Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Highlights Significant Progress in the Fight Against Gun Violence in Buffalo

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced significant progress in the fight against gun violence in the City of Buffalo. Data reported by the City's Police Department for the first half of 2023 when compared to the same timeframe in 2021 showed a 73 percent decline in the number of firearm-involved homicides; 60 percent decline in those injured by gunfire; and a 59 percent decline in shooting incidents. Buffalo’s reductions in gun violence during the first six months of this year led the 20 police departments that participate in the state’s Gun Involved Violence Elimination initiative and builds upon double-digit decreases in shooting incidents with injuries and individuals shot in 2022. Governor Hochul also announced $2 million in new state funding for community-based organizations in Buffalo, one of seven cities participating in a new program designed to strengthen neighborhoods affected by gun violence.

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 are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

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

It is great to be back in Buffalo, especially with an extraordinary story to tell. We talk often about our need to protect the public and strategies and engagement from the state and working with local partners and resources, but you also have to have partners who are literally in the streets making this happen. And I'm so proud that Buffalo has surpassed all expectations in terms of its crime rate. We'll be talking about particularly the most egregious crimes, shootings and homicides.

And before we get started, I want to acknowledge some of these extraordinary individuals. Mayor Byron Brown, I want to thank you for embracing the responsibility to protect our citizens and your hands-on approach, working so closely with all of us and continuing to request the resources from the State necessary to help you do your jobs. You're doing an incredible job. So, Mayor Byron Brown, thank you. And we'll be hearing from you momentarily. It also takes the District Attorney to prosecute the cases and to make sure that justice is served. And I want to thank the District Attorney here in Erie County, worked together a long time, John Flynn, and thank you for the work that you and your team are doing as well.

I also want to thank our county executive here, who has to manage different kinds of crimes and has a city within his jurisdiction, but also manages what is happening out in our many 42 towns and cities. So, I want to thank the County Executive, Mark Poloncarz, for his role in making sure that people sleep safer at night and the work that you're doing. Pastor Giles, helping us literally in the streets, and the word peacemakers really has a special connotation when it's given by someone like you who know the streets so well. And I know my husband Bill had the opportunity to work closely with you and many of the violence disruptor organizations that were just getting off the ground years ago when he was in the U.S. Attorney's Office. So, I'm well aware of your work from the home front as well, and the difference you've made and the lives that you saved that you may never be able to calculate, but there are many. And thank you Pastor Giles for the work that you do. Steve Nigrelli, I want to thank you for the work you do at the state police level. Again, helping us come up with the ideas and making sure they're executed with our communities. And I want to thank Reverend Blue. Reverend Blue, where are you? Reverend Blue's here. Oh, maybe he's on his way. Reverend Blue coming perhaps.

But I do want to give a special shout out to our Chief of Police, our Commissioner. Joe Gramaglia, you've been through a lot in the time that you've ascended to this important role and the confidence that the men and women who work under you in your leadership is important to all of us. And when I saw you spring into action a little over a year ago after the May 14th shooting, it was extraordinary. He brought a sense of calm, a sense of urgency to the people, but a calm in executing your responsibilities. And so, I want to give you a special round applause for all you do here. Our Commissioner of the City of Buffalo Police Department, Joseph Gramaglia. Thank you.

So, we have made progress in reducing the most serious of crimes. And as I said, when I first took office, actually less than two years ago, I said, “Public safety, protecting the public is my number one priority.” And we knew it would not be easy, especially as we were coming from the ravages of a pandemic that disrupted our entire way of life and thrust people into chaos and uncertainty. And what we saw was there were more cases of substance abuse and domestic violence and overall crimes and mental health episodes. It was just so surreal because no one could have foreseen that. We'd never had experience dealing with that, but it had a real human effect. And one of those effects that it had on society was an increase in crime, a dramatic increase in crime all across the country. This was not a New York State phenomenon. It was happening all across America, particularly in some of our larger cities.

And so, the COVID pandemic, the gun violence epidemic – we just lost too many New Yorkers, and I saw the experience. I felt the experience. I've been to too many funerals of people that are victims, and the anguish that pervades in a community after the violence goes away for a day is still there. People live in communities that are traumatized day after day, never knowing when the next drive-by shooting will happen, or like shooting into a crowd or a shooting in a grocery store. There's a real trauma that affects the human psyche and affects people's ability to just function in everyday life. So, this fear that people feel, it's not right. It's an injustice that people can't have the security that they're all entitled to.

So, I made a commitment that I would build new partnerships, new policies, new legislation, whatever it took to do what I could at my disposal, all the tools that were out there that had not been used the way I wanted them to be used. We cultivated partnerships at the state, local, federal level. We have policies that make sure that community organizations have the resources they need. They've always known what to do, they just didn't have the resources to make it happen. And again, landmark legislation to make all New Yorkers safe. One thing that I'm particularly proud of is launching, a year and a half ago, the first ever consortium of other states pulling together to deal with gun interdiction, the Interstate Gun Task Force. And what we've done is now we have alliances and relationships in all of our neighboring states, and more are being added because they want to be part of the effort to get the guns coming in from out of state.

Think about this. They're not being manufactured here in New York. They're not being made here in Erie County or in Buffalo. They're coming from out of state. And if we can stop them at the border – something I asked our State Police to be very aggressive about, very aggressive – and to literally stop them at the borders or the gun shows where they're being loaded into trunks in Pennsylvania, nearby Pennsylvania, and being brought up to our state and being distributed to people and sold to people and used in violent crimes here in Buffalo and Rochester and all the way down to the City. This is how you make a difference. You just reorient your priorities. I have the resources. But what are they doing? And we have put a massive focus on getting guns off the streets and also what we can do with the legislature, letting them see the urgency of changing the laws to protect our people.

It's that simple and a tragedy that shook us to the core, again, the Tops Massacre. After that, I went back to Albany and said, “We have to do more.” And I signed a comprehensive nation leading package of some of the toughest gun laws you'll ever see. And I'm proud of that because it is making a difference. And then shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court struck down a law that had been used for 100 years to protect our citizens from concealed carry weapons. Think about that. There are states where it's legal to have guns hidden as you walk into grocery stores and places of worship and other playgrounds in schools. That's legal in a lot of states. And we protected our citizens, and the Supreme Court took that ability away from us just over a year ago. So, we went back, went back to the drawing board, so we have to change the laws. We'll identify sensitive areas where you cannot have a concealed carry weapon.

We also have to invest in the programs, and that means money. My Budget is a statement of my priorities, and what you see is an historic investment, $347 million that we've used to help with gun prevention, violence prevention programs all across the state helping communities respond in the aftermath of violence, supporting youth employment programs, our Gun Involved Violence Elimination Initiative, GIVE programs, that's for our Upstate communities. And that's where we've really focused a tremendous amount of money, and our police stabilization units where our community is under stress. They call us up, we show up. Our State Police are literally on the streets in places like Rochester and Syracuse helping them out and have been, and we're committed to that.

And also here in Buffalo, I've directed investments. They've gone up over 300 percent from $6 million to $25 million this year. And I'm proud to say our methods are working. But let me just look overall at the statistics for the state before we get down to the really incredibly positive news about Buffalo.

But outside New York City, shootings are down 28 percent in the police jurisdictions, the 20 jurisdictions where we give extra resources because they've been identified as high violence communities. Fatal shootings are down 43 percent, murders down 35 percent. Erie County, County Executive, murders are down 64 percent. Violent crimes down 10 percent compared to just one year before. That is a dramatic change. And that one area I want to really zoom in on is the City of Buffalo. Buffalo is leading the charge. Let's just look at the numbers from January to June. Homicides here are down 62 percent this year, and 65 percent since the summer of 2021 when I took office. That's the largest decrease – again, 65 percent since I became the governor.

So, I've been watching these numbers closely since that time. Largest decrease since 1985. From January to June last year, there were 42 homicides. This year, the same period, it’s 16. Fatal shootings are down 73 percent from our peak in 2021. Last year, there were 36 fatal shootings in Buffalo, and we knew 10 in one afternoon. This year there's been 11 total. First half of 2021, 184 shooting victims. Same period last year, 143. This year, it's 73. That's a 60 percent decrease since 2021, the peak of the pandemic. Shooting incidents are down tremendously. 153 shooting incidences in 2021 in Buffalo, 104 the next year, which we are very proud of. And then this year, 63.

But it's not just the homicides and shootings, which are the most egregious crimes. Violent crimes such as robberies, rapes, and assaults are down too. They've dropped 20 percent in the last two years – from 1,122 violent crimes in 2021 to 894 this year. To put it in perspective, this is the lowest number of violent crimes seen per month in the last three decades here in Buffalo. That's extraordinary.

These numbers are great. The progress is undeniable, and people around the country have taken notice. This makes me really proud. A report from the Council on Criminal Justice, which is featured in many news outlets, reviewed 37 American cities, and found Buffalo was one of the cities leading the way in reducing homicides. The Atlantic reviewed a study of 90 cities, and they highlighted Buffalo where the murder rate is dramatically declining. Again, we won't stop until these numbers are down to zero. We will not say mission accomplished. We're not done. But this is extraordinary.

But there's also one thing that is increasing. While homicide shootings and violent crimes are decreasing, what's increasing is our gun seizures. This is an intentional effort, as I mentioned before, to get the guns off the streets, and I want to thank the Buffalo Police Department's leadership and all the officers who are working so hard to just get those weapons of destruction and death out of the hands of people on our streets. And that's what's helped make these public safety improvements possible. And I said last year, I said, “I don't want to be in the business of solving crimes. We should be in the business of preventing crimes.” And that's what we're doing here. Last year, we had over 10,000 guns taken off the street. The police seized 65 percent more firearms than in 2019, and the numbers just keep getting better. Here in Buffalo, nearly a thousand guns were seized last year, 956 the highest in more than a decade.

We've also seen a rise in ghost guns. Guns that can be purchased on the internet, and the parts manufactured at home, put it together at home, they're untraceable. So, while criminals continued to design and conceal firearms, we'll continue to try and stay a step ahead of them making it illegal to do so.

We passed in 2021, legislation to make them absolutely illegal, while they are legal in other states. Last year, the Buffalo Police Department seized over 76 ghost guns right here in Buffalo. State Police seized 120 statewide. So, we're going to double down. This is what you do when you know when you're doing something right. We're going to continue the strong relationships we have between the community, the organizations, the violence disruptors, our police programs like SNUG Outreach and Project Rise, the Peacemakers. And we're going to continue to use technologies at our crime analysis center because all of us have a responsibility to keep the public safe, from law enforcement officials to elected leaders, community leaders, advocates, judges, lawyers, probation, parole, there's a whole ecosystem, but the purpose is to dispense justice, but also to protect our citizens.

And I want to thank everyone who's been a part of this. These numbers make me proud. All of you should be proud, but again, we're not resting on our laurels. This could change, numbers could change. So, let's celebrate this day, but also look forward and say, “What are we doing right? What technologies and strategies can we embrace here?” But also talk about across the state so others can see what's being done here. But holding out Buffalo as a model, this day is an opportunity for us to say, “They're doing it right, the numbers are trending in a positive direction, and more people are alive today in Buffalo as a result of these efforts.”

So, I want to thank everyone. I want to thank the mayor, invite him to come up and tell him that this is an amazing day to be able to look at these numbers. I was going through my six-month reports, I get briefed all the time on our crime statistics throughout the state, and I looked at the numbers for Buffalo and Erie County and I said, “We have to go to Buffalo. We have to celebrate this.” This is a moment to say we are trending in the right direction, and this is incredibly positive news.