Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Highlights Growing Support for Local Cops, Local Crimes Act

Earlier today, Governor Hochul hosted a roundtable with law enforcement and elected officials to announce growing support for the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, which would prohibit local law enforcement from being deputized by ICE for federal civil immigration enforcement. Joined by more than a dozen district attorneys, county sheriffs, police chiefs, and county executives from across the state, the Governor highlighted her commitment to keeping New Yorkers safe by ensuring local police are focused on fighting local crime. ensuring that critical public safety resources and personnel for essential law enforcement functions are not used for the enforcement of federal immigration violations.

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:

Thank you all for traveling to join us for a very important conversation this morning - something that's very much in the hearts and minds of people all across this country, but certainly here in the great State of New York. And I know many of you traveled some distance - some not so far, some all the way across the state - to be here.

And I want to just acknowledge those who've traveled here. But I also want to acknowledge our Superintendent of State Police, Steven James - I always appreciate all you do for us.

We have our County Executive, Dan McCoy, from Albany County; County Executive Ken Jenkins from Westchester County; County Executive Jason Garnar from Broome County; County Executive Mark Poloncarz from Erie County; County Sheriff Craig Apple from Albany County; Sheriff Toby Shelley from Onondaga County; District Attorney Lee Kindlon from Albany County; District Attorney Brian Green from Monroe County; District Attorney Tony Jordan from Washington County; District Attorney Chris Liberati-Conant from Columbia County; Chief Brendan Cox from the Albany Police Department; Chief Tommy Champion from the Buffalo Police Department representing the Commissioner, Craig Macy; Chief Mark Rusin from the Syracuse Police Department; Chief Marcel Olifiers - I'm going to ask, Olifiers?

[...]

Olifiers. I get "A" for effort. Okay. Olifiers from Mount Vernon Police Department. Deputy Chief Ed Noonan from the Utica Police Department; and Dr. Joe Popcun, the Executive Deputy Commissioner of DCJS.

That is quite a gathering - very impressive group of individuals representing either their counties or sheriff's departments, DA's offices and local police departments. I had a similar gathering just the previous Friday in New York City where the Commissioner of Police, Jessica Tisch, stood with me, as well as the district attorneys and elected officials - all the way from the district attorney from Onondaga County coming down to district attorneys from New York City and others - all really standing in solidarity on an issue where we know it's important that we are the number one individuals, all of us in our respective world, to keep New Yorkers safe.

There is no higher responsibility that any of us have than to keep the people in our jurisdictions of our state safe. And I have focused on this intensely for four straight years, investing over $3 billion - many of it going to your counties and localities to help with the latest technology, or overtime and more police officers and law enforcement, changing laws where the laws were in your way for our district attorneys and for others in the criminal justice system.

And I've taken this very seriously. And what I want you to know now is that I'm seeing a diversion of that in some counties, where we are focused on local police solving local crimes, but there is a diversion that is going on now over this past year. It's been one year where there's been this intense effort to deport large numbers of individuals, basically based on a quota.

Now, I will say this very strongly: I don't support open borders. I don't support individuals committing crimes in our states, whether they've newly arrived or they've lived here all their lives. And those who are committing crimes should not be here. They should be sent back after a process. And so, what we're seeing, though, is that over the last year, 40 percent of the people arrested by ICE have no criminal record, do not have pending charges, have not been convicted of crimes. And that's a lot higher than other states if you look at the data, double some.

So we have people who've done nothing wrong that are being arrested by ICE, and there are counties in our state and localities that are diverting the resource from keeping their own communities safe to helping with that effort. And I just want to re-shift the focus to make sure we're doing job number one, that we're not being deputized as federal ICE agents, because ICE certainly has a big enough budget - $85 billion up from $6 billion a few years ago.

So in my judgment, they have enough resources. They can do what they want. We have limited resources. We're the only ones focused on protecting our local communities, and that's why we're talking about our legislation to shift the focus back where it belongs all across the state. So we want to make sure that our jails are not being used for ICE detention centers and our sheriffs who have reasons to do it that are more financial than other reasons, we'll certainly have conversations with them. I want you to know we've supported our sheriffs so we can do more.

I don't want to have local police being forced to do the job of ICE, and I also want to make sure that warrants are signed by a judge. Again, someone has a warrant signed by a judge, that's the gold standard - that means someone else has looked at this as opposed to someone who may not have even had a lot of training, and certainly not training in conflict de-escalation by the way. All the members of your forces I know are, I know this. And so, we'll always cooperate with the federal government, always, to solve crimes, prevent crimes and fight crime. But at this point, that's not what's going on here. That's not what's happening in our country, in our state.

So I want to hear from some select members of law enforcement, and I want to have a really intense conversation about this - certainly in the course of this morning - about what our options are, what else we can do.

We want to also ban ICE from going into sensitive locations so you don't have to worry about schools, and daycare centers, and hospitals, and courtrooms and places for education. People should not have that fear. But also if people's constitutional rights have been violated, that's just like if someone alleges constitutional rights being violated by a state or a local officer, there are consequences. I don't know why the federal government should exempt itself in the State of New York if those actions lead to that.

Dr. Popcun, if you could lead off in the conversation, I know you've had some individuals who you want to hear from directly. And I thank all of you for coming here. You all have really important jobs back home, but this is a conversation I think needs to happen right now, and your voices mean everything to me.

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