B-Roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces State Police Continue to Increase Gun Seizures Statewide

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that State Police are reporting a 104 percent increase in gun seizures this year, statistics boosted by a months-long investigation that resulted in the recovery of a large cache of firearms and the arrest of multiple suspects who were involved in a gun trafficking ring. The successful investigation was conducted by the State Police Gun Trafficking Interdiction Unit. Governor Hochul secured $2.5 million to fund 14 GTIU positions in the FY 2023 Budget following the creation of the unit last summer. This substantial uptick in gun seizures is a direct result of these types of strategic investments to support law enforcement initiatives that crack down on illegal firearms.

B-ROLL of the guns seized by New York State Police that were displayed at the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.

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

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming out today. And I wanted to take this opportunity to come over and see in person what our law enforcement leaders are working on, what they're focused on. They're focused on the same thing I am, as I have been since day one. A little less than a year ago, I said, "Public safety is my number one concern." And that has been our laser focus, addressing it on so many different fronts.

So, I want to thank, Superintendent Kevin Bruen, for leading this operation. And specifically you'll hear more from Major Scott Donn, who's the New York State Gun Trafficking Interdiction Unit, which was stood up just about a year ago.

I've talked about how important it is to fight crime, but also particularly the most onerous part, the most egregious part are the crimes they're committed with guns because these are the ones - these are the weapons that'll destroy someone's life, injure them, destroy families, destroy communities. And that is why we've been intensely focused on gun interdictions since the very beginning. And we've taken a lot of aggressive action. You can see by the dozens of firearms in front of me today, we're starting to turn the corner and make real progress in getting these guns off the streets.

And we're delivering on our promise to focus on this, but we still have a long way to go. These are not guns manufactured in the State of New York. So, clearly they're coming from somewhere else. They're coming from another state. And I want to thank this very elite group of people that was stood up again toward the end of last summer. I put the money behind it, so we have people that are dedicated to ensuring that we get these guns off the streets, out of the hands of criminals and stop the loss of life that results when people are using these on our streets. And what I had to do immediately was coming into a situation, saw that crime was continuing to escalate, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic, I wanted to hire people.

I brought in 14 more investigators and have them strictly focus on trafficking and manufacturing of a legal firearms, identifying the source of supply and what we just witnessed over here was something that's fairly new to market. These are what we call ghost guns. Personally manufactured firearms, PMFs. They always have to call it something. PMFs - personally manufactured. These did not exist a short time ago.

We this year, since I signed a law of banning these ghost guns last October, have now compensated over 400 of these. And they're simple to manufacture. They're sent from a facility in Nevada many times. People receive them here and now they're in violation of the law, so we now have the tools for law enforcement to get these ghost guns off the street. Right now, this unit has over 20 current investigations underway. And in December of 2021, they began a month's long investigation into a gun trafficking ring.

I've talked about this. I've talked about how I was going to deploy our State Police on the borders, but also in investigative units to stop the flow of illegal guns coming into our state. And places like gun shows in Pennsylvania, people are loading up trunks. You can witness this - with weapons that they're bringing across the state lines. You come up 81, you heads north of Syracuse over to Rochester, down in the Bronx, down the Brooklyn. That's exactly the flow of guns that we're trying to disrupt. So, they began focusing on multiple jurisdictions on this case, and they work in partnership with local law enforcement and brought together statewide data gathering and intelligence. Search warrants were executed this summer at multiple locations, and the result is there's still an ongoing investigation.

So, we have to be somewhat light on the details, but this is the result of that one activity. This is not over a series of time. This is one investigation. The confiscation of these weapons, 30 guns, and again, I applaud our State Police for bringing these in, taking them off the streets, literally saving lives.

We have six assault weapons, seven high capacity magazines, 12 of the ghost gun pistols, and other assorted gun parts, as well as the weapons. Multiple individuals were arrested and this is a reflection that our efforts are ongoing. We're going to publicize them. So, to the people that are engaged in this illegal activity, know that we are coming after you. That is the message here today. This investigation was an undeniable success and it's far from the only victory we've had, not just statewide, but also as I spoke about before, when I launched on January 26, the first ever in the nation collaboration among nine states. And within those states, the local police departments and the State of New York, led by the State of New York, our first ever interstate gun task force. And that includes representatives from nine states.

We've had one goal, one goal, get illegal guns off our streets. This is the primary driver of crime that is violent. And this is where our focus has been. And I want to thank the unprecedented cooperation and the recognition we're now receiving, and I'll be announcing this in another week or so, that we'll be inviting up the new head of ATF who called me, who said, I want to elevate and talk about what you are doing in the State of New York because other states should be following your lead on this collaboration among states; data sharing, breaking down silos in law enforcement entities at the state, local, and federal levels, which have historically been barriers to success. They are now working at in a level of unprecedented cooperation and the results speak for themselves.

So, I'm pleased to announce that we've seen a 104 percent increase in seizures by state police, just since last year. Just since we put an intentional focus on accomplishing what they did here today, we're proud of it. We're seizing more illegal firearms. We're making more communities safe. And so far the State Police have seized over nearly 800 guns and that's an enormous increase. And I also wanted to thank them for what they've done, working with our other partners across the state. There's been over 6,000 gun seizures this year thus far. It is still only half a year to go. So, we are focusing on this and we're also conducting 470 gun tracing investigations, and we're working with other states.

As I mentioned, ATF Director Steve Dettelbach is going to be coming here. He's focusing on us, but I said, we're not resting on our laurels. This is success. This is success. It's success today, but we are not stopping until we move the specter of illegal guns off our streets: New York City, Albany, Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, Binghamton. All of our communities are seeing challenges here and at the state level, we are taking a coordinated approach to making sure that we not just deal with this, but also we have the toughest gun laws in the nation. How do we do that? Well, you have to be focused. You have to overcome a lot of opposition and we have to be more than just at the forefront of the fight on gun violence, because we have to continue this fight every single day.

So, how do you do that? You invest. You give an unprecedented amount of money to our state law enforcement operations, $227 million in our state budget to support this effort as well as money for community stabilization units, getting out there in the streets. Something I spoke to Mayor Malik Evans about when I was in Rochester at the very sad occasion of a police officer's funeral on Monday. We talked about this on Friday. I had gathered all the law enforcement on a Zoom call in Rochester to talk about how we'll give you money. We'll give you resources to build from the streets up operations to head off the crimes before they are conducted and to be more preventative instead of trying to solve the crimes after.

So, we have $18 million for gun violence prevention, $20 million for communities in the aftermath of gun violence. Gun violence doesn't just affect the victims. The perpetrator's family, their neighbors, the victims' community, their churches, their schools. There's a widespread effect and we're focusing on putting money in those communities to help them recover.

I saw the effect of this in Buffalo last weekend, Saturday when I was at a day of caring and healing brought together by people from the White House. We were involved. Local partners, clergy from Brooklyn went all the way to Buffalo. Texas brought in resources, backpacks for kids, and just brought in food and just really recognized that a community is reeling months after not just horrific mass shootings like we saw on May 14th in Buffalo, but also what you get that constant anguish that penetrates a community as a result of day to day gun violence.

So, we're supporting that as well as well as our crime analysis centers, they collect data, they trace data, they investigate and they work very intensely. I signed a bill that allowed the sharing of data collected from our seizures - believe it or not, this was not allowed until I signed a bill. Sometimes you just have to say, "Why not? Why can't we fix this?" And so, our partners are working closely with us.

I also want to say that we've changed our gun laws to make it easier to prosecute gun cases. That's what we're doing here. Prior to this, we now have more guns that are now class C felonies, gun violence and possession of a certain number of guns is making a presumption of intent to sell. That's how we're getting after the traffickers.

So, I just wanted to put a spotlight on some of these. We also, as you know, called back the legislature in an extraordinary session in the aftermath of the concealed carry changes, the striking down of a law that's been on the books in the State of New York for about 108 years. Now we are working intensely and I'll be making some announcements because some of these regulations to effectuate these changes will be in effect on September 1st.

My team and I are meeting weekly to go over all the elements that we're going to be getting out to the public, particularly restricting concealed weapons in sensitive places, how we define those sensitive places, how we make sure that they will withstand any challenges in the future, which is important to us as well. We're going to make sure we do it right in compliance with the law, but also protecting New Yorkers, which is again, my number one priority. So, that'll be dealing with safe storage. That'll be dealing with eligibility requirements for people seeking concealed carry permits, background checks for all ammunition purchases. This is a new development, banning body armor and strengthening our red flag laws. I have an announcement on our success in implementing the red flag laws in a couple of weeks, too.

So, we're going to be continuing to engage with the public, to let them know that we recognize there's more to do. We recognize that every single day, as long as there's still illegal guns on the streets, we will have a crime problem. I am laser focused on working with all of our partners, local, state and federal, to make sure that we can have more days like this. We can demonstrate the success of a coordinated effort, an investigation that resulted in the, taking off the streets of this many weapons. And you can say that many, many lives will be saved because these will not be in the hands of criminals who have been terrorizing our communities for far too long. It stops. We're going to get to that point where we can finally say this war is over and we won.

Thank you, Major Donn, and I appreciate all you do. And this does give me the opportunity to just say thank you. Thank you to our hardworking, dedicated public servants who are willing to put on a badge and uniform, and often go into harm's way. We saw what happens when circumstances end up with a loving wife who kisses her husband goodbye in the morning, and he does not come home at the end of the day because they're out there protecting our public safety. And I will never take for granted those who are willing to put themselves in this situation because without them, we have chaos.

And every time I speak at a police officer's memorial, every May as I've done for many years - I spoke to the Chiefs of Police last week. And I'm here today to say to all the men and women who are so dedicated, you are the people who keep society functioning. As your Governor, I want you to know how grateful I am to every one of you. It is tough. And I want you to know that I have your back. I'll have your back because you always have ours. And you're taking care of something critically important to me which is the safety of New Yorkers.