue of the ventilation, it's not just for, you know, for the attorneys and for the defendants themselves and for the prosecutors. It's also a matter of the jury. I mean, you want trials, you've got to have jury selection. You got to have grand juries. You got to have a lot of civilians who were passing through these buildings. And apparently to the extent that ventilation and screening isn't in place, that's got to be a choke point, right?

Mayor: Again, I don't accept that. We have offered Office of Court Administration, whatever support they needed. We have public buildings open all over. Again, there's this circular logic here with deep respect. Look at all the public buildings that are open, employees going to them. The public going to them. Courts are no different. The work has been done long since cleaning buildings, ventilation. If there's any particular case where we need to add something or address something, we will. We're not seeing them saying, oh, here's a couple of buildings that need some work. We're seeing wholesale, lack of functioning by our court system. You can see it in the numbers. The trials are not being completed. It's affecting the ability to get to plea bargains. It's affecting everything. There's a lot of other things going on in terms of fighting crime. We have a lot of work to do on many fronts. But it is outraging me that we can have a part of our criminal justice system that is not functioning and giving excuses rather than saying, you know what? You're right. We must be fully functional. That's on us. The City's offered help, time and time again. We're not at full strength. Schools are at full strength. You know, so many other parts of society are at full strength. Dermot Shea said weeks ago, you know, Yankee Stadium is full, but there's next to no trials happening. I mean, come on. Something's wrong with this picture. And I would say to the Office of Court Administration stop accepting the excuses of all the different constituencies, fix the problems, fix the problems. And if you need help, we've offered it. We've offered material help. We'll do whatever it takes, but we've got to get these trials back.

Louis: Okay. We've got more to talk about. We'll do that after a short break. Stand by, Mr. Mayor. We'll be back in just a minute. Stay with us.

[...]

Louis: We are back Inside City Hall, and I'm talking with Mayor de Blasio. Mr. Mayor, let's talk about an agency you have unquestioned control of which is the Department of Correction. There was a suicide, an apparent suicide, in the last day or so in the Rikers Island infirmary. Advocates are saying that this is the ninth person to die inside Rikers this year. We have a federal court appointed monitor who said that conditions are deteriorating. What is the plan to put an end to these conditions? 

Louis: The core function, of course, is the safety of the actual detainees. So, with nine suicides now, and the year's not over, where's the accountability there? 

Mayor: There has to be, and it's been case by case. Any time – and you've seen it in the past – anytime anybody who works for our Corrections Department didn't do the right thing and it resulted in someone being – their life being lost, taking their own life, we do see accountability and we will continue to. And I hate that it's ever happened even once, but there will be accountability. But you also have to recognize that this whole last year-and-a-half the impact on COVID has been really intense in terms of the Correction system. Inmates could not get visitors by and large. There's been a lot of disruption. It's been very tough on officers and we've lost some officers to COVID. It's been a horrible situation all around – bad enough that anytime you talk about Corrections, it's a tough environment, but the pandemic made it even tougher. And I give a lot of credit to the officers who stuck with it and to the leaders at Corrections who stuck with it. Correctional Health did an amazing job protecting people, officers, and inmates alike. But it's been very, very tough, but all we can do, I think, is case by case ensure that there's accountability and we continue to make structural changes, but the real solution is to get the hell off of Rikers once and for all. It is a broken place. We need to get out of there. 

Louis: Different question, different institution. Let's talk about the schools. You announced last week a vaccine mandate for all Department of Education employees. One of the main city labor unions, DC 37, has pushed back against the requirement. I wanted to know where things stand with that union and the others as well. 

Mayor: I respect them greatly. A lot of respect for Henry Garrido, disagree with him on this. We said from the second we announced the mandate that we would go to impact bargaining with all the unions involved. Obviously, I'd spoken to the union leaders in advance. It's the right thing to do to have this mandate, to protect our kids, it’s the right thing to do to reassure families. We need every single child back in school. And we can do this in a smart and fair way. We’ve started the bargaining with a number of unions. And we're doing it in a way that's both smart in terms of public health because the adults are really – we know this about COVID. COVID can affect kids, but it’s much more of an impact on adults. And if we can secure the adults, we're keeping the kids safe too. But we're doing this in a way that's respectful of working people. We're doing it with collective bargaining. And I think if any court looks at this, they're going to see that this is a legally sound approach. 

Mayor: A different set of stakeholders – Cynthia Nixon, the actress, and sometime candidate, political activist, on Twitter, she said, “Last year, the Mayor could not understand why two-thirds of parents chose remote. If you want us to send our children back, you need to communicate a real effective safety plan early and often and build our trust. This plan does not do that.” She's speaking not only for herself, but for others. What would you say to those parents? 

Mayor: Well, first of all, I have immense respect for Cynthia Nixon, and I've worked closely with her over the years, and she's a tremendous education advocate. And we put out a very honest and earnest plan last week to answer the questions that parents had. And we've gotten a lot of good feedback from parents about it. I'm going to reach out to her for sure. And I want to hear what the concerns are because we've – look by saying we're going to take every health and safety measure we had last year, which was literally a gold standard of health and safety measures that proved itself – you saw how safe New York City public schools were. We're going to add to it even more ventilation in some places, we're going to add to that mandatory vaccination for adults. There's no question in my mind – and by the way, young people, the 12- to 17-year-olds, it's amazing. I think we're at about 61 percent vaccinated, at least one dose already, and a great deal of efforts being made to get kids vaccinated ahead of school. So, I am absolutely convinced we can do this safely, but if there's answers that we're not giving enough to parents, I think the early and often is right. We have to keep answering, I need to, our Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi, our Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter. We need to get the word out to parents, and I think they will be reassured the more they see about this approach. 

Louis: Let me ask you about the BQE renovation. That key section in the Brooklyn Heights area, right before the Brooklyn Bridge, was it the objection of the local community that killed this plan to rebuild it? 

Mayor: No, a lot more than that. I mean, the original thought, although nobly intended, to address what looked like a really imminent danger, it came with a tremendous amount of dislocation, a tremendous amount of construction that was going to have impacts for many, many people in many communities. And when there were community concerns, a panel got together and asked a very fundamental question, is there an entirely better way to do this? And are we projecting the future properly here? One of those panel members was Hank Gutman, who's now our Transportation Commissioner. And he and his team did a new analysis with outside experts and found that in fact the current structure can be reinforced enough to get us to 2040, which is quite a ways from now, with some smart measures like reducing the number of lanes and other measures just to secure it. And then the vision that the DOT has put out, which I really believe in is, let's be doing the work as a city to move a lot of the truck traffic off of the BQE, turn it into waterborne freight, rail borne, smaller trucks that make less negative impact on our roads, electric vehicles. A lot of great ideas that are really viable and are working in other parts of the world so that we can have a sustainable BQE. So, I think this actually was a case where the community concerns led us to a better outcome. 

Louis: This isn't, in your opinion, sort of kicking the can down the interstate, so to speak. 

Mayor: I like your analogy. Do not – Errol, I want to advise all viewers, do not kick cans on interstates. It is dangerous. But, no, 2040 – I mean, you've been around government, I've been around government, we're talking about 20 years from now. That's pretty long term in the scheme of things. But no, the fact is the technology is changing and the opportunities. We've already seen, we've gone back to the water in terms of passenger transit with NYC Ferry. In fact, we built out the system more last week with the Staten Island to the west side of Manhattan route. But the future also is going to involve more and more of our freight going on the water. We need to get off the roads. I mean, the roads are just – there's so many reasons, the congestion, the pollution, climate change impact. What the DOT is saying – and I agree with Hank Gutman entirely on this – is let's re-envision how we move stuff around the city and get as much of it off of the roads and out of big trucks as possible, make it much more sustainable. 20 years is plenty time to create that new system. A lot of that work's already being done by DOT and our Economic Development Corporation. And, again, you see it around the world. This is where things are going. The age of the giant truck, you know, going through an urban highway, that's the past. We need to move off of it. 20 years is a timeframe in which we can do that.  

Louis: The – in the short and medium term going from three lanes to two is going to turn what is an already daily traffic jam into gridlock, right?  

Mayor: No, I went on that section literally just an hour ago. And it's a brief stretch where that happens. It's going to be some delays at some times, sure. But it's a piece of the BQE. It's a brief piece of the BQE and you know what people do, they adjust accordingly, and they find other routes and one thing or another. And the bottom line is this is what's going to make it sustainable. And that's what's going to allow us to get to a better solution for everybody. 

Louis: Okay. We will leave it there for now. Thanks very much, Mr. Mayor, we will talk again next week.  

Mayor: Thank you, Errol. 

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This press release was produced by Office of the Mayor of New York City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.