Pat Kiernan: And with that key City Council vote coming up this afternoon, I’m joined by Mayor Adams. Along with the mayor this morning is Yanely Henriquez whose 16 year old daughter was killed back in April of 2022. She was caught in the middle of a gunfight near a high school in the Bronx. So, thank you both for being with me this morning.
Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you.
Yanely Henriquez: Good morning. Thank you.
Kiernan: Mr. Mayor, I want to just start with you and what has become a very public battle, the presence of Ms. Henriquez next to you, a part of that. Why do you think this legislation is so important that you’re going right up until the wire on this City Council veto?
Mayor Adams: I think it stands next to me, to the left of me. When you look at Yanely’s story, it says a lot. Those police officers worked around the clock to find her daughter’s killer. They spoke to hundreds of people. Time is of the essence.
And I want to be extremely clear: I support the concept of this bill, Level 2’s and Level 3 stops and Level 4 stops, and even the transparency in the car stop that you saw with Councilman Salaam. That shows the system works.
It’s the Level 1’s. And I’m hoping that if this bill is overrode by the City Council that before we execute it let’s correct the parts of it that is going to be burdensome to catching people who are dangerous in our city.
Kiernan: Ms. Henriquez, you’re on the front page of The New York Post this morning. You wrote a letter to the City Council speaker. You have certainly gone public with this story in a way that, you know, we… It’s terrible that anybody has to be in that situation that the tragedy that you went through. Why are you speaking out at this time on this issue?
Henriquez: Well, I feel that this bill is going to change a lot of things. It’s going to be a tremendous effort, but we will be able to get it. Because at the moment that everybody was looking for the perpetrator, you know, it’s better than being in a desk filing paperwork when they should be outside looking for whoever is doing any damage.
And that’s why I supported the mayor in, you know, passing this bill because I don’t want to see another mother and I don’t want to see another child go through the same thing that my family is going through to this day.
Kiernan: But when you look at the City Council’s perspective on this, they say that gathering this information will provide more information to have the city better policed. You don’t think they’re accurate with that? You’re focused on the issue of how much time officers spend on the street versus how much time they spend complying with these reporting requirements?
Henriquez: I believe that you don’t need to spend hours and hours doing paperwork. And just go out, and like we have body cams that they can download in two seconds how technology works this day. Why do we have to go and spend nine hours doing a police report or trying to get a warrant or anything like that? That’s nine hours that nobody’s doing their job.
You know, fortunately for me, I was blessed, you know, that Jeremiah was caught, you know, because everybody was doing the job. But it doesn’t always happen the same way. So, let’s just focus on the police doing their job catching these people, you know, committing this crime, than sitting in a desk doing a police report that takes five hours.
Kiernan: Mayor Adams, let’s get into that….
Mayor Adams: And we should be…
Kiernan: Go ahead.
Mayor Adams: No, and I just want to be extremely clear of, we have body cameras. We have stop and frisk reports. We have all sorts of documentation that police officers are doing now. And that is why I took the councilmembers out and asked all of them to join me. And many of them saw and many of them acknowledged as they spoke with me after that they understand exactly what we’re saying.
And we’re hoping that if it is overrode by the council that the time of execution some time in July, between that window, let fix the part of the bill that will be really labor intensive for police officers.
Kiernan: Mr. Mayor, I had the City Council speaker next to me yesterday. She said that you were overplaying the amount of paperwork involved, that an officer with a smartphone could provide this data in seconds and it really wouldn’t take up as much time as you believe it would.
Mayor Adams: And I think the speaker really has good intentions, and I think the councilpersons that is part of this, they have good intentions. But when you’re on the ground and you understand the real [operation] of policing, one may say that if you’re only talking with one person, yes, you will have just a few minutes to do this.
But when you do go out to search for someone who’s your mother, your daughter, who’s missing, dementia, Alzheimer’s, you are speaking to a large number of people and the officers should be focused on doing the investigatory aspect of their work, not trying to make sure that they guess someone’s right age, guess someone’s right gender, guess someone’s ethnicity, write a reason why you spoke to those hundreds of people.
That is just not what you should be doing. Policing is not about just guessing, it is about what you are catching on your video camera and what your clear observations are.
Henriquez: [Inaudible.]
Kiernan: Mr. Mayor, ultimately today this is about politics and it’s about whether you can win just a couple of votes because it’s a high threshold for the council to override a veto. In terms of those one on one conversations that your office might have had with councilmembers, do you think you might have been able to sway some of them over to your side on this issue?
Mayor Adams: Well, I did my job. My job is to look at bills that come before me and make a determination that if it’s a good idea, bad idea, particularly when it comes down to public safety. And I’m not going to do anything that’s going to jeopardize the success that we have been having in bringing down crime, doing investigations to find victims of those who inflict violence in our city.
And so I did my job, now it’s time for the City Council to deliberate and do their job. And I think we have some good councilpersons there that realize that we can find a balance of public safety and justice. That’s what I stand for. That’s what I advocated for throughout my entire life, and I’m going to continue to do what’s best for the City of New York. I am finished with my aspect of this for this level.
Kiernan: Mayor Adams with us from Gracie Mansion, and we thank you for your time. Yanely Henriquez, thank you for sharing your perspective this morning.
Henriquez: No problem. Thank you very much for everything. And you know, I want to say that I shared this phrase with my daughter where I was always nervous and you know, she always told me, “Mom, you got this.” So, mayor, you got this. Don’t worry about it. We got this.
Mayor Adams: Sound like my mom. [Laughter.]
Henriquez: Yeah. Yeah, something like that. So, we just have to do it [also].
Kiernan: Thank you both…
Henriquez: Thank you so much, guys.
Kiernan: …nice to have a smile on a serious story like this. We appreciate it.
Mayor Adams: Thank you.
Source: NYC.GOV – Midtown Tribune news
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