Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces $13.6 Million to Fight Gun Violence, Aid Victims and Survivors, and Bolster State Response to Public Health Crisis

And then, of course, Elizabeth Cronin, the Director of the Office of Victim Services. Elizabeth, another individual who has the heart and compassion to help people who've seen the worst in life. These random acts of violence, sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's the wrong place at the wrong time, you're caught in the crossfire, you're on the subway at the wrong time. So there's a lot of pain out there. So you need empathetic people who can relate to that. And Elizabeth, you and the team you lead are really are making a difference every single day.

So as I've said, many, many times as Governor, number one job: Keep people safe. For a long time, it's safe from COVID, we're working on that still. Safe protecting their health, but also safe from violence, because everybody has a human right to live in safety. And not to have fear, because fear is paralyzing. Am I right about that? It's debilitating. And I think about people in neighborhoods here, senior citizens, who are aware of an incident down the block, "Well, I don't want to go out now. I'm afraid to go to my doctor appointment. I'm afraid to go to the store. I'm afraid to go see my family." Fear is an emotion that can take people down. And that's what happens when there's gun violence in a neighborhood, in a community. Some people become desensitized to it, reading about it, "Oh, another shooting, another shooting." But if you're living here, you can't escape it. You can't turn the page of the newspaper and read a different story. This is your story you're living with every single day. So let's accept that reality, and know that we have to do something about it.

So as Governor, I'm constantly pushing my team, talking to experts, talking to people in the field. What else can we be doing at the state level? And I have found one of those answers and it is investing in organizations like this, and saying, you are the people I need to help turn this around and bring back that right that we all have to live without fear to live in safety, to raise kids and families and start a business. And make a place like Brownsville be the best it can be. That's what we're doing. That's why we're doing this.

So we have a gun violence epidemic here in the state of New York, full stop, that is a statement of fact. It's a public health crisis. I don't need to tell you that it also takes you down mentally, but also the people in a community. And the survivors, family members, or the perpetrators' family members, and the younger siblings of someone who's now incarcerated or dead. And it affects the clergy, who are bearing far too many young people. This has an effect, a ripple effect. One violent act has a ripple effect through a community. So this is a public health crisis as well.

So, how do you stop public health crisis? You find the source of it, the virus, how you treat the virus and you disrupt it and you stop the transmission. That's the plan. You stopped the transmission of the violence, right? It's kind of like putting on your mask. Right. Kind of like putting on the mask. So we know that you invest in strategies that work. This is not a new issue. I'm a lot older than everybody in this room. I remember violence in the late sixties. And I remember the seventies, I remember the eighties. This is not a new phenomenon. What's new is our approach to it. We are not victims. We're not bystanders. We're actually engaged in doing something about it, that's why we're driving the numbers down again. We're making a difference. So you invest in place-based strategies. What does that mean? It means what we're doing right here. It's the place where people live. You've take it to them.

And we also had to close number of loopholes in our laws. You may have known about that. Somebody thought it was okay for 18 year olds to walk in and buy an AR-15, anybody think that's okay? Hell no. And you can't do that in New York anymore. Because we stood up, we passed some really tough laws. We have to help our law enforcement teams, retraining and getting them to understand what's going on with the people that you're charged to protect. And so, we have to bridge the divide of understanding and that's an important part of it. And that's what Rossana Rosado works out all the time. And also working with community leaders. You are all community leaders. That's why I'm calling you that. You are leading us through this. And so, some of you have lived the experience, you're uniquely situated to be able to help people.

But what the bottom line is you're building relationships, right? You know where to stand, you know the street corner, you know the public housing where people are having problems, you know where you need to stand, you know where you just kind of pull somebody in. You know this, I'm not telling you something you don't live and breathe.

A lot of houses just don't have the stability, kids don't have an adult who actually can have the luxury of time to give them. I mean, a lot of people are working two jobs and they're just trying to make ends meet trying to put food on the table. They may just not be there when their children, especially the middle school and the high school kids, need them the most. For them to see an adult who reaches out and pulls them in and mentors and that peer counseling, as they get older and say, you know, come on, man, you don't have to do that. You don't have to do that. Let me show you another path. That is what we're talking about.

Overall, we've decided to really up our budget. I just came through my first budget and I look at all the numbers, big numbers, but they're numbers that you can direct as a statement of your priorities. These are not just numbers on a piece of paper. It says I want to dramatically increase the amount of money we're spending on gun violence prevention. $220 million is what we now put and I thank the legislators for this. And that includes over $20 million. I said, well, they said, well, this is how much we always fund. I said, you know what? Let's triple that amount of money. So that's exactly the $20 million that we're investing in SNUG type programs, as well as money for law enforcement, for retraining, and to help them have strategies to reduce crime. We are better off when we are partnering together to reduce crime overall, are we not? I mean, that's how you get it done.

Also, $15 million for crime analysis centers. Why does this matter? Because people are bringing guns here from other states. I mean, where are they coming from? I'll tell you right now, they're not being sold on our streets. Legally in a store, I mean. There's no gun stores here. They're coming in from other states. So we have to have the intelligence gathering and not work in silos where NYPD does their thing and New York State does theirs and New Jersey does theirs. I brought them all together. I said for the first time ever, we're going to have nine states, nine states all around us who are all tracking together.

They meet every month. I go to their meetings and I say, I need you to stop the flow of guns from coming here because if you don't have a gun, you're not going to kill somebody. It's that simple. So we're working on that as well. And so, our task force has done an extraordinary job. Just in six months, we have more guns off the streets than we've had in 20 years. So, we're making a difference on our end.

Also, you know, you're part of this story. I want you to be part of the success when I compare the numbers from January to June this year from last year, we have an eight percent decline in shootings across the state. Eight percent down, outside of New York City. New York City itself down twelve percent. But let me tell you something else. Let me tell you something. No, I've got an even better one. Brooklyn is down 20 percent. Okay. Brooklyn is down 20 percent.

That's what you're doing. That's what you're doing. You're helping stop that. The insanity can end. We can stop this. We're making a difference. We're not through yet. We're not even close to being done. We're not done until the last person holds a gun in their hand and shoots somebody in the city, in the state. We're not there yet, but that reduction, we basically had the same number of shootings that we had in 2014, 2015, which is not the good old days, but better than they had been.

So, I just want you to feel that sense of change is coming and not to live in such despair that we can't do anything about it, that it's spiraling out of control. And it was spiraling out of control, but that's when you say no, no more, no more. We have to do something — funding more programs, supporting people, supporting our law enforcement to do their jobs. We have a way to do this and it's making a difference.

So, we talk about what we're doing and again, I'm reinforcing that we're not done yet. I mean, we just had a horrific situation. You know, just a random Tuesday night, not even a weekend night, in the summer, a Tuesday night, four hour period, we had five people shot in the city in a four hour period. I don't want to diminish what's going on. Can't do that ever, but we will continue devoting everything we have at our disposal to stop this crisis because we are seeing a difference. We need to help people get through trauma and the grief that they're experiencing, and we're going to continue treating this as a real crisis, a public health crisis.

Today, we're going to be also announcing a fund and we talk about victims and survivors and the impact on them. $13.6 million in funding to fight that response as well. That'll include funding in parts of our state that are seeing a rise. We have data, we track the numbers. We know where the cases are happening. We have over 30 nonprofits in hospitals and what we're going to be doing, which I think is phenomenal, we're going to be hiring over 150 more, what we call the credible messengers. 150 more people and that's statewide, and that includes $120,000 to hire three more people and at least get your start, get going even further. And we'll add some more next time around as well.

So, this is how we help dealing with the curing the violence. We identify the hotspots. We give the resources to organizations that are doing the great work, doing the great work and helping you ramp up your work as well.

What we're also going to do is have a $2 million fund for the Community Capacity Development Fund. What does that do? That is again, an emergency fund to help the victims where they are dealing with the trauma and response, as well as money for the Office of Gun Violence and Coordination.

I will close by saying we're going to continue changing our laws. We allowed more extreme risk order protections. You've heard about them. You know what they are and when someone shows signs of doing danger, something harmful to themselves and others, we actually are not powerless any longer. That people can say, hey, I see that. We're going to have training across the state for teachers and businesses and law enforcement and organizations like here so everybody knows what we're talking about here. That you know what the signs are. I'm not going to assume everyone knows the signs, but they will when we're done with our training. So that's an important part of what we're doing.

And again, as I mentioned, we raised the age to be able to buy an assault weapon. We did that after we saw two cases. Common denominator, two young white males under 18 years old, 18 years old, able to walk in a store and legally buy an AR-15. And that happened in my hometown at Buffalo in my neighborhood, 10 minutes from where I live, the shooting at the Tops grocery store, which was literally opening up today, I think after two months of being closed, creating a food desert because this was the store everybody went to. It was our grocery store. And still, we talk about the effect on a community and the victims left behind. People are still afraid to go to the grocery store in Buffalo. They really are. I've talked to a lot of my friends and it's just this fear. So, we have to help people. We have to help people.

And that's what we're doing. I want kids to be able to go out and play safely. I want kids to ride their bikes. I want moms to push strollers. I want kids that just feel like they're going to be okay. And how are they going to feel okay? Programs like yours, programs like this all over our city and our state.

So, I want to tell all of you how grateful I am that you have, in some cases, changed your own lives or experienced things that could have set people spiraling out for the rest of their lives. And you pulled back and you said, I can help others. I learned a lot. I know this system. I know what goes on out there. I know why people do what they do. And using your life's experiences to stop someone else from having negative experience with theirs is powerful. And I am so grateful as the Governor of the state that we have people like you, New Yorkers, who care so much about other people that just show up here in this very hot room to talk about what you're doing. But I know you're going to go out there to the even hotter streets. It's going to be 90 today and keep making a difference in people's lives. So thank you.

Thank you so much for all you do.