Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo and Brooklyn Borough President Adams Deliver Remarks Ahead of Gun Violence Prevention Community Meeting in Brooklyn

Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams delivered remarks ahead of a gun violence prevention community meeting in Brooklyn, NY.

VIDEO of today's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of today's remarks is available here.

PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of today's remarks is available below:

Governor Cuomo: Good morning. It's my pleasure to be back in Brooklyn this morning, and it's my pleasure to be with Eric Adams, who is going to be the next mayor of the City of New York, and I am very, very excited about that. I want to thank Reverend Cohall and the Lenox Road Baptist Church for their hospitality today. We're going to be having a meeting later on here with community leaders. Congratulations to Reverend Cohall, 25 years serving as pastor.

It's my first chance to formally congratulate Eric Adams on his election victory. I am very excited about it on a personal level, as a Queens boy, born and bred. Eric Adams is a Brooklyn boy, but he's got a little Queens in him too, you can tell. I worked with Eric when he was in the Senate, and he is going to be extraordinary. I believe that. We did a lot of good things together. He showed real leadership. He showed the ability to get things done. He took on difficult issues, and we developed a true mutual respect and friendship.

On a professional level, I believe that Eric and I come from the same political philosophy. We are progressive Democrats and we have the same definition of what it means to be a progressive Democrat. You know, progressive Democrat is not a new term. Everybody now has their own definition of what it means to be progressive. It's not a word that just entered the lexicon. Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran as the progressive Democrat. It has a tradition and it has a meaning, and what it means to be a progressive is a government and a leader who actually makes progress for people. You can't be a progressive without that word, progress. That is the key to it. Not talking about progress, not proposing progress, not theoretical progress, not progress in an academic sense, but actual progress for real people who have real problems and need government to provide real results. That's what we believe. And we are united in that. And we are at a critical moment in New York City where we need progressive government, but we need progressive government that works, and delivers, and is competent, and makes change change on the ground because we have real problems.

We're going to talk today about gun violence. We have more people dying of gun violence than COVID. 77 percent of the victims of gun violence, black and brown. 77 percent. It is a major civil rights issue. And we have to get to the young people, target a youth group, 18 to 24. And it's not enough to say "No, don't do drugs. Don't join a gang." There has to be an alternative. There has to be hope. And we're going to be working with the community today. The State is going to be announcing 4,000 summer jobs and full-time jobs, with training, for youth in New York City. So there is an alternative for them.

Homelessness is a major problem. And I mean, think about this. 50 years ago, we discovered the horrendous situations in mental health hospitals and we went through deinstitutionalization. We wouldn't subject people to mental health hospitals that didn't treat them well. Deinstitutionalization. Where are we 50 years later? Now we're seeing people can sleep on a park bench or a Subway car. People are sleeping back in Subway tunnels again. That was the answer to deinstitutionalization? That was progress? We know how to help the homeless. We've done it, been working at it for years. They need facilities, they need services, they need mental health treatment and they need housing. But don't defend their right to sleep on a Subway car. We're better than that. Provide the services and facilities and shelters that they need, and don't provide shelters that are more unsafe than the Subway tunnel.

Crime is a major problem, and it's not going to go away on its own. This is a difficult issue. We have to reform and repair the police relationship with the community. The George Floyd homicide flash point, put an exclamation point all across the nation in this situation. We have to reform policing and community relations. The answer is not abolish the police. You abolish the police, who do you help you abolish? Only rich people have police. They'll still have their gated communities. They'll have a doorman, they'll have a driver, they'll hire an ex-NYPD officer to provide their security. But you need trust and respect restored between the police and the community.

And all of this happens at a critical moment for New York City. We are in a post-COVID transition. A post-COVID transformation and what we do in this moment decides the future of the City of New York. We just went through a year that changed the dynamic. You're not going to put Zoom back in the box, that doesn't go away. People moved out of the city, businesses moved out of the city. They're in the Hamptons. They're in the Hudson Valley. They're in Florida. They're in Aspen. Do they come back? Will they come back? It depends on what we do and they're not going to come back if they're afraid to walk down the street and if they're afraid to take the subways, and if they're afraid of being harassed. New York City has to be welcoming and we have to tackle these issues and tackle these problems. We have to show them a positive future. That's why I've been working so hard on major new projects. We're going to build a new airport. We're going to build a new train station. Why? So people see progress and they believe in New York once again.

This is a national problem, they're all national problems, but it's New York's place to fix them. Why? Because New York State, New York City are the progressive capital of the nation. That's our legacy. That is our destiny. And we have tackled many problems first in New York. First to do marriage equality, first to do $15 minimum wage, first to do paid family leave, first to do the best gun control law in the nation. That's who we are. And these are national problems, but there'll be tackled here. We will do it in partnership. And we'll show the nation how the job is done and what it means to be a progressive Democrat. I believe Eric Adams can do that. It is not easy. It's hard. Two elements, courage and competence. And I believe Eric Adams has both those elements.

I pledge today to work in full partnership with him to solve these problems in New York, to re-establish effective progressive government, and to show the country how we tackle these problems in a progressive, humane, intelligent, effective way and how we make government work.

I am excited. I'm excited for all the people in the City of New York and all the people in the State of New York. Because as you know, as goes, New York City, goes New York State. It is an interwoven destiny, and we are going to make New York City better than ever before. That's our pledge. Congratulations, Eric Adams.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams: Thank you. Thank you so much, Governor and I am so happy that you are joining us here at Lenox Road. And I too want to say congratulations to the pastor of who I consider to be one of the most important spiritual leaders in the Borough of Brooklyn. And also agree with you, the way goes New York City, goes New York State and in fact goes America. This is such an important place for all of us.

I am happy that you touched on progressive, what it means to be progressive. I have made it clear over and over again, I am the original progressive voice in the city. Being progressive is not what you tweet, but what you do to help people on the streets every day. And when we talk about the Rockefeller Drug Laws, not only did I protest against those draconian laws as a sergeant in the police department, but I went to Albany and put together the coalition that reformed the Rockefeller Drug Laws.

When we talk about marriage equality, did people forget? That was our bill. We signed that into law. When we talk about all of these issues, it didn't start this year. It started so many years ago. Police reform, ending stop-and-frisk and testifying in federal court to do so, inequality in our classrooms. All of these issues that we look at, we've allowed the term being progressive to be hijacked by those who do not have a track record of putting in place real progressive changes. And I am not going to surrender of my progressive credentials.

Being progressive is not just closing Rikers Island. It's closing the pipeline that feeds Rikers Island. Being progressive is not merely stating that you're going to have a hospital in communities open, it is ensuring that people can have the right health care, so they don't have to depend on dialysis centers in hospitals. Being progressive is not merely having a school building. It is ensuring that our children have the right tools inside those school buildings that are really far beyond what people are even talking about. Something as simple as washing machines, you have children who are not going to school every day because they don't have clean clothing.

And that is the difference in our style of progressive leadership. And I agree with you. We see eye to eye that we must put in place real changes for people on the ground. And that's what I represent. I said it then, and I'll say it again: I am the face of the Democratic Party. Those countless number of men and women everyday workers that they want safe streets. They want their children educated. They want to stop hearing gunshots instead of alarm clocks. They want to ensure that they can be employed and live in an affordable city. Those are the bread-and-butter issues that I believe are crucial to not only the city of New York, but this entire country. And I'm team New York. I'm team New York.

I am not going to engage in all the differences and the debates. I wear one jersey: New York City, and that is who I'm going to stand up for. I did it as a cop, when I put on a bulletproof vest for 22 years, and I stood on the street corners and protected the children and families of the city. My son won't grow up in a city that I grew up in. That is not going to happen. With a 13-year-old baby assassinated in the Bronx and broad daylight in what appears to be a retaliatory shooting. And no one wants to talk about that. That's unacceptable. And so I appreciate not only the president of the United States, our president brought this conversation to our nation's Capital. We have ignored this conversation so much, and it was frustrating to hear everyone talk about assault rifles. We have a handgun problem. But the victims are black and brown and poor. And now to see the governor continuing to amplify this conversation. I remember when we talked about the high-speed ballistic ammunition and we pushed that through Albany, we have to engage in this conversation. It is happening every day in our cities, but not a heavy handed policing model, a holistic model.

And what the governor is rolling out, it is a compliment to what the president of the United States stated. How do we do employment, youth engaged? Making sure we put money into the hot-spots crisis management teams. How do we redefined the ecosystem of public safety so that we can identify what is the police role in that ecosystem As well as some of the other entities in that system. And treat gun violence as a public health emergency.

We pushed back on the pandemic and reopen our city. Now we have to deal with the pandemic of violence. That's real. And many of us in this room, we're insulated from it. If I were to ask you, do you know someone who was shot and killed in the last year, your hands won't go up. Go into a classroom in Brownsville and ask a classroom of students. 'How many have you lost someone to gun violence? How many of you lost a family member who was shot?' You will get eight out of 10 of those children raised there. Those are the people we have ignored. We've normalized, violence in our city and the feeders of violence in our city and then our entire country.

That's what this is about. And so I'm encouraged with what the police department has done with the gun suppression unit, the number of arrests we need to do a better job and giving them the support that they deserve. I'm encouraged with the money. This is real money that we're putting into this problem. And it's really impressive what the Governor is going to announce today and continue to announce and roll out with their team.

And I'm also encouraged with the energy that we're seeing across this entire city that we're recognizing we must fix this problem because it's tied into our economic recovery. The prerequisite to prosperity is public safety and justice. No one is going to come back to our multi-billion-dollar tourism industry if three-year-olds are shot in Times Square. It's just not going to happen. No one is getting back on our subway system to fill the office towers in Manhattan if they'd been shoved on the subway tracks. We're just not going to turn around this city. We're going to lose those high-income earners because the income that comes from the 65,000 New Yorkers that are paying 51% of our taxes, that's paying for our teachers and firefighters and police officers. If they flee to Miami, so to are their tax dollars fleeing as well. We need them here and we need them to be part of our economic recovery. So, it's not about turning against each other, it's turning towards each other and ensure that we can turn this around with employment, with support, with mental health professionals, giving jobs, jobs equal dignity, and that equals opportunity.

And so today, we will not accept a force or either an argument that we have to have justice or public safety. They go together and using that mechanism, we're going to have a safe city where we could raise healthy children and families. I look forward to the partnership with this administration, as well as the partnership with, with Washington D.C., to finally turn around the systemic poverty and crime that's pervasive in far too many communities in the city.

So again, Governor, thank you for the opportunity to be here with you. Thank you very much.

Governor Cuomo: Well said. Beautiful.

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