B-roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Safer Streets: Governor Hochul Highlights $19 Million Investment in Law Enforcement Technology Across Western New York Police[...]

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul today visited the Town of Tonawanda Police Department to highlight more than $19 million in state investments that are modernizing law enforcement technology and equipment across Western New York's police agencies. The visit included a tour and demonstration featuring the Department's state-of-the-art technology purchased with the State's law enforcement technology grants including a new 3D scanner to document crime scenes and accidents, virtual reality training system, and new communications equipment. Distributed to 378 police departments and sheriffs' offices statewide, the $127 million is delivering results by improving officer safety, protecting New Yorkers and strengthening operations. Thanks to Governor Hochul's investments in public safety across the State, index crime in Erie County is down 14 percent while shootings in the City of Buffalo are down 22 percent.

B-ROLL of the Governor touring the Tonawanda Police Department is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

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

Good morning everyone. It's been a great homecoming for me. I spent a lot of time in Tonawanda as an Erie County Clerk because we had a DMV office here, right, Carl? Yes we did. Yes, we did a lot of time out here providing services to our residents. And so, it's great to be back here.

And also I've been touring the state, visiting police departments all over and we'll talk about the funding from the state and how they're using it for technology. But this is also just an opportunity for me to say thank you to everyone who decides they want to be a member of law enforcement, goes through the rigors of training, is part of a team, an incredible community, and I want to just let them know how grateful I am to all of them for what they do. Because of what they do, we all sleep better at night, more safely in our beds. And I'm also grateful to every one of them.

Certainly our leadership matters as well. Chief James Stauffiger, I want to thank him for embracing these opportunities and his overall leadership. But, the enthusiasm with which he approached the opportunity to have money from the state and to deploy it for his members to make them even more effective. So, thank you Chief.

Someone I've known for a long time, Supervisor Joe Emminger and all your town board members who are here today. Thank you Joe. Great leadership here. Got to keep it going. And someone who's going to be ascending to likely a different position very soon, but is our Senator Sean Ryan. I want to thank him for what he does for this community so far in Albany as well as Assemblyman Bill Conrad, a great champion for this community and always having a strong relationship with our district attorney, Mike Keane and our other county officials who are here.

Today we focus on the brave men and women of the Tonawanda Police Department. And I know a little bit about police departments since I was a Town Board member for 14 years and an important part of our Budget, was funding our police department as well as hiring the chief and going through the vetting for all the members of that community. And so, it's something I was immersed in for a long time and that's why it brings to me this sense - for a long time we didn't have as much support from the state as I always thought we should have, and to put on costs to keep up with emerging technologies so we can stay ahead of the criminals has been put on localities and they just don't have the budgets to do this at the scale that I want them to do. So that's why based on my personal experiences and personal other elected positions, I knew how important this would be for places like Tonawanda.

So I just had an opportunity to check out some of the crime fighting technology. You know how important this is to me. And we're always - as I mentioned - we're always trying to stay a step ahead of the criminals, but they sure make it hard on us. You saw the announcement from the Tonawanda Police Department. I want to get this out to everybody, that the latest scam is that you could be a victim of a car theft, not from what we talked about a couple years ago. And you can use the charger for your cell phone and literally steal a Hyundai or Kia. Now they're getting very clever and able to scan your fob and get the information necessary literally from your house. You keep your keys near the door inside, you think your door is locked, but they're able to scan this and use that to steal your vehicle while you're sleeping.

So Tonawanda Police Department, I thank you for sounding the alarm on this. I think this should be all over the state, but also there are ways to have fob protectors that everybody should be employing. And that's a lower tech way to do this. But that's what we're up against. We're one step here and they're always going to try and be a step ahead of us, and that's why technology matters.

That's why I've committed $127 million to technology upgrades across the state for law enforcement. Here in Western New York, it's nearly [$19] million. And the Tonawanda Police Department, they've received $734,000. And you saw in this room and I saw outside - very impressive use and decision making from the entire team on how to use that money in the smartest and best way to protect the residents of this community. So we saw the drones here, the cameras, the SWAT headsets, virtual training sets, and also the 3D crime scene scanner, which is quite remarkable. In just four minutes, it absorbs thousands and thousands of data points and can literally recreate a crime scene which otherwise was done on paper with pens and rulers and trying to estimate the rate of speed for a vehicle involved in a crash. Now the police can perform a detailed forensic analysis without even having to return to the crime scene over and over because all that data is captured and analyzed right back here. So it also preserves fragile evidence and allows prosecutors to present a detailed visual examination of what really happened on that day. It's just a game changer.

So that's just one part of my holistic approach to protecting the public, which is my number one priority. And in Western New York, we've embraced other strategies, including the Gun Involved Violence Elimination Initiative - over $6 million allocated to Western New York for programs that are really doing an incredible job reducing gun crimes and shootings and the homicide rate throughout this region. It's making a real difference.

We have over $3.2 million for the SNUG Street Outreach programs, and I became familiar with this years ago as a county official. In fact, my husband was a prosecutor - a violent crime prosecutor before he became U.S. Attorney and he knew many of the individuals who - some of them - had former run-ins with the law, had done some time in prisons, and used their experiences to come out and be part of an organization that we're funding that allows them to be the trusted individuals in a community to help young people in particular find a more productive, safer path forward. And so this is really important to me to keep supporting those violence disruptor programs.

We allocated $2 million for Project Rise, and that provides mental health services and mentoring and other services really for a lot of people - with the idea of keeping people away from violence. Our crime analysis center - the Erie County Crime Analysis Center, $1.5 million for that. That's one of 11 crime analysis centers. There just had been a few when I first became Governor, and I realized it's all about connecting the dots and sharing information in real time. That's how we can bolster up our defenses for people across the State, and we're continuing to be able to crack some of our toughest cases.

And making sure that we also look at our laws. We heard a lot about the need for changes in our laws. We had to toughen up our bail laws, not one year, but two consecutive years. I had to go back and say, "Listen, I understand the philosophy, the attitude behind the changes, but we have too many people that are committing crimes that are getting out without consequences, and that's not how you keep a community safe."

We also had a change, more recently, our discovery laws because - our prosecutors will tell you - the police do their work on the ground, they build pretty much an ironclad case and have all the evidence, but right when it gets to court, the judges had their hands tied because of these laws. That literally, cases are being thrown out on technicalities; that if there was a piece of paper as well as a digital copy of some evidence, and you did not provide both, even though they're duplicative, a case could be thrown out on that alone.

Domestic violence cases - we were finding out that 94 percent of domestic violence cases were being thrown out before that victim even had her day in court because of the technicalities involved here. So we changed all that. You're going to see a major difference over the next year, and I'm proud to see that, and our prosecutors will be employing that along with additional money we've provided our prosecutors.

And stronger red flag laws - this is how you have that early warning system based on what someone has said to a classmate in school or telegraphed to a teacher or what they're doing online, and our monitoring of online speech is robust. We had a very small analysis center at State Police and I changed that. Particularly after the Buffalo shooting, I went back to my team and said, "What could we have done?" What does the State have to do now to at least try to identify perpetrators who feel, - in this case, were radicalized online to a philosophy of hatred and willing to drive three hours to slaughter individuals who were doing nothing more than grocery shopping.

I use that example all the time of how we sat down and said, "More has to be done." And toughening up our red flag laws has made a huge difference in getting guns out of the hands of individuals before they harm themselves or others.

And let's look at Tonawanda. Again, congratulations. Index crime is down 11 percent, not over years, but just since last year alone. Violent crime, down 36 percent. This is extraordinary. This is extraordinary. When people know this, it does bring a higher sense of security, that basic sense of security that everybody deserves to have. And let's zoom out and look at all of Erie County, it's a very similar story, actually, similar all across the state. Index crime in Erie County down 13 percent, murders down 23 percent.

And basically, I'm just going to wrap up with this, this is how you fight crime. You fund the police at record levels, my administration in four years has allocated nearly $3 billion for law enforcement. That's unprecedented, but it's making a difference. Equipping them with the best police technology, improving coordination between agencies, which was not happening before, and again, engaging young people before they find themselves on the wrong path. And finally, passing or changing laws that need to be changed just to have more common sense in our criminal justice system. So that's how we're going to keep doing it.

Now, I also want to show a contrast from what is going on here in the State of New York with what we're seeing in Washington. It was very disturbing to me to see there had been a reallocation of law enforcement resources at the federal level: FBI agents, DEA agents being redeployed to become ICE agents. I'm not sure how using ICE agents to go into small businesses like I visited earlier last week or to be going to our schools or places of worship or around our courthouses - it's people who've been living here a long time. Some, you hear stories, people have been here 20-25 years, contributing members of our community working hard, making a difference. How redeploying money from fighting criminals and fighting terrorists to those activities, how that makes us safer, well, it doesn't. It does not make us safer. And separating kids from their parents does not make us safer nor cutting this money for public safety does not.

Just this year, Homeland Security slashed $87 million from counter-terrorism dollars. Every community is vulnerable, whether it's cybersecurity, cyber, terrorism, or real in-person threats. Why'd they do that? $87 million less we have in New York State than we had the year before, and that's a 40 percent cut right here in Western New York. Does anybody feel safer now? 40 percent cut in federal resources to help keep us protected from terrorism. Now, what does that mean? It's bomb squads, tactical teams, canine teams, and hazardous material response units that will not have the funding that they've relied on in the future.

So I'll close with a simple message to Washington, if you're serious about law and order, if you're serious about keeping America safe, then look at what we're doing in New York. We're funding law enforcement at higher levels. We're not scaling back. And we believe in the people on the ground and their ability if we give them the resources they need to just do their jobs because they're so committed. So I say we should work together with Washington, find a path forward, but please restore the funding that's been cut.

So we've come a long way, but you'll never hear me say that "mission accomplished" or "done" because one crime victim is one too many. But I'm here to just, again, thank the leadership, thank all the members of this incredible extraordinary police department and the elected officials who are here, but also to remind him of what's working. This is what's working. The dollars are what's working, and the people behind me are working every single day to keep us safe. And I want to say thank you to all of them. Thank you very much. And with that, I'll turn it over to our chief of police.

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