Transcript: Mayor Adams Hosts Community Conversation

April 17, 2024

Commissioner Fred Kreizman, Community Affairs Unit: Good evening. My name is Fred Kreizman, commissioner of the Mayor's Community Affairs Unit. I'd just like to welcome everyone tonight to Riverdale. Greatly appreciate everyone coming out for this town hall, the community conversation with Eric. This is the 27th town hall we've had, not including our youth town halls, our senior town halls, our business town halls. We're proud to be here in Riverdale/Kingsbridge Academy in CB8 in the 50th Precinct. We're proud to be at a location where we had our astrophysicist, Neil Tyson, an alumnus from the school.

We just wanted to go quickly through who's here, who's on this desk. Of course, I'm just asking everyone to hold applause to the end. We have the mayor of the City of New York, Mayor Eric Adams. We have our deputy mayor of Health and Human Services, Anne Williams-Isom, our deputy mayor of Operations, Meera Joshi, our deputy mayor of Strategic Initiatives, Ana Almanzar. We have our deputy chief of staff for the first deputy mayor, Meagan Chen.

We're going to be joined by executive director for Housing for Economic Development, Leila Bozorg, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Mark Stewart, Human Rights Commissioner Annabel Palma, our Small Business Services commissioner, Kevin Kim, our DYCD deputy commissioner, Susan Haskell, our NYCHA chief operating officer, Eva Trimble, Health and Hospital CEO Dr. Mitchell Katz, Department of Health Assistant Commissioner Anita Reyes.

Mayor's Office of Community Mental Health, Laquisha Grant, DSS First Deputy Commissioner Jill Berry, Department of Education, chief of Schools of Bronx Superintendents, Dr. Maribel Hulla, ACS Deputy Commissioner Ina Mendez, Department of Finance special counsel, Tara Krieger, EDC Assistant Vice President of Government Relations Fernando Ortiz, Fire Department Deputy Chief David Simms, Mayor's Office of People Disabilities Commissioner Christina Curry.

Of course, to my right, we're joined by our Honorable Borough President Vanessa Gibson, our Honorable District Attorney Darcel Clark, our Councilmember Eric Dinowitz, our commissioner of HPD, Adolfo Carrión, our Buildings commissioner, Jimmy Oddo, our commissioner of Department of Aging, Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez, our commissioner of DOT, Ydanis Rodriguez, our commissioner of DCWP, Vilda Vera Mayuga, Department of Probations deputy commissioner, Sharun Goodwin. The Mayor's Office of Asylum Seeker Operations Director Molly Schaeffer, Parks First Deputy Commissioner Iris Rodriguez-Rosa, our director of our Office of Rodent Mitigation, Kathleen Corradi.

Sanitation chief of staff and deputy commissioner, Ryan Merola, New York City Emergency Management assistant commissioner of external affairs, Ira Tannenbaum, Department of City Planning executive director, Edith Hsu-Chen. Department of Environmental Protection and deputy commissioner, Beth DeFalco. Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs chief of staff, Miguel Santana. Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice chief of staff, Nora Daniel, Mayor's Office of Climate Environmental Justice deputy executive director, Paul Lozito.

Of course, we're joined by others from the NYPD. We have the deputy commissioner of Operations, Kaz Daughtry, Chief of Patrol John Chell, the Borough Commander Chief Ben Gurley. We have our precinct commanders of the 50, Captain Ryan Pierce of 47, DI John Corbell, of the 52, DI Chase Maneri. We're joined also by Chief Richie Taylor from Community Affairs.

Sanitation Bronx Borough Chief Denton Lewis. Sanitation District Superintendent Thomas Ager. We also don't want to forget anyone else. At this point, I just wanted to go run the show. We're going to go to our borough president, Vanessa Gibson, which is followed by District Attorney Darcel Clark, followed by the Councilmember Eric Dinowitz, and then we'll hand it over to the mayor.

Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson: Okay. Thank you so much. Good evening, Bronx. Good evening, Riverdale.

We are so excited to have our mayor, Eric Adams, and the entire Adams administration here at RKA. Can we give it up for the RKA staff, Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy, the wonderful young students that greeted us as we arrived? Let me say that RKA is one of our incredible institutions here in Riverdale in Community School District 10.

Yes, thank you to all of our educators that represent District 10, all of our teachers and educators and administrators, to all of our community board members from Community Board 8, we say thank you so much, as well as our partners in the NYPD right here in the 50 Precinct but we also recognize the 47 and the 52. In addition to everyone who's been recognized, I also want to say that we have our very own Bronx Park Commissioner here. Hector Aponte.

Thank you for being with us tonight. Tonight's town hall is really an opportunity for all of you, residents of our great borough, the Northwest Bronx, whether you live here in Riverdale or Kingsbridge, Van Cortlandt, Van Cortlandt Park Village, so many great parts of our community that have truly been thriving. It is really because of all of you that we are here because we realize that we only are able to celebrate all of our great progress because of all of you.

I can say this community is vibrant, it is energetic, we have done so many incredible things together from food distributions, to giveaways, to celebrating restaurant week right here in Riverdale to supporting our businesses and all of our entrepreneurs, all of the incredible things that are happening is really a testament to all of you, to your contributions, to your investments, to working together. Tonight's town hall is an opportunity to hear from all of you about the important priorities that matter to you and your families, to your loved ones, to your children.

It is up to all of us, the members of this dais, my colleagues in government who are here, to make sure that you all know that we serve you in public service every single day. No matter where you live, the zip code you reside in, we all have a fundamental expectation to be safe in our borough, to make sure that we stand against any acts of hatred and violence, and discrimination, that we focus on education and pathways to the middle class and pathways to college and careers for all of our young people, including those right here at RKA.

Tonight we say thank you for the work you do. As your Bronx borough president, I am so honored to represent all of you every single day. Every single day, we will continue to work together, to walk together, to advocate together, because when we work together, we are truly a stronger community and a stronger borough for that. Thank you, Riverdale. Thank you, Bronx, for all that you do. We look forward to tonight's town hall. Let's give a round of applause to our mayor, Eric Adams, and the entire administration for being here tonight.

I'd love to pass the mic to my sister in all things public safety, an incredible champion, my partner, my ally, someone who works closely with our Office of the Bronx Borough President. Ladies and gentlemen, community, please help me welcome our very own, District Attorney Darcel Clark.

Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark: Thank you, Madam Borough President. Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for being here, coming to the Bronx once again. You have not forgotten us, we know that. We know that from the time that you ran until this very day, you make sure you keep a footprint in the Bronx, and we very much appreciate that. To all of your staff here, which I have a lot of working relationships with all of them, thank you. To Riverdale, thank you. Congratulations for having another successful town hall. We're going to make sure that you hold us accountable. That's what this is all about.

We're all elected and appointed, but we work for you, and that's the one thing that everybody needs to understand that we are here for a reason. You put us here and we have a job to do. As your district attorney, I make sure for the last now going on nine years that I'm going to make sure that I represent you and make sure that you not only are safe, but that you also feel safe.

I'm thankful to the partnership with NYPD, which I have to work with every day to the great leadership of NYPD here in the Bronx and downtown at 1 Police Plaza. We got good Bronx presence there with Commissioner Caban. There's always that good connection and Chief Gurley here now. I'm very happy to do this work, but we all need to understand that everybody plays a role in public safety. It is not just the mayor's job, it is not just the NYPD's job, and it's not just the Office of the District Attorney's job, it is everybody's job.

We are all in this together, and that's what I work hard for every day to make sure, I continue to establish those relationships, so you know that you have a DA that you can reach out and touch when you have a particular situation or condition in your neighborhood. I want to make sure that it gets addressed. I visited the city council for their hearings, and they made all these headlines. "Oh, my God, she went to the city council and didn't ask for any money for her office?" Guess what I asked for? Money and resources for the Bronx. That's what we need.

I was happy to do that and I will continue to use my voice to make sure we get all that we can. I'm excited about tonight to listen to your questions and concerns and to make sure that not only that we have complaints, but more importantly that we come out of here with solutions. I'm very happy to hear that. I guess it's a time for me to pass it on to the great council member of this district, a dear friend who I've worked with closely for a long time. Him first as a educator and now as a councilmember. The great Eric Dinowitz. Thank you.

Councilmember Eric Dinowitz: Thank you, DA Clark, that's actually the first time anyone's called me great. I'm very appreciative. Good evening, everyone.

Audience: Good evening.

Councilmember Dinowitz: Good evening, everyone.

Audience: Good evening.

Councilmember Dinowitz: Much better. I'm so thrilled to be here at my alma mater. I went to middle school here, it's great to be back. Ask me if I ever got a basket in this basketball hoop, but never, never did. I was in the chorus that tells you what kind of child I was. I was on the stage in those plays over there. I see you work too. It's wonderful.

I just think so much about living in this community and as I'm looking around the room, I can't help but be excited about how many of you I know from all of the different facets of growing up here and working in this community. Whether you're on the community board, you're an environmental steward, you're a poll worker, you are part of the development corporation, you are a principal or a teacher here, you are a steward of our parks, you're a parent who cares, you're a former or current parents association president. So many of you here care so deeply about our community, and you demonstrated in all sorts of ways, and I want each of you to give each other a round of applause right now, please.

I do want to bring greetings from a guy I know pretty well, a guy you know pretty well. His name's Jeff Dinowitz. He's our assemblyman. He's up in Albany fighting for a lot of the things all of us on these days are fighting for, and that's for our shared values and for resources here in the Bronx. We trust him dearly to continue to fight for us and I know he's going to do a great job. We're going to have a great state budget, I hope, and I hope it's one that we in the city as we're doing our budget can really use and rely on to make sure that we in the Bronx get, as DA Clark was saying, the resources we need and deserve to support everyone here in the Bronx.

I'm excited for tonight. I see so many people, not just community leaders, but people who've come to my office for help and on this stage are the very people that I call to help all of you. We don't go out and fill potholes ourselves, we liaise with the DOT. We don't tow cars, we call the NYPD. We don't plant trees, we call parks department. I'm really excited tonight for everyone up here to hear directly from you and for the mayor to hear directly from you about what our needs are in our community, the needs I see and hear every day. Do I get to introduce you?

Mayor Eric Adams: One, two. One, two. Only if you want to

Councilmember Dinowitz: Okay. I would love to.

Mayor Adams: Say great.

Councilmember Dinowitz: Say great? Our great. You just need to know, I know many people in this sometimes think government doesn't work, and I think everyone these days will agree. Sometimes we feel like the gears of government, but on Saturday, I think a lot of us in our community were feeling a lot of fear and anxiety about what was going on overseas.

We have felt that here since October, and for many of us even before, and knowing how many people in the city would feel and all of our concerns, the mayor immediately called a meeting of the NYPD and all the elected officials and briefed us on what was going on and what the city was doing to make sure that we were safe and we felt safe, but he did not stop there.

Just as he is hosting this meeting today to hear directly from you, after the elected officials meeting, he held a meeting with community leaders, regular people in this city so the administration could speak directly to them and make sure that they know what was going on and what our city was doing to ensure that we in New York City, our people here were safe. There are stories after stories about the mayor engaging directly with New Yorkers just as he's doing tonight. With that, I want to introduce the great mayor, which I'm sure he's heard before, our great mayor, Eric Adams.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Thank you.

It's great to be up here. Just some amazing partners in government I just enjoy working with. Darcel brings just a holistic approach to public safety and the Borough President Gibson. I remember when we were colleagues in Albany, she always had a way of solving a multitude of problems, being thoughtful as she went on to become a City Councilwoman, and now the borough president and the legacy of the Dinowitz's family, his dad, and now he's carving his own path and it's just public service giving back.

We want to open the floor and hear from you, but I would like to say, just go back, January 1st, 2022, the city that this administration up here inherited. 40 percent increase in crime, no one wanted to be on our subway system. The bond rate is the independent financial observers to determine how successful you're doing as a city did not want to give us a high bond rating. Our children were not being educated at the capacity that they deserved. We saw homicides up, shootings were up. Guns were proliferated in our street at an unbelievable capacity.

You saw foster care children in programs that did not give them the support that they deserve. Tourism was decimated. Covid was everywhere. We were unsure if our schools were going to be open or closed. Two years later, two years, they told us it was going to take four to five years to turn around our economy. Two years later, we had more private sector jobs in the history of the city, regained all the ones that we lost during Covid.

We witnessed decrease in homicide, decrease in shootings, thousands of guns removed off our streets because of the work of the men and women in the New York City Police Department. Independent financial observers raise our bond ratings that allow us to be able to borrow better and invested in our city.

They said we made tough decisions and managed the budget in a way that was not detrimental to the city. 62 million tourists visit our city because we made the city safe. Five of the major seven crime categories are down thousands. I think we're up to about 50,000 illegal motorcycles of dirt bikes, three-wheelers off our streets. We confiscated and took off our streets.

Even without the support we deserved, the sheriff's department closed cannabis shops and removed millions of pounds of illegal cannabis on our street. Invested in foster care children. They were aging out at 18 years old. We invested in them to pay their college tuition, give them a stipend, and we were able to give them life coaches through fair futures until they were 21 years old.

We saw a reversal of aging out being the victims of crime, participating in a crime or dealing with mental health issues, but nurturing them and giving them the support that they deserve. That is what we have done, put in place our older adult cabinet to hear directly from older adults how they want to age in place in the city, and get the respect and dignity that they deserve.

Two years later, went after my public enemy number one, rats. We had consultants that came to us at the beginning of the administration because we wanted to containerize our garbage. We knew we had to containerize the garbage if we wanted to get rid of rats. Consultants told us it was going to take us four and a half years.

I said, "You can throw that report in the garbage. We're doing it in two and a half years, and we have started the process of doing that. We'll never get rid of rodents in this city if we didn't do that. We have an amazing Rat Czar that's here and committed to getting the job done, getting these rodents off the streets."

We have a long way to go, but don't kid yourself, folks. This city is not coming back. This city's back and there are three issues I keep telling New Yorkers, and these issues have really hijacked our narrative, and these issues have overshadowed our success. Issue number one is recidivism. We have a recidivism problem, not a crime problem. The person who shot young Jonathan, the police officer we lost, he had 20 prior arrests. The person who was in the car with him was out on a gun charge and he's still in the car with a situation like that. Recidivism is a real issue that we need to fight to make sure we go after violent, dangerous offenders who are doing dangerous things to good people.

Number two, the severe mental health issue we have in the city. We need to give people the care. The community affairs officer has a- they're going to be all right. We need to go after those serious, severe mental health issues that we're facing in the city, and that you see, and you know we see in a repeated revolving door. What we have been doing if a person is dealing with severe mental health issue that can't take care of themselves and are dangers to themselves and others, we'll bring them into the hospital, give them medicine one day and put them back out until they do something wrong.

Let me give you a number for you. 70 percent of the peoples on Rikers Island have mental health issues. We close our psychiatric institutions and place people on the street without the support they deserve, and we turn Rikers Island into the psychiatric facility that we're talking about. It's just not sustainable and it's not the way you should be dealing with people who are dealing with severe mental health issues.

Thirdly, random acts of violence. No matter how we feel, it traumatizes us. A woman being punched in the face for no reason. Someone being shoved to the subway tracks. Someone being assaulted. These random acts of violence that we're seeing in the city, now do a cross section of it and you see it's all rooted in those three things. The person who pushed someone on the subway track, the same day that Officer Jonathan passed away and was murdered, this person was repeatedly going through the psychiatric system.

That is what we are honing in with this team. We must get those three issues under control because people feel our subway systems are unsafe. 4.1 million riders a day. We have six felony crimes a day, but if one of those felony crimes is pushing someone on the subway system, then you're going to feel that your subway system is unsafe. That is what we're up against and that is what we're fighting against, but don't allow it to overshadow who we are.

We look at the bar graph of showing big cities in America. We're the safest big city in America. When you leave here tonight, go google those other cities. In those other cities, you see tents line up all along the roadways, people publicly relieving themselves on the streets. Crime is rampant. Portland wanted to legalize hard drugs. They legalize it and saw an increase in overdose death. You know what they want to do right now? The same people that called for legalization are now calling to put back the criminalization of it.

We're not making those errors here. I came to become the mayor as a former police officer. I saw how public safety is the prerequisite to prosperity, and that is what I'm going to govern in. We must be safe, not only in the actual crime numbers, but you have to feel safe in your city. That is what we're fighting for. That is who I am. And I'm not going to move away from that. That is all I know. You have to be safe in your city. I'm going to give it my all to make sure you are safe to raise healthy children and families in the city of New York. I want to open it up to our tables.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table one.

Question: Mayor Adams, it's a privilege to speak with you about our concerns.

Mayor Adams.: Thank you.

Question: I feel honored to be able to present the first question. I not only speak as a principal of PS81, but for all schools in Riverdale, PS24, PS141, of an issue that we've had for many years. The issue is we are not a Title I school, but I ask you to come and visit our school and see our population. We are struggling because we don't receive the funds the Title 1 schools receive, but we certainly have the population. The population means that we have parents who are fearful to fill out lunch forms. We know that Title I is determined by the lunch forms.

We can understand why families are fearful. They're fearful for being identified. Maybe they don't have the proper authorization to be living in the United States, but they're our children. They're the children of Riverdale. They're the children, as our Bronx president said, we are about supporting our children to make sure that they get an adequate education.

When you have 32 first graders in a classroom, it is not what any one of us would want for our children. Certainly wouldn't be what I would want for my children or my grandchildren. So I plead with you to either give us the Title I status or funding to support the schools at PS81, 141, and 24. Would you agree, Stephen?

Stephen and I work very closely together and so does [inaudible] because we work [for] our children. Our children are our passion. Our children are the future of the United States. You said it perfectly, borough president.

Question: I could also add, mayor, we have been getting stuff done. We have been getting stuff done under the leadership of Dr. Hulla. We want the ability to get even more stuff done.

Question: We are high-performing schools. Despite our struggles with funding, 24, 81, and 141. Highest, we exceed city, state standards.

Question: And all the way from K to 12! We're educating them all the way. For little babies [inaudible] in college.

Question: We are united.

Mayor Adams: Why don't we let the DOE, who I have, Dan, who's from DOE?

Commissioner Kreizman: Dr. Maribel Hulla.

Mayor Adams: Please. talk. Give me that. Talk about her question, please. Thank you.

Commissioner Kreizman: If you could stand up.

Dr. Maribel Hulla, Community Superintendent, Department of Education: Sorry. Hi, everyone. Good evening. I just want to welcome myself back here. I was the former superintendent a week ago.

One of the ways that we have been supporting the Riverdale community, because they're not Title I schools, it's advocating what we can do in the sense of becoming a community school. I know over PS24, he has a great partnership with, want to tell us a little bit more about your partnership and your after school?

So I want to go back to some of the other programs now that we have been supporting the three schools with. District support directly to the schools. Central support directly to the schools in regards to the Title I programs. As you are aware, the city, we're about, I want to say, 80 percent to 85 percent of our schools are Title I, and the 15 percent that are not are because economically, as Ms. Corrine shared, economically looks like they're doing a lot better than the 85 percent of the schools that are Title I schools.

Mayor Adams: I want to go back to the principal, right?

Dr. Hulla: Yes.

Mayor Adams: The question was, now of my understanding, if a parent fills out the forms, they can't be turned into ICE or any immigration. Am I accurate or am I not?

Dr. Hulla: Yes, you're accurate on that. No one, they can fill out the form. I know that some parents have a little reservation around that, but we do have parent coordinators at the schools to support and educate them with that. We also have our family leadership and family support at the district level so that if they want it not to do it at the school level, they can also do it at the district level.

Mayor Adams: So what we need to do is get the information to the parents and we could partner with the borough president's office where we could come in and have some of our immigrant groups, some of our organizers to come and have those one-on-one conversations.

They may be intimidated by speaking with you or me, but let's have their peer supporters come in and tell them, "You won't be turned over to ICE if you fill out the form to get the support for your children, because your population is Title I, you should get the Title I support that comes with it." Why don't we partner and get into schools and speak with these parents one-on-one and give them the support that they need?

Commissioner Kreizman: Table two?

Question: Good evening.

Mayor Adams: Good evening.

Question: I am the table two representative. I go to the school, Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy. I'm a freshman. My name is Richard. Today I would like to discuss the topic of vehicles.

Mayor Adams: Topics of what, I'm sorry?

Question: On vehicles.

Mayor Adams: Okay.

Question: Firstly, I would like to address the matter of paper license plates. There are these people from New Jersey, or they claim to be from New Jersey, wearing these paper plates and run the stop signs or red lights. Frankly, it's a huge problem. It can cause many accidents and I'm afraid for my family and many others. Another topic I would like to discuss, like you previously covered, is the mopeds. It is a huge problem, and frankly, I see them speeding, I see them running red lights, like I said.

Another factor that also comes into it, which is I think, in my opinion, out of our realm in a way, is how that ties into Uber Eats and how that also ties into the recent migrant situation as this is one of the only ways of occupancy they can do. They have these illegal vehicles and that obviously affects not just Riverdale itself, but the whole of the Bronx and New York.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. What grade are you in?

Question: I'm a freshman, sir.

Mayor Adams: Okay. Freshman in high school?

Question: 9th grade.

Mayor Adams: 9th grade.

Question: In school.

Mayor Adams: Thank God you can't run for mayor right now. [Laughter.] You know what I'm saying? All dapper.

Question: My mother dressed me, sir.

Mayor Adams: Oh. First of all, I would love for you to intern with me this year at City Hall.

Question: Oh, wow. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: I would love for you to intern. I would like for you to move around with me and see the city. We're doing some stuff where we're getting young people like yourself to sit in the room. We've been doing this Breaking Bread, Building Bonds where 10 people sit down and have dinner from different [inaudible] groups. I would love for you to help me organize that with young people.

Question: Wow. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: All right. DJ is going to get your information and we're going to show you how to do the internship. I want you to roll with me this summer, man.

Question: Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Chief Chell, the most quoted chief in the history of the Police Department, can we talk about that because he's dead on and you know how I feel about these paper plates, so you're dead on. Can you share?

Chief John Chell, Chief of Patrol, Police Department: All right. About 25 minutes before we got here tonight, myself and Commissioner Daughtry engaged a plate cover with Jersey plates on the FDR that just tried to stab someone in Brooklyn. That's why we got here just in time because we had to chase his car all over Queens and we lost them, but we gave it a valiant effort. That's how dangerous these cars are. Plate covers, paper plates. In terms of, this is probably the number one quiet life issue we hear in every neighborhood in the city as we go around, right, mayor, we hear about this?

When the mayor came into office, this was a priority for quality of life. Since June of '22, we're probably about 50, I got to correct the mayor, it was 57,000 bikes and cars that we've taken. A lot of hard work. It's very dangerous work, and we are not going to stop doing that. This year alone, we're about 15,000 bikes and ghost cars. It's going to be a record year for us with the warm weather coming up. We're constantly strategizing what we're doing. We're using our technology, our aviation, our drones. The cops are well trained on how to shut down bridges. We really changed the game with this, but it's still a priority. Very dangerous, but we're not going to stop.

Mayor Adams: The paper plates that you're talking about that we call ghost vehicles, they're being used in robberies, they try to cross the bridges. We have put a whole apprehension plan in place. They are a real problem. What was happening previously, we were ignoring them. We were allowing them to park anywhere, we were allowing them to ride on the streets. We've taken a proactive approach. Over 50,000 of these illegal vehicles, cars, mopeds, three wheelers. That's a quality-of-life issue for us. 2022, when we came into office, they were just taking over our streets. We got more to do, but we are on top of this in an unbelievable level. You wanted to ask something, Kaz?

Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry, Police Department: Yes, sir. Mayor, before he rolls with you, tomorrow we're doing a huge operation. I'm not going to say where it's at in regards to ghost cars, paper plates. If you want to come tomorrow night, ask mom and dad, you can roll with me. We'll take them together.

Question: Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Chief Chell: We're going to start putting out never before crime stopper up to $1,000 to let us know where these bikes are parked in mass so we can take them before they hit the streets and keep us all safe.

Mayor Adams: Yes. Well said. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. DJ is going to connect with you, DJ or Valerie. Okay? Where are we?

Commissioner Kreizman: Table three. Behind you.

Mayor Adams: How are you? Good. I don't think, is it on? Here, you can have my mic.

Question: Thank you. Good evening. My name is Jessica Gonzalez. I'm a junior here at RKA. I participate in many activities such as student government, and I'm on Bronx Youth Council with Vanessa L. Gibson. I as well would also like to [intern] with you this summer.

Question: With the failing infrastructure in Riverdale, particularly common storm and sanitary sewers lead to flooding and serious backups and erosion, localized flooding affects sports and recreational activities, health and quality of life. Here's Orangel, who is as well my mentor on Bronx Youth Council.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor. My name is Orangel Mejia. I'm good. I'm the Student Body President at the University of Mount St. Vincent, and I'm a current junior. We feel new construction under the city, the plan of Yes will make things worse. Are there any solutions to address these issues of infrastructure? New construction in Riverdale. We feel that under the City of Yes plan, it'll make things worse, and we are wondering if there are any solutions to address these issues.

Mayor Adams: The flooding, which one are the issues?

Question: Any infrastructure issues.

Mayor Adams: Infrastructure issues?

Question: Infrastructures in general.

Mayor Adams: Do I have Dan? Who do I have as my City of Yes person? Okay. All the way down on the end, explain to my interns.

Edith Hsu-Chen, Executive Director, Department of City Planning: That's right. Well, hi, I'm Edith Hsu-Chen. I'm the executive director at Department of City Planning. I would like to say I started out my city planning career as an intern, so I'm all for this. Yes. Okay. Let's talk about City of Yes. You mentioned infrastructure. What we're rolling out just this month is the City of Yes for housing opportunity. It is an incredibly important initiative. It is about making sure we are providing enough housing in New York City.

As we all know, we are in a desperate housing crisis. Our vacancy rate, I mean our available apartments, 1.4 percent. For apartments that are less than $1,500 a month, it's effectively zero. People don't have choice. It's a big problem. The housing crisis means a lot of problems. It results in poor conditions of apartments, it results in high rents, it results in maybe homelessness or displacement, we have to address the housing crisis.

We are doing it at Department of City Planning with many of our partners in the city through a huge overhaul of zoning. The zoning that's in place today, a lot of it dates back to 1961. We are a very different city than what we were in 1961. We need to make sure that New York can provide housing for all. We are doing it through initiative that is producing more housing, a little bit more housing in every neighborhood.

It's not that one particular neighborhood will have a huge burden. In fact, we are saying the city has a housing crisis, we have a citywide housing crisis, and the whole city should participate in providing housing. On the question of infrastructure, we do have an environmental review associated with our housing proposal and we are looking at the potential effects on infrastructure that housing may bring. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi, Operations: Our deputy commissioner from DEP is here that can speak specifically about flooding in your community, but I'm glad you raised it because you're the future, so you should know what the future looks like when it comes to flooding and the climate crisis we're in. We have a sewer system that will not be able to withstand the rains that we see. We get more rain, we get more intense rain. We have to do what other nations are doing and other big cities are doing, and that's build out green infrastructure.

Things like making our ponds into holding tanks. We're going to be daylighting a stream in the Bronx as well which will also help clean the water and prevent flooding. Every piece of land that we have, we can't cover it up all with asphalt and concrete. We need to make it green so it can absorb the water when it comes down.

That's absolutely the way of the future. I'd like Beth to speak to specific projects that are underway in this community.

Deputy Commissioner Beth DeFalco, Public Affairs, Department of Environmental Protection: Thanks, deputy mayor. You mentioned one of the most important projects that we're doing, which is daylighting Tibbetts Brook. Basically, taking a stream that was buried and connecting it so that the water from the stream is going to go directly, instead of going into the sewer system and using the capacity that we need there for stormwater, it's going to go directly into Harlem River, which helps on many fronts. One, it's going to reduce combined sewer overflows.

I don't know if you know about this, but help keep our harbor water clean. At the same time, also, because the stormwater is not going to be going into the sewer system, give us a little more capacity. That's probably one of the most important things that we're doing. Green infrastructure sometimes isn't green, sometimes it's gray. It looks like porous pavement, which is another thing that we're starting to install around the city so that we can actually use the soil and the things underneath the ground to hold water until the sewer systems can take it and move it.

Those are things that people can think about as they're looking at their backyard. Instead of doing that concrete backyard, doing things like cobblestones, pavers, things that can absorb the rainwater. That will make a big difference.

Mayor Adams: We're with you. It's important that we look at the flooding aspect, we look at how we're going to build out. The whole City of Yes concept, it's intimidating, because our zoning rules were the same basically from 1960, but they were racist. There were rules put in place to prevent people from building in certain communities. When my son went away to college, my most important achievement was for him not to have a student loan. To get a good job and then come back and live in his community. We don't have any more housing. A 1.4 percent vacancy rate is a real problem, so we have to do it without being disruptive.

This number blew me away today. We have 59 community boards. Out of those 59, nine of them have provided more housing than 50 of them combined. We've created an environment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, other places.

We've displaced tenants and we've displaced residents because we're not building a little over the whole city. A little, not disruptive, but just a small amount. If we don't do that, then we're going to oversaturate those nine. We're going to displace longtime residents from being there, and that's just not fair. It's just not fair. We're with you and I look forward to you guys rolling with me over the summer.

Commissioner Kevin Kim, Small Business Services: Mr. Mayor, can I just add one thing?

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Commissioner Kim: Thank you for that question on flooding. I think this administration recognizes that it's no longer just about hurricanes and the challenge of flooding infrastructure that you brought up so appropriately. New York City Small Business Services, two weeks ago, we just launched a grant program for businesses to be prepared in emergencies and natural disasters, including flooding situations. We're giving up to $5,000 to small businesses to be prepared and buy resiliency equipment.

Not only that. This mayor and this administration believe so strongly in technology to leverage that to help small businesses. We've created a risk assessment tool that any small business can go in and just punch in their information to see how much of a risk they are at getting floods or being a victim of natural disaster. With that, you will then be eligible to apply for this $5,000 grant that we're going to be giving out to approximately 500 businesses.

Mayor Adams: Thank you so much for your question. Great question.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table number four.

Question: Hi.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: I'm good, how are you?

Mayor Adams: Great.

Question: Okay. I am a sophomore at Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy. I am also president of the Key Club, that's a community service club for our community, and I have a question on what will you be doing about the smoke shop selling illegally to minors such as my friends, getting people addicted to substances such as nicotine and cannabis. I am aware there is a SMOKEOUT Act. What will that be doing for our communities? My friends, 16-year-olds, as young as 12-year-olds are getting addicted to nicotine, cannabis at such a young age. What are you going to be doing about that besides just a SMOKEOUT Act?

Mayor Adams: First of all, thank you for your question and you should become the advocate for what, when we talk about this, people think that we are speaking what we want, and by your passion that you showed, is really allowing my folks from Department of Health and Mental Hygiene who are leading this fight for us and others what Assemblywoman Rajkumar and others have done. The state passed a law. The city didn't pass this law.

The state passed a law saying that cannabis is legal to be sold in stores, roughly about 14 stores, but the problem is when you say something is legal, people don't read the whole law. They just say it's legal, so we can open up as many stores as we want. We have 2,800 stores that are illegal. We didn't have the power in the city under the police department to go in and close down these stores. Only the sheriff department with only 139 something people, 10 were allocated to closing down the stores.

We were in Albany. Albany heard us this time. Last year, they ignored us. We didn't get it done. This time, they heard us. We are now going to be able to have the sheriffs, believe it or not, deputize the police officers, so now every precinct can go in, look at these illegal shops and get these shops closed down because you're right, everything from nicotine addiction, the edibles of what cannabis does to a young mind as it's developing, it is extremely harmful, and so we are going to go in and we're going to close down these illegal shops.

Your voice means so much because it made it seem like Eric is just this square that want to close down cannabis shop, but you saying, "I don't want my friends dying from this, I don't want my friends being addicted to nicotine," they need to hear your voice more. I thank you for your question and we're going to get it done. Thank you very much.

Commissioner Vilda Vera Mayuga, Department of Consumer and Workforce Protection: Mr. Mayor?

Mayor Adams: Yes?

Commissioner Mayuga: Vilda Mayuga here, commissioner, Consumer and Worker Protection. I just want to touch on one point that you mentioned because, as the mayor said, the city's finally getting that authority. In the meantime, the mayor has instructed us to use every tool that we can. And a lot of these places do sell not just cannabis, but also tobacco products.

The Consumer and Worker Protection Agency, we do inspections of these places because we are the ones that issue the licenses. We are targeting all of these places. Since the mayor put this mandate on us in just the last year, actually, not even before when he started, we've closed approximately 120 of these places and collected over $18 million in penalties. We care a lot and we do undercover inspections with minors for places that are also selling these products.

If you have any information of any of those stores, do not assume that we know them. Please go to our website, nyc.gov/dcwp. There's a complaint form there. You can tell us where it is. We will put it in our route. Our inspectors will go. We will issue the summons and we will be sure to shut them down.

Mayor Adams: Well said. You should start a hashtag, young people against illegal cannabis. You should. That passion you have is the passion that people need to see. They need to see when a young person state, "I don't want this to happen to my friend." That's what happened with the illegal gun movement. Young people had to shoot it on their campuses, and they rose up and they stated that we don't want to grow up in a generation where we're in class and someone is going to come in and shoot up our class, and it made the country take notice. Your voice is a powerful voice. That passion, turn it into purpose. Where am I going? Oh, we got another young person in the room.

Question: Good evening. Danny Steiner, newly retired science teacher from Bronx Theater High School on the JFK High School campus, environmentalist like my friend here. In Riverdale, we have an issue with drag racing. There are several streets in our neighborhood, Independence Avenue, West 246th Street. We have Riverdale Avenue, West 256th to 263rd Street.

This happens at all hours, mostly at night, though, and Tibbetts Avenue, West 230th Street, where I have been working for 20 years trying to keep that garden going, keeping the kids safe in front of In-Tech High School. Every morning, that poor custodian has to come out and clean two garbage cans full of trash that these people deposit there from partying, cleaning cars, repairing cars, pretty much every day. It's a disgrace. It's demoralizing. Something needs to be done.

Mayor Adams: First of all, Vanessa, you should see this hat he's wearing. "Bronx is blooming." Love that. Love that. Chief Chell or Kaz, we're big on it. We're big on it. There are a number of locations in our city where this drag racing is taking place. Young people have lost their lives to this and it's amazing when, Commissioner Daughtry, he could talk about it, when we take videos and then we go to get the cars because we're confiscating the cars, and then we show the parents, "This is why we taking your son's car." They see what their sons are doing.

It's like subway surfing. When we go home and show the parents, "Hey, your child is riding on top of the subway station," many parents are not aware these children are looking online. They have millions of views online, and they are drag racing these cars. Commissioner Daughtry, can you talk about some of the stuff you guys are doing?

Assistant Commissioner Daughtry: Yes. Thank you so much for the question. I'm actually excited to talk about this because I was talking about this last week with our legal team. I put cameras up at each one of the drag racing locations throughout our city. I'm not going to say where they're at, but I have about 15 cameras. When we catch those people drag racing, sometimes when the cops get called, it takes a while to get there because they shut the streets down.

It's just a lot of obstacles to get there. However, I'm starting to review the tape when we're identifying the car. Once we identify the car, where they live at, I'm sending the tow trucks to their house in the middle of the night and take the car. We're taking the cars and we're taking up a forfeiture. When the mayor decides to do his big crush, some of those drag racing cars are going to be there.

Mayor, please, John and I want to drive the truck to go over them when we crush them. That's what we're doing in this city. We are not going to chase these drag racers because that's what they want to do. They want us to chase them, they want to record it, they want to have it in their GoPros, but as soon as they stop and we identify those cars, we're going to come to their house in the middle of the night with our tow trucks and we are going to take them.

Mayor Adams: That location, we're going to grab the location. Okay. All right. We're going to get their location.

Question: We talked about this. [Inaudible] their priority is fast cars with black tinted windows, smoking weed, and not directing their lives to do something productive.

Mayor Adams: Without a doubt. We're going to get that location, but thank you for that.

Question: Right here, sir.

Commissioner Kreizman: Next table.

Question: Thank you. Thank you, everyone. My name is Vanessa Kim. I'm born and raised in the Bronx, South Bronx. I moved my family to Kingsbridge West 231st Street. Some of the themes that we talked about in our table primarily is about increasing the measures of seeing more police officers in our region, in our area specifically. We talked a little bit about increased hate crimes and concerns about that, but a lot of our folks in the table want to know how we're going to see more police officers in our area specifically. Not only to help protect and feel safe, like you mentioned, but, also, we have many synagogues around here, but also- it is a very diverse community, so we want to be able to make sure we feel protected, basically.

Mayor Adams: Yes. Well, thank you for that. Thank you. Chief Gurly, do you want to touch on that?

Assistant Chief Ben Gurley, Patrol Borough Bronx: First of all, good evening and thank you for that question. You've seen an increase probably since all October with the Police Department and what we've been doing with the synagogues under the leadership of me and Captain Pierce. Our counter-terrorism bureau, our auxiliary officers, plus officers from our Yankee Stadium detail and officers throughout the city, we've been putting them in this community and working closely with the community on that, understanding that. We also have a piece in the 49 precinct, which we also put cops there as well. I know many people in here, we've worked on that big. If it's something that we're failing at, let us know, but I know we increased the presence here a lot, so if you're not seeing that, let me know, please. Okay? Thank you.

Commissioner Kreizman: The councilman which-

Mayor Adams: The presence of the uniform is comforting, and we want to encourage everyone to get our young people to take the police exam. We have a real deficit in our public safety community, deficit in correctional officers, deficit in Police Department, deficit in school safety agents. These are noble professions and they have been beat up so much throughout the years that a lot of people just don't want to do it.

We came in office, the first thing we did, we wanted to settle our police contract so we could stop hemorrhaging officers, but we want to continue to have young people to come into this noble profession, but we believe in the omnipresence.

Nothing is more comforting than coming out of the subway station or walking down the block and you see that uniform presence. I don't buy the theory of those who say, "They don't want police on their blocks. They don't want police on their train." I have not been to one community meeting where adults or residents have not said, "We want our police," and we are going to continue to stand up and protect and to support the Police Department in this city and in this administration.

Councilmember Dinowitz: Mr. Mayor, first, I want to commend the mayor because not only does he believe in the presence of police officers, as I know a lot of us here do, but also in the underlying things that build community and he's been- you mentioned building bonds and breaking bread, and which we've had some of those events here in Riverdale at the Riverdale Y, and that was with the support of Mayor Adams, so I want to commend him.

I do want to say specifically about one of the issues, because it was hyperlocal. One, we do want those cameras. 230th Street and Tibbett Avenue is actually something that is being worked on in the city and that actually is owned by the Department of Education. SCA is in the process of paving that street, but also putting a gate to prevent cars from coming in at night after all the school staff and students have left. When that project is done, you should not see any more drag racing going down that block because it will be gated off.

Mayor Adams: Good. Great. Good stuff. Good stuff. Commissioner Daughtry, you have that location also? The location that was just mentioned?

Assistant Commissioner Daughtry: 230 and Tibbett, correct?

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Assistant Commissioner Daughtry: Okay.

Mayor Adams: Okay, on it, on it, on it.

Commissioner Kreizman: Next table, seven.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: Hi. Good. Good evening, Mayor.

Mayor Adams: Good evening.

Question: Welcome to Riverdale.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Question: Just want to say thank you for bringing your cabinet members and all the special people here in the Bronx. My name is Amy Sigh, and I am a member of the Community Education Council District 10 here in District 10. I'm a borough appointee by Vanessa Gibson. Very honored to represent her. I am a mom of five. I am a Norwood resident, but I am pretty frequent member here in Riverdale. I business here, I shop here, I do everything. I think everybody had biggest concern is safety and quality of life for our youth. I want to thank all the youth for really vocalizing that.

A lot of the families and the youth have expressed that traveling in the morning to get to school and traveling home safely, going home, either after school or afternoon activities is a very big concern because as you're traveling home, wherever you are at every block, in every corner of a school, there is an illegal marijuana shop or a scooter that's going to run you over on the sidewalk or crossing the street with your kids.

Parents have volunteered, no pay, took their time in the morning before dropping off their kids or at dismissal to make sure that kids are arriving safe. They're not injured. School safety agents and crossing guards do their duties as well, but it's not enough. I think that the presence of NYPD have done a lot, especially with the recent issues here on 238 on the trains tracks, but it's still not enough to feel comfortable that our young children feel fear, and that our lives are at risk.

I want to say, what are you going to do about it more than just making sure our NYPD officers are going to be deputized by the sheriff? I know there's only so much you can do, but our lives for our scholars is really important. I want to say thank you to Superintendent Hulla because she has done her biggest part in schools to make sure our principals and parent coordinators are educating the youth about drugs and what the use of drugs will be harmful to them, but it's not enough for us members of the community to say, "That's enough. We're enough to handle our kids." It's not. It's serious.

I have to say, commend the areas of Riverdale, Kingsbridge, Van Cortlandt, Norwood. We are actually one of the more safer communities versus the rest of the Bronx, but yet it's still not enough. Please, I beg of you to get all these interns into your mayor office and advise because they have great voices. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you.

It's never going to be enough for us as long as there's one victim of a crime. There's a combination of things that must be done. As the commissioner of DCWP just stated, her team is going in. Even before we got the law passed, she's going in with the sheriff's department, doing what they need to do. but the New York City Police Department is now going to have a bigger presence in that. Our schools are educating our children about the dangers of drugs. Then there's a role that is often ignored that is really empowering parents with the information on what to reinforce at home.

Because, as we know, I am Jordan's biggest role model. He watches me, he listens to the things I'm saying. That's the combination that we're going to need. Those parents who ensure that safe passage for their young people, those are the ideal parents that we want in our city because we all have to step up. I think DA Clark said it, public safety is all of our effort. It can't be just one sided, but doing what you're saying you and parents are doing is what we need.

We're going to do our job, and we're going to be dogmatic about it, but raising your voice, if all of us are saying it, that's how we got the changes in Albany. Everybody started saying, we don't want these illegal smoke shops in our community, these cannabis shops. We didn't hear that noise last year. We heard it this year, and everybody responded because of that. Your voice is more powerful than you think it is. It's very powerful.

Question: Some of these people, they get their drugs down the block right by the school, and then they come to the front of the school, and they're laid out unconscious, and then NYPD is called, and then they escort them to where they need to. Then the next day, you wake up and you drop off your kids. Again, it's the same thing every day. We want some kind of prevention so that it's not just an intervention, but it's something stable for families to feel like the passage to go to school is safe.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Intervention and prevention is what we believe in. Thank you.

Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, Department of Transportation: Mr. Mayor, if you don't mind. I also want to add another aspect that on when it comes to improving safety around the school, is also about improving safety for children when it came for the pedestrian perspective. We also have the New York City DOT Educational Department, and we work with the schools, we work with the parents. If there's any school that has not been in touch with us when it came to improving safety for the student as they come in out school, please, also let us know.

One of the reason why also we have those speed camera near the school is because also we want to be sure that our drivers are near the school that they slow down. In that way, everyone is safe, the students, the parents, and also the drivers. Again, we also working to create safe route to school so that from the transportation perspective, we also adding into this, to other area, we want to be sure that our kids are safe as they go to school.

Mayor Adams: Well said. Well said. Anyone have any lotion? My hands are ashy. Let me have a little. Thank you.

Question: Good evening, mayor. My name's Steven Schwartz. I'm the proud principal of PS 24. There we go. I was going to ask for an internship, but I think those spots have already been taken, so I'll have to go to my question instead. The question the table had is more about congestion pricing and about city workers and why they have to pay those congestion prices while going to their jobs for the city. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: First of all, we have a real congestion problem in the city that's hurting business. Not only that, it is hurting our environment in a real way, but what many people didn't realize is that the state turned the power over to the MTA to come up with the rules and the plans. I felt that it's our city. The area in Manhattan is New York City streets. I think the plan should have been dropped down to the City Council and the mayor's office to formalize the plan.

We didn't have that power and authority to do so, and so we have to follow basically what the MTA decided. You have to continue to raise your voice to get those modifications. We were able to get a hundred million dollars, Meera.

Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi, Operations: Yes. We got a hundred million dollars in mitigations for the Bronx, especially in environmental mitigations. That is asthma centers, parklands, and electrification for trucks. Also, to your specific point, we got something for not all city workers, but there's a lot of city workers that come into Manhattan that can't really take the subway. They're building inspectors, they're ACS caseworkers.

It doesn't make sense for them to take the subway because they have equipment or the way their travel patterns are. We negotiated with the MTA to make sure that those workers, and we know who they are, we have a highly tracked city fleet that every car has telematics on it, and so that those vehicles will be able to get an exemption and those workers will get an exemption through the vehicles.

Councilmember Dinowitz: I'll just add that Assemblyman Dinowitz secured, as many people here know, for Bronx residents, the Henry Hudson Bridge is now free for those with an E-ZPass.

Mayor Adams: Good stuff. Good stuff. I just want to be clear because every meeting people stop me on the street. You know what's interesting? Whatever happens in the city the people get the mayor. I always tell people, people stop me, "I got divorced." "Use your problem, Eric." The mayor, the mayor, the mayor. MTA in the state controlled this. I would've loved to have more of an input and a different outcome from it.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table nine.

Question: Good evening, everyone.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: Mr. Adams, hello. How are you?

Mayor Adams: Good to see you.

Question: I'm good. My name is Gina Gallo, I'm a senior and the President of Honor Society here at RKA. The question my table has for you pertains to budgeting, and that is, will you increase investments in justice involved supporting houses and fact teams as well as will you restore funding for our schools in your executive budget?

Mayor Adams: What's the first part, the justice, you said it?

Question: Will you increase investments in justice involved supporting housing and fact teams?

Mayor Adams: Yes. Okay. What many people don't really comprehend, by law, we have to balance the budget by law. When we were dropped with 180,000 migrants and asylum seekers, we spent $4 billion out of our budget, out of nowhere. We got about 138 million DM from the feds. 138 million out of $4 billion. We had to sit down and say, "How do we balance the budget by law? Where do we find efficiencies?" We went to every agency and said, "Listen, we got to balance this budget."

Now, not one agency raised their hand and said, "Take the money from us." Everybody said, "We can't cut anywhere." We were able to put money back into the school system, for childcare and other initiatives. We were able to put money back into our law enforcement community to make sure that we were able to put more police classes in place, and now we're sitting down at the table right now looking over what else we can restore in some of these important entities such as our educational system.

We're in that conversation right now and we're sitting down with our City Council. I have a great partner there with Adrienne Adams, the speaker, and her team, Eric Dinowitz and others. We're trying to figure out how to minimize the pain that we are experiencing and how devastating this was on our budget. This was not the budget we wanted. The budget we wanted put resources in all of our agencies. This is painful for all these commissioners to have to look at efficiencies.

Then to add to that situation, the previous administration put money in school programs like Summer Rising, in pre-K, and 3-K. They put money in a program that they knew was going to sunset because it was Covid money, and they put permanent programs in place with temporary dollars.

They knew these programs was going to sunset, they knew the money wasn't in the budget, and now we had to go and say how do we hold onto these programs knowing that the previous administration put the money into permanent programs with temporary dollars? That is the science that we're going through right now. I'm not great at math, but I know the money that comes in must match the money that's going out, and we're going to try our best with the help of the city council to restore as much as possible.

Question: Thank you so much.

Mayor Adams: Thank you very much. Where are you going to college?

Question: I don't know yet. Well, I'm trying to figure that out. I am waiting for FAFSA to get back for me, and hopefully, I'll figure that out soon.

Mayor Adams: What do you want to major in?

Question: Marine biology.

Mayor Adams: Wow. Lovely. Huh?

Crowd: Another intern.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: Hello. Good and you?

Mayor Adams: Good. Good to see you.

Question: Hi, my name's Mitchell Jefferson, I'm a senior here at RKA. I'm going to college in Maine, and I plan on majoring in sociology and biochemistry. Our question for our table is we are wondering about the problems that pertain to having abandoned vehicles, specifically located in Lakeview and Broadway. How does the city plan to address instances like these all around the five boroughs, but yes.

Mayor Adams: Got you, got you. Is this mom?

Question: Oh, no.

Mayor Adams: Okay, all right. I just wanted to make sure. Chief, you want to talk about that?

Chief Chell: Yes, I'll pass that to Chief Gurley.

Mayor Adams: Where you going to college?

Question: I'm going to Bowdoin College in Maine. Thank you. Yes. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: You have a scholarship?

Question: Yes.

Mayor Adams: Good. Full?

Question: Close. Yes, close. Close enough.

Mayor Adams: I tried to get my son to get a full scholarship. He said, "No, you're going to pay for it, man." Go ahead, chief.

Assistant Chief Gurley: Hey, thank you. Thanks for that question. Taking over in August when I became the commanding officer of the Bronx, I would drive around and I would take a look at this, street storage, no plates, abandoned vehicles. We put together what we would call the Tour of the Bronx towing. To year to date, we're pretty much about 890 vehicles towed in the Bronx off the streets. Some of them are larger vehicles, RVs, trailers. Some of them are smaller vehicles. We've also addressed some of our, shall I say, some of our street used car dealers, and we also addressed some of our auto mechanic shops because they were the biggest culprits.

We're going to continue to do so. We'll definitely hit that area for you. We'll get the information from you that you just spoke about, and we'll hit that area and we'll even circle back with you and let you know what we got. Thank you.

Question: Thank you so much.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Great questions from these young people.

Commissioner Kreizman: Before we go to the last table, I just want to especially thank Alina Dowe who helped put this event together, our Bronx Board Director for the Mayor's Community Affairs Unit.

Question: Hello, my name is Tara Moran, I live right across the street, and I used to be on the community board, and, since I have the mic in my hand, I want to give a big shout out to the parks department. You go on half a percentage, like half of 1 percent of the budget and we have the third largest park here in Van Cortlandt Park and I want to thank you so much for all the work you do for this community. Very important.

My concern is a follow-up to, you've heard it a few times and she was kind enough to let me ask this question, if you live in this community on these streets, maybe if you have a Honda, you'll come out the door and your four tires will be gone and it'll be up on cinder blocks or on milk crates and nothing gets done and people say, "Oh, get their pictures. It doesn't matter. They're chop shops. It's an insurance fraud, and it doesn't get addressed." That's my question. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

Mayor Adams: I think Bronx Chiefs-

Chief Chell: I'm going to pass this to- There was a, we called a pattern. We had a crew of people coming down to this area, specifically in the last month, taking all the tires and rims. They were from Yonkers and other parts of the Bronx. As we do every week in the police department, we drilled down on numbers, places, times were happening. We saw this, we put a plan together. I'll pass it to the Commanding Officer Chase Maneri who put the plan in effect. He can tell you about the people he locked up the other night with their stunt with their van and stolen tires in the cars.

Mayor Adams: You're right on.

Deputy Inspector Chase Maneri, 52 Precinct: Hello, everybody. I'm Deputy Inspector Chase Maneri from the 52 Precinct. Like Chief Chell was saying, I'm sure you've seen driving around the Bronx and in any of these local communities a lot of times you'll see people going to work in the morning. They see their vehicles on milk crates. It's a problem we're seeing lately with a lot of these quick thefts. These guys are like F1 pit crews going up and stealing four rims and tires in three or four minutes.

We did have a great success last weekend here in the 52. We had a 911 call about someone who said, I see something very suspicious. It looks like this car might be stealing people's rims. He calls it in. We respond to that area. We see a guy outside his vehicle, he's got a Mercedes Benz, and then inside the Mercedes Benz there's rims and tires, and then he had a Econoline van next to him with another three set of rims and tires. We do some homework, we put a few things together, we call some complainants from some recent rims and tires thefts that we had earlier in the week.

We took about nine that week, nine different grand larceny complaints, and we're able to connect the dots to a couple of people that had their rims and tires taken from this same crew. We were able to arrest this guy stealing rims and tires from multiple vehicles. We have also leads on two of the other people that he was doing it. We're discovering now that this crew is responsible for not only crimes in the 50 precinct, the 52, 47 crimes all over the city, because of the very distinct vehicles that they're using.

It's a great success story and it also is a reminder that when our job gets done because people in the community see something that looks super suspicious and they called. Without that call, we would have had no luck arresting this person.

Assistant Chief Gurley: You mind, Mr. Mayor? Y'all can clap for that if you want.

I just want to add one of the things we're seeing when we see these vehicles is we're not getting 911 calls from witnesses, we're getting 911 calls from the victim when they finally come to their car. What I'm going to ask everybody in the room, if you see this in your neighborhood, and I know it's not your car and it's fine, you can report this. Because in order to have a prompt apprehension, we need a prompt response.

I need the 911 call so that we can get cops over there and start the investigation and maybe we can stop the next one. Maybe we can stop the third one, but if nobody calls until the complainant wakes up the next day and goes out to their car, then, obviously, the perpetrator could just keep doing it. If you do see it, please feel free, pick up the phone and call 911. We need to know so we can try to make a quicker apprehension and stop more cars from having their tires stolen. Chief?

District Attorney Clark: Yes, and I want to add to that. Thank you, Chief Gurley. Actually, I had a meeting with all the Bronx borough commanders today.

Chief Chell: That's because I yelled at them.

District Attorney Clark: That's one of the topics that came up and what my office as the district attorney explained to the police is, yes, this is a complaint I hear in every single neighborhood in this borough. I know that too. It's our job to put the case together. They'll gather the evidence, bring it to me. I'll be able to prosecute. If you see it, you got to tell us because it's so hard to catch them in the act. I know so many people that have walked out and there is a car either not there or it's on milk crates or whatever. It's so important. Every piece of evidence is important for me to make the case. Video, witnesses, whatever you have. Please, the only way we're going to turn this around is if you help us get there.

Chief Chell: Right. Video, video, video. When you have a chance in the next couple of days, if you have a camera at your house, please take a look at it and make sure it's pointing in the direction that makes you feel safe. Please take a look at it and make sure it's working properly because the one time you might need it, that you spent that money on, you're going to go, "Oh, what happened?" Take the time. A little crime prevention tip. I think I can speak for the Madam DA there. She probably solves more cases with video compilation throughout the city than anyone in the city. Okay?

Mayor Adams: You want to add something, Chief? To add to that, it's just so important, and this is what we have been trying to drill down on this recidivist stuff. We had 542 people who were arrested for shoplifting that committed 7,600 crimes in the city. 38 people who assaulted transit employees committed 11 of 1,100 crimes in the city. We have these patterns. Every neighbor is not committing crime. There's just a small number of people who have made up their mind that they're going to just be disruptive in our city, and we have to target them. That pattern that we just got with the cell phone snatcher. Yes?

Assistant Chief Gurley: Yes, I'll take that. We had a young man riding around on a scooter, snatching cell phones, primarily in the Bronx. We believe in another borough as well, but I'll talk about the Bronx. On March 26th, did about five or six, and then April 4th, we caught him live on three and he had an additional six phones on him that he snatched. Thank God we had some people in the community that had enough, and his last attempt, they grabbed him and they held onto him. He was on a scooter, unregistered. Give it up for the people of the Bronx. That's right.

One of the things we did well with that particular case is we had the complainants cooperate with us. That's very important. They came forward, they cooperated, we immediately reached out to the DA's office, and we got the DA's office involved very early. Very, very early. This young man who's unfortunately currently in jail right now, but he has hit us in about two months for 14 incidents that we know of. You could probably double or triple that because we probably didn't catch them on many of them. Just think about how that's plaguing our crime numbers.

These are grand larcenies, these are phone snatchers, plus chain snatchers, because you have groups of people that are working in tandem and they're doing this and it's a big money thing right now. As we've seen this in the 50 precincts and the 52 to 49, throughout the Bronx, throughout the city, we got to take heed of what's going on when we're talking about our scooters riding up and down. How can we better protect ourselves? A lot of people carry their phones in their hands. Unfortunately, and I'm not picking on anybody in here, but our victims are women a lot of times because they have their phones in their hands.

Most guys have their phones in their pockets. Most of our perpetrators' victims are women. They snatch the phone and then it's a lot of money for the phone. $150, $200 for the phone when they sell it again. These are the things that we're working on in the Bronx and throughout the city with the DA's office of putting these people away, putting these people away so they can't continue. This individual openly said to the police department, when he gets out, he's going to do it again because it's a lot of money. No, this is a true story. We have what we call vine alerts on people like him. We get alerted to when he gets out. We'll know when he gets out.

Crowd: Next week.

Assistant Chief Gurley: No, no, no. Hopefully, not next week. The DA can talk about that.

This is what's happening, and this is what the mayor's talking about in terms of the recidivism because there's multiple people like this committing these crimes. Think about it. That person's history in New York City only started in 2023 and currently right now has about 14 felonies in two months. There's others as the mayor spoke about. Mr. Mayor?

Mayor Adams: Thank you so much. I don't know when the last time you bought a phone. It's not $150. All right, all right. Riverdale, as the young lady stated, I don't know who it was, stated that this community is a community that has prospered throughout the years, is a safe community. Just speaking to some of your young people, you show that they're going to go on to do some great things. Our job here, this amazing team of people, is to create Riverdales all over the city.

There have been too many communities that have been betrayed and left behind. What we're doing now in Brownsville is unprecedented, the decrease in crime, employment, focusing on those communities, South Jamaica, Queens, parts of the Bronx. Our goal and our commitment is that we know we have jewels in this city, like Riverdale. We must make sure we have Riverdales all over the city of New York so every child will have an opportunity to reach their full potential as we develop their full personhood because we need each other.

I don't worry about these young people who stood up and talked. They're not going to be the 16-year-old that punched the woman who was walking in the Greek church. They're not going to be the ones that shot four people the other day on the scooter. They're not going to be the individuals that shot Jonathan. I don't worry about these young people. I worry about those that we have abandoned as a city. Because if you abandon them upstream, they're going to become those who bring violence downstream. We have to be preventive in doing so.

I thank you for coming out tonight. This is the greatest city on the globe.

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