Albany, N.Y. (WBEN) - During her State of the State address given Tuesday in Albany, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul tackled a number of issues relating to crime, public safety, and better addressing the mental health crisis many New Yorkers face across the state.
As part of Gov. Hochul's State of the State, she announced several initiatives to keep New Yorkers safe as residents remain seriously concerned about crime and public safety.
Tuesday's announcements in her address at the state capitol included four key elements to better addressing public safety in New York:
- The launch of a joint operation of law enforcement agencies to crack down on retail theft to support small businesses, and provide peace of mind to customers.
- State investments will also support the successful prosecution of domestic violence perpetrators, and keep guns out of the hands of offenders.
- The directing the Department of Health’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention to implement a comprehensive set of strategies aimed at preventing gun violence.
- The proposal of legislation to expand the list of offenses eligible for prosecution as hate crimes, building on the Governor’s continued efforts to combat hate crimes.
"If government can't keep their citizens stay safe, then nothing else matters," said Gov. Hochul during her remarks on Tuesday. "Last year, we reduced gun violence, bringing shootings down by a third all across the state. Murders are down 21% in New York City, 38% Upstate. We've made key revisions to bail reform to make New York safer. We enacted gun control legislation that's a model for the rest of the nation. But certain types of crime have been stubbornly high. ... But our success in driving down gun violence proves that targeted strategies do work, and that changing trends is indeed possible. Today, we're unveiling a series of crime fighting tactics, alongside an era-defining mental health initiative, so New Yorkers can live free from chaos and disorder, and focus on the things in life that matter most."
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Erie County District Attorney John Flynn was also in attendance on Tuesday in Albany, representing the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York as President of the association. He says it meant a great deal to be on-hand, especially in light of how much public safety and criminal justice issues were at the forefront of Tuesday's address.
"She spent probably the majority of her speech talking about issues that are important to me, and to district attorneys all across the state. But more importantly, important to the constituents of the State of New York," said Flynn in an interview with WBEN on Tuesday. "Obviously it's a tremendous honor to have my 61 other colleagues across the state elect me as their representative as President of the State DA Association. I don't take that honor lightly, and I wanted to be here today to represent not only the district attorneys of New York State, but represent all New Yorkers who recognize that public safety is our No. 1 issue."
Since taking office, Gov. Hochul has continued to prioritize initiatives and investments to make New York safer.
In 2023, shootings were down substantially from their pandemic peak, both in New York City, down roughly 38% from 2021, and in GIVE (Gun Involved Violence Elimination) jurisdictions around the state, down roughly 35%. New York City has now returned to 2016 levels of shootings, and GIVE jurisdictions have returned to 2017 levels.
Here's a more detailed, in-depth look into the Governor's initiatives:
Cracking down on retail theft
Gov. Hochul is proposing a comprehensive plan to tackle property crime, provide relief to small businesses, and bring peace of mind to New Yorkers while they shop.
"Retail theft has become organized. That's probably the biggest difference that we've seen as a society in the past 50 years," Flynn said. "Retail theft used to be individuals going in the stores, looking around, make sure no one's looking, and then grabbing an item and shoving it in their pocket and their purse. It's evolved now into organized gangs, quite frankly, of four or five individuals, with lookouts, with cars in the parking lots, going in and smashing-and-grabbing as many items as they can out of our retail stores and then taking off."
Across the state, property crime has risen exponentially since the COVID-19 pandemic. From January to June 2023, larceny in New York City was up 12% over the same period in 2022, and up 58% compared to the first six months of 2017.
In the rest of the state, although 2% down from 2017, larceny has risen 3% year-over-year, trending upward. As a result, business owners and retail workers are facing increased stress and financial strain, and New Yorkers are concerned and frustrated running simple errands at a local pharmacy, grocery story or retail shop.
District Attorney Flynn says what many in New York are seeing more of is cross-county crimes being committed.
"We're seeing people from Monroe County coming into Erie County and vice versa. We're seeing, on a statewide level, people from the city going into Westchester County and going into Long Island," he said. "What the Governor is proposing here is having a specific task force and unit by the New York State Police that can help us out locally, that can investigate and help us solve cross-county jurisdictional line retail theft."
Gov. Hochul’s plan includes:
- Introducing legislation to establish criminal penalties for online marketplaces and third-party sellers that foster the sale of stolen goods and increase criminal penalties for assaulting retail workers.
- Launching the Retail Theft Joint Operation to coordinate through our network of Crime Analysis Centers the response of law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, modeled on the successful intra-state task force on gun trafficking, but focused on combatting organized retail theft crime.
- Deploying a dedicated New York State Police team to build cases against organized retail theft rings.
- Setting up a New York State Police Smash and Grab Enforcement Unit.
- Establishing a Commercial Security Tax Credit to help business owners offset the costs of certain store security measures.
- Providing funding for dedicated teams in District Attorneys’ offices throughout the State focused on property crime, primarily organized retail theft.
- Funding for the DAs and new SP units to allow for an increased use, enforcement and prosecution of Trespass Affidavits and other legal strategies to assist small businesses in combatting this retail theft.
- Expanding the work of the 11 Crime Analysis Centers (CACs) by providing a centralized intelligence gathering and evidence collection strategy across the State designed to receive intelligence from retailers victimized by organized crime theft. These data, intel and evidence would be collected by the CACs and shared with local law enforcement to enhance the investigation and prosecution of these crimes across state jurisdictions.
Flynn adds the more money now for Crime Analysis Centers, especially the Erie Crime Analysis Center covering Erie and Niagara counties, is going to help solve the retail theft problem, along with other pressing issues like car thefts.
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Preventing gun violence
Gov. Hochul is directing the Office of Gun Violence Prevention to implement a comprehensive set of strategies aimed at preventing gun violence:
- Provide technical assistance to community-based organizations and hospitals to align their hospital violence intervention programs with the recently signed Medicaid Reimbursement for Violence Prevention Programs, which allows low-income New Yorkers impacted by community violence to receive violence prevention services from qualified specialists.
- Continue building public awareness to change the narrative on gun violence to discourage perpetuating stereotypes based on race and class that further proliferating racial injustice and health inequity.
- Building upon Gov. Hochul’s expansion of the Red Flag Law in June 2022 that allowed health care providers to file an Extreme Risk Protection Order petition to prevent individuals who show signs of being a threat to themselves or others from accessing any kind of firearm, New York will offer training and awareness for these health care providers.
- Convene a New York State Health Systems for Gun Violence Prevention Taskforce to focus on data infrastructure, firearm injury risk assessment screening, and hospital violence intervention.
- Continue to invest in community-led youth programs in historically under-resourced communities that experience the highest rates of gun violence.
- Create a syndromic surveillance system for firearm related injuries and a dashboard for the public.
Where Flynn feels the prevention of gun violence needs to take the next step is for the state to allow courts and judges to take the matter more seriously. He points to the ongoing issues with the Raise the Age laws right now in the state.
"Basically what's happening is individuals - young kids, especially - who are getting caught with guns, they're going to Family Court. I'm losing jurisdiction on them, and they're getting a slap on the wrist in Family Court," Flynn explained. "If I can keep those gun cases, which under the New York State penal law, a possession of an illegal firearm is a violent crime. For all violent crimes, district attorneys should be able to keep those crimes and not have them go to Family Court. And if I can keep those crimes, then I can hold the perpetrators accountable, I can punish them when need be."
Flynn adds while he's all for giving kids a second chance and providing kids programs to help get them out of the gun culture, he believes there needs to be more accountability hanging over their heads, which includes the possibility of jail time.
"We need to shift the focus here on a little bit more 'tough love', when it comes to gun violence and gun crimes, especially amongst our youth," Flynn said.
Reducing domestic violence and supporting survivors
Domestic violence accounts for roughly 20% of murders in the State. Each year, approximately 40% of felony assaults and 30% of aggravated assaults outside of New York City are domestic violence related.
However, many domestic violence offenders are never prosecuted, often leading to offenders’ abusive behavior continuing or escalating. In New York, roughly two-in-three prosecuted domestic violence related arrests were dismissed in 2022.
Gov. Hochul is proposing investments in a set of proven strategies to increase the likelihood of both successfully prosecuting domestic violence cases and seizing firearms, deterring future violence among high-risk offenders, and helping survivors recover:
- Provide dedicated funding to District Attorneys’ offices in GIVE jurisdictions to expand DV STAT, a model first piloted in Queens that supports collection of evidence and relationship-building with victims even before an arrest is made.
- Provide funding to jurisdictions to implement “gold standard” risk assessment tools to focus on high-risk domestic violence perpetrators and victims.
- Provide dedicated funding to GIVE jurisdictions to focus on domestic violence offenders, identifying the most high-risk individuals and engaging them to reduce recidivism.
- Provide funding to expand the Supervision Against Violent Engagement (SAVE) program to improve public safety among recently released individuals by focusing on domestic violence.
- Provide funding to local jurisdictions partnering with CACs to build the data collection capacity of local law enforcement and to work with the State's Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence to review the current state capacity of law enforcement information-sharing with regard to domestic violence reports. New York will modernize the use of the critical data available when answering domestic calls for service through the Domestic Incident Reporting and expand the use of the National Incident Based Reporting System so critical and potentially life-saving information and reports are electronic, shareable, and searchable statewide.
- Continue the Governor’s commitment to providing survivors with the emergency, flexible funding aid they need at their time of crisis via microgrants to be used to cover expenses in emergency situations.
Flynn says his office, one of the bigger offices in the State, has a limited number of victim advocates. However, in a lot of rural counties across the state, even in some counties close by like Niagara and Monroe counties, they only have a couple Crime Victim Advocates.
That's why the proposed money for Domestic Violence Advocates will provide not just more resources for District Attorneys offices across the state, but also to help in the nonprofit world as well.
"If the nonprofit domestic violence advocate world gets beefed up, then I don't need as many in my office," Flynn stated. "We work together each and every day, and it's the support, it's being there for these crime victims throughout the process that is key. If a victim of domestic violence calls 9-1-1 and makes the initial complaint, and I make the arrest and I start the prosecution off, my biggest problem is somewhere along the way, I lose that victim. They decide they don't want to press charges now against their boyfriend, they reconnect with their husband or their significant other. Therefore now without the victim, I can't fully prosecute the crime. With having more advocates and having more support for victims throughout the entire process, I may not lose them in the course of the prosecution. And if I don't lose them, then I can hold the perpetrator accountable. Put them behind bars, put them in jail, get them out of the victim's life, therefore I can allow now domestic violence victims to prosper, and to get out of the cycle of violence that sometimes they're in for years-and-years."
Combating rise in hate crimes
Gov. Hochul is proposing legislation to expand the list of offenses eligible for prosecution as hate crimes to include all forms of first-degree rape, gang assault, making graffiti, and arson, among others. Flynn says this would be a significant change for the State.
"Hate crime in New York is not, in itself, a penal law violation. There is no individual-specific hate crime penal law that I can prosecute someone for," he explained. "The way it works in New York is that hate crime is an enhancer. So I charge someone with an assault. If I add on the hate crime to the assault charge, then what it does is it bumps up the charge one level higher. Sometimes if I got an E level felony assault, I can bump it up to a D level, or bump a D to a C, which just increases the punishment on the individual. If you add more crimes to the hate crime list of enhancers, I can put people away, and I can get bad actors off the streets easier."
Between 2018 and 2022, the number of hate crime incidents increased by 69% in New York City and 109% outside of New York City.
Gov. Hochul has remained at the forefront of efforts to fight hate in all its forms, including in the wake of the recent rise in hate crimes and incidents of harassment, which have been driven by a spike in antisemitic incidents, up 214% in October 2023.
As far as Flynn is concerned, he believes every single crime that has any type of human harm element to it should have a hate crime enhancer attached to it.
"Obviously a petit larceny, you're going into Walmart stealing a candy bar, there's no need for enhancement for that. But every assault, every sex act crime, obviously every homicide already is, but every type of criminal trespass and criminal mischief, property crime," Flynn said. "Anytime you're talking about property damage or damage to a human being, every one of those crimes, in my opinion, should have a hate crime enhancer attached to it, because, again, that increases my ability to put the bad guys away."
Gov. Hochul has deployed additional State Police to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the launch of a new hotline for reporting incidents of hate, and disbursement of more than $51 million in grant funding to support security at 497 nonprofit community groups, cultural museums, and civic organizations statewide.
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Gov. Hochul also announced on Tuesday expanded efforts to better address the mental health crisis in New York, and provide more resources for residents of all ages across the State. This includes treating serious mental illness that threatens public safety, and addressing the youth mental health crisis.
Flynn says the crux of the focus when it comes to the mental health crisis is quality of life crimes.
"The mental health crisis, when it comes to criminal justice, is mainly centered around a low level misdemeanor and low level felony-type crimes," he explained. "The murderers, sexual predators and rapists, there is some mental health component to that, but the reality is there's not much. The mental health crisis deals with the low level quality of life crimes that we see on our streets and in our neighborhoods across the City of Buffalo and Erie County. So more resources for mental health will hopefully get those people the treatment they need, and that makes the quality of life better for all of our residents."