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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Yes, we are in our 30 Issues in 30 Days election series. Let everyone else obsess on the horse race. We continue to center the many issues in the New York City mayoral and New Jersey gubernatorial races. After our debate crawl in the previous segment for New Jersey, today it's issue number 14, in 30 Issues, Criminal Justice Reform, as an issue in the New York City mayoral race. Back in 2019, remember it was then Governor Andrew Cuomo who signed the bail reform law, a priority for progressives at the time, the law stopped many prisoners from being held on bail. It was those who had committed most misdemeanors and nonviolent offenses, including drug charges, shoplifting, and misdemeanor assaults. Since then, the law has faced sharp criticism, with some lawmakers saying it has led to an increase in crime and rising recidivism rates. It has been changed several times, as some of you know, especially to give judges more discretion in deciding when people can or should be kept in jail before a trial. Now, in his campaign for mayor, Cuomo says New Yorkers feel unsettled, they feel unsafe. He certainly doesn't remind people of the fact that he signed that law, and he's calling for the hiring of more police officers.

Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani wants the NYPD to focus on major crimes, as he frames it, while creating a new Department of Community Safety to take over certain police responsibilities that they have now. In our 30 Issues series, we've been addressing some issues with explainers and some with debates. This will be more on the debate side. An exchange of views with our two guests. Michael Tannousis, Republican assembly member representing District 64, including South Brooklyn and the East Shore of Staten Island, and Insha Rahman, director of Vera Action, an organization that works on the politics and policy of crime, public safety, and immigration. Thanks to both of you for engaging. Welcome to WNYC.

Michael Tannousis: Thank you for having me.

Insha Rahman: Thanks for having us, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to play some clips of the candidates first, one of each, and then we'll discuss the issues. I wanted to start with an ad that the Sliwa campaign is running, that you'll hear knocks Cuomo on the bail reform law and also knocks Mamdani.

Speaker: You can hear a woman screaming. Rapes in broad daylight. Attacks on the subway. Why? Cuomo.

Andrew Cuomo: We're going to end the cash bail system once and for all.

Speaker: Worse, Zohran Mamdani wants to go even further. With them in charge, you are not safe.

Curtis Sliwa: We deserve better. I'm Curtis Sliwa. I'm asking for your vote for mayor. Together, we'll build back a safer, more affordable New York.

Brian Lehrer: There's a Sliwa ad that's currently running. Here's Cuomo on what he's emphasizing on public safety, speaking during the mayoral primary debate this past June.

Andrew Cuomo: We have to get back to safety. I would add 5,000 police officers. Yes, we need mental health professionals who also help work with the mentally ill, and they're two totally separate things, but this city has to be safe. Opportunity for youth is part of it, but if people don't feel safe, Errol, they're not going to stay. End of story.

Brian Lehrer: Cuomo there addressing my co-moderator in that debate, Errol Lewis from New York 1. Here's a Mamdani clip, from that same debate, on creating a Department of Community Safety.

Zohran Mamdani: When I put together our proposal for the Department of Community Safety, it was built upon the many conversations I had with rank and file officers who had told me that they signed up to join the department to take on serious crimes. Yet what they were being asked to do is play the roles of mental health professionals and social workers. That is part of the reason why 65% of crimes in the first quarter of this year are still not solved. We need to ensure police can focus on those crimes, and we have mental health professionals and social workers to address and tackle and resolve the mental health crisis and homelessness.

Brian Lehrer: We've heard a sample of each of the three candidates. Now we'll get to our guests. Assemblyman Tannousis, I'll give you the first response on this. Earlier this month, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said she thinks the 2019 bail reform law was the main cause of the spike in crime in 2020, not the pandemic. I assume you agree with that, but try to make that case.

Michael Tannousis: I do tend to agree with that. First, I just want to say that Ms. Rahman was a Bronx defender when I was at the Bronx District Attorney's office. So we used to do battles in the courtroom and now we're actually doing battle on the radio, which I find quite funny. In regards to the commissioner's statement, it is absolutely true. I was a prosecutor for almost a decade. One of the reasons, the main reason I ran for this assembly seat was because of the bail reform laws passed in 2019. I remember I was the prosecutor on a homicide case on Staten Island where a guy murdered two babies and their mother. Attempted to murder a third baby.

The state assembly, at that time, decided it was a good idea to take away judicial discretion and pass these bail reform laws. Now, listen, I was a prosecutor. I was a prosecutor in the Bronx. Prosecuting is not just about putting people in jail. It's about doing justice. I will be the first one to tell you that when I was in the Bronx District Attorney's office, I had people released just as much as people that were prosecuted to go to jail. That's because a prosecutor is supposed to do his job. He has to do the right thing by the victim, by the public, and by the defendant, and by the defendant.

The problem therein lies, is that this law took discretion away from the judges, so judges are not allowed to look at things on a case by case basis, which is what they're supposed to be doing. Their hands are tied, and people get released back onto the street. There is a feeling out there that, especially from the police officers. I understand you played a clip of Zohran talking about police officers that he's spoken to. I don't think there's anyone more, in the assembly, that speaks to more police officers than I do on an everyday daily basis. The feelings that I get from the police officers is, why even make those arrests? When the judges are forced to release them back into the street.

You want to know why crimes are unsolved in New York City? There's a specific reason why crimes are unsolved in New York City. A lot of police officers have retired, given the fact of what has been occurring in our city in the past few years. Add on top of that, the caseloads that they have, and on top of that, the feeling amongst police officers of, "Well, what's the point of making the arrest when they're just going to get released before we finish our paperwork?" Then that's what leads to that increase in crime.

Brian Lehrer: We will get to police staffing and police recruitment as one of the points of conversation here, but Insha Rahman, why don't you go ahead and respond to any of that? You can take as much time as Assemblyman Tannousis fairly took.

Insha Rahman: Of course. Assemblyman Tannousis, good to see you again, and fun to do battle here on the radio as we have in Bronx Criminal Court in years past. The 2019 bail reform law fixed a huge problem, a huge injustice. In New York's pretrial system, was that the wealthy, no matter whether or not you were dangerous, you could pay your way out of jail and skip accountability, while people who were poor, who didn't have $250, $500, languished in jail no matter how minor the offense is or how safe they were to return home to their jobs, their families, and go back to their lives.

What a cash bail system does is it actually makes us less safe, because when public safety is not the determinant of who stays in jail, but rather money is, which is what New York's old bail law did, that undermines the fundamental value of public safety. As, Brian, you said up front, the bail law, what it did do was allow for judges to release people without setting any bail on low level misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. Importantly, the reforms to the law left in place setting money bail for cases where judges had concerns about public safety. More serious cases.

Assemblyman Tannousis talked about his time as a DA and on a serious homicide case. Let me be very clear. Judges can and do still set bail on those kinds of cases. Bail reform did not change that. What bail reform did do for judges is not take away discretion, but in fact allow for judges to have more options. Rather than just being able to release someone or set money bail, they actually have a third option because of the bail reform law in New York, which is to put somebody under pretrial services. That means supervision, case management, support.

Whatever the underlying driver was, whether that's a mental health issue, addiction, needing to get into school, or get a job, judges actually have more discretion now, under the bail reform law, to actually funnel people towards the right kinds of services and intervention that prevents crime and breaks its cycle. Look, crime did go up in 2020, and up until about 2023, and then it started to decline again in New York. That is because the pandemic happened. We saw in cities across the country that didn't do bail reform, that continued with tough on crime punitive policies, crime went up in those places, too. Much as it did in New York.

There have been three separate studies that have found that, yes, crime rose in New York in 2020 into 2023, but it was not because of bail reform. The fundamental problem here with this debate is, if you blame the wrong causes for crime, you miss the right solutions for what actually works to make us safer. What we are seeing now, in this debate, in this mayoral race is, do we want to move forward with new solutions? What actually works to prevent crime and break its cycle? We are seeing that from Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani. We're seeing some of those options from Andrew Cuomo as well, who has defended passing bail reform as governor, and I think that's where New Yorkers are.

That's what they're hungry for. We can dig into the results and look and see what they're looking for, but I think fundamentally saying you either have a choice of crime or you go back to what we had before, it's missing where New Yorkers and voters are on this issue.

Brian Lehrer: Issue 14, in our 30 Issues in 30 Days election series, on public safety and criminal justice reform as an issue in the New York City mayoral race, with Republican Assemblyman Michael Tannousis, of parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island, and Insha Rahman, director of Vera Action. Assemblyman, I wonder if you would take this to the candidates per se. We've heard your two positions on the 2019 bail reform, and I guess some of the tweaks to it since, but you heard the Sliwa ad where he-- and I'm curious. I don't know. I should have known this coming in.

I know you're a Republican, obviously in the Assembly. Are you endorsing the Republican candidate and do you hold Cuomo responsible to this day, for that, or do you think he has changed his tune enough to be basically the same as Sliwa on this issue going forward?

Michael Tannousis: Well, I think first of all, I'm a Republican, I am endorsing Curtis Sliwa for mayor. I think the biggest takeaway from Curtis' commercial is the fact that the former governor has flip flopped on his stance on bail reform. He was the governor at that time. It was at a time, if you recall, that the Republican Senate was lost. It became a Democratic majority. Correct. So, this moved forward and it was signed into law. I think the, like I said, in a situation where you have, and there's a reason why, by the way, Brian, why you hear candidates flip flop. That's because they tend to go with the wind, right? They tend to go where they feel the public is.

The main takeaway there is that the public does not feel safe. I take the subway on frequent basis. I will be the first to tell you that when you go down onto that platform, there is a different feeling down there if there are actual uniform police officers on that platform. You see it. I look around. I go down, if there's no police officers, I look around and I see, and there's a bit of a side eye from the people that are riding the subway to see who's around them, to make sure everything's okay. A bit of tension, which is totally different when you walk down to that platform and you see uniformed police officers, and people tend to be more relaxed.

I think that the candidates now, and even Zohran has now begun to flip flop a little bit, in terms of the policies that he wants to set forth, because at the end of the day, I think people realized that the public wants more police. They want to feel safe. They want to keep people in New York City. They don't want to see people continuing to flee to other cities and to other parts of the country. I think that's the main takeaway from Curtis' commercial.

Brian Lehrer: Insha Rahman, maybe you could pick up on that by describing, as you understand it, Mamdani's proposal for a Department of Community Safety and what it would do that police officers themselves actually do now, and respond to the assemblyman's description of the importance of deploying police officers on subway platforms as he sees it.

Insha Rahman: Yes. Everybody wants to be safe. Safety is a nonpartisan issue. New Yorkers of all stripes want the same thing when it comes to making sure that our streets are safe, our subways are safe, that we go about our daily lives without issue. On the subways, we have seen time and time again, what is causing New Yorkers to feel unsafe is when they see people who are visibly in crisis, people who are homeless, who are having a mental health episode. Things just don't look and feel right. Police have a critical role to play, but we cannot ask them to be social workers, mental health workers, and right now we are asking them to do everything.

That's where Mamdani's proposal for a Department of Community Safety comes in. Mamdani has been very clear that police have an important and critical role to play, and that's to respond quickly to 911 calls. It's to improve case clearance rates, which means less than half of all cases are being solved right now by the NYPD, and it's because we're distracting them and asking them to respond to everything else. A Department of Community Safety will staff up mental health trained social workers.

For cases in which that is the right response, a trained expert who can deal with somebody who is homeless, who is in mental health crisis, means that you actually can keep the police focused on responding to and solving serious crime. Mind you, this is not some outlandish proposal that has no basis in reality. Other cities have done this. For example, in Oregon, Seattle, Washington, Denver, Colorado. A lot of cities are struggling with more homelessness, more people in crisis. Even though New York City has tried to staff up on policing, what they have not done enough of is staff up on mental health workers, social workers, experts who can deal with those kinds of issues.

That's what Assembly Member Mamdani is looking to as he's proposed the Department of Community Safety. It's actually well researched. These are proven solutions. There's been a study of Denver's program that showed that crime dropped by 34% in the places that had essentially a Department of Community Safety response. That's what Assembly Member Mamdani is proposing to scale up here in New York. We do it a little bit, but we don't do it nearly enough, not enough to meet the scale of the problem.

There's about 2,000 people who are homeless, living in the New York City subway system. Focusing on getting them out, getting them into housing, getting their mental health needs met is what's going to work to actually make the subway safer. Police simply can't do that job.

Brian Lehrer: Assemblyman Tannousis, you can respond to any of that, but on what you raised before, regarding so many police officers retiring, and you said it's because they are asking basically, why arrest people if the courts are just going to release them back onto the streets?

Mamdani says, one of the main reasons for the staffing shortage now and the difficulty in recruitment is that police are being asked to do the jobs of social workers, and a lot of things that they shouldn't-- that all the problems of society shouldn't be put on the backs of police officers. That he thinks it would actually help with recruitment and I guess slow the rate of retirement if his kinds of policies were enacted. Why don't you respond to that?

Michael Tannousis: First, I want to say that, like I said, I take the subways, I walk the streets of Manhattan. I noticed, obviously, that there is a big mental health crisis in our streets, in our communities. Okay? The main issue here, however, is that, what exactly is this Department of Public Safety going to do? Is this going to be a department that's going to totally replace police officers? People have to understand, when a 911 call is made, and police respond to a scene, they don't know what they're walking into.

It could be a situation where it might not appear like a serious situation, could then potentially become or turn into a deadly situation. That's why we need to add more police officers into our ranks. Now, the question becomes, do we need more health professionals? Absolutely. Absolutely, we need more health professionals. You know what else we need? We need to fix Rikers Island, because that is a topic that not many people, not many of my colleagues in the legislature talk about.

People at Rikers where bail is set, or they're even remanded, are not even getting the proper mental health treatment that they need at Rikers Island, because the former mayor decided it was a good idea, Bill-- and I'm not talking about Adams, I'm talking about Bill de Blasio, decided it was a good idea to ignore all the issues at Rikers, have it turn out of control, so that he can justify the closure of it. I think absolutely, we need more health professionals, but not in place of cops. We still need to let cops do their job. One thing I would just want to say, Brian, is we're looking at this as a small crime, big crime.

When you are the mayor of New York City, there is no such thing as small crime or big crime. Big crime comes from small crime. You cannot treat small crime in a way to say, "Well, we're not going to prosecute this." Or, "We're not going to make the arrest on this because it's not as significant, so we can concentrate on the murders and on the robberies and on everything else." You have to be able to put things in place in order to keep people safe and to make sure that those people that commit these crimes are prosecuted, and those that need mental health services receive the services that they need.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned Rikers. I'll just mention as a program note for our listeners that that will be issue 17, in 30 Issues in 30 Days. On its own segment next Tuesday, what to do about Rikers Island, and the three mayoral candidates positions on that. We're going to run out of time soon. Insha, he talks about big crime, small crime, and a lot of what people seem to focus on, I think, from any side of this, who are serious about addressing the problem of crime, big crime, small crime on the streets, is recidivism.

For example, and I know Mayor Adams talks a lot about this, the NYPD stats say that during the first quarter of 2018, around 2,500 people were arrested more than three times for the same crime. That was before bail reform. In the first quarter of this year, that grew to more than 4,500 people. An increase of 73%. The NYPD won't say how many crimes these people allegedly committed, so that may be a little confounding variable, but still, in the first quarter of this year, just the first quarter, there are around 2,500 shoplifting recidivists per the city's numbers.

That's one of the arguments, is that something more serious needs to be done. That includes addressing holes that the bail reform law created with respect to that relatively small number of people who commit a relatively large number of the crimes. Your position?

Insha Rahman: The problem with Assembly Member Tannousis' point that small crimes lead to big crimes is that he's treating all things the same and calling for one response, which is arrest, prosecution, and jail. What we know is that we need to have an array of tools. Indeed, there will be arrest and prosecution and jail for the most serious crimes, as it should be, but what we are currently doing is not addressing and not offering more options for the low level crimes that are a problem that do need an intervention. The intervention that we've used for a very long time, which is, arrest these folks, put them in jail for a small period of time, they're released, they come back around.

That is indeed really frustrating. Certainly to the police officers who see that revolving door, and to all of us in the community, New Yorkers like myself, who want more accountability. The right kind of accountability here is actually preventing crime and breaking its cycle. What we have seen is simply arresting and locking up those folks is not going to work. If instead, when somebody gets arrested for shoplifting and it is clear that they are homeless and are in crisis, we connect them to services, to housing, to mental health treatment, to employment, that's actually the best intervention. It's the best accountability for preventing future crime.

We all agree we need to be serious about safety. I am not saying to ignore or brush the small stuff under the rug. I do not think we can. What we need is a greater range of tools to actually respond. We've heard a lot of like-

Brian Lehrer: What's the-

Insha Rahman: -"Well, you got to be where--" Sorry, go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Just a follow up. By the way, credit to Politico for that summary of the recidivism stats. How do you address recidivism per se, Insha, in the context of what you were just saying?

Insha Rahman: When somebody keeps getting arrested for a theft, a petit larceny, or keeps getting arrested for being out in the streets and being disorderly, arresting them and putting them in jail is not going to stop the next instance from happening. What will, though, and this is proven, this is what a Department of Community Safety will do, is connecting that person with a mental health expert, getting them connected to services, having case management, is what will break that cycle.

I want to be very clear. This is being serious about safety and focusing on real accountability, which is both personal responsibility for a person who's broken the law, what can we do to prevent the next time, and also accountability for a system that works. Simply cycling people through the courts and through jail is not going to be the answer. Brian, you mentioned statistics that Mayor Adams and the police department have put out from before 2019 and then today. The big intervening factor there was not actually the bail reform law. It was the pandemic.

We have all seen, because of the pandemic, there has been an explosion in the mental health crisis and in the homelessness crisis in New York City. Thousands more New Yorkers are homeless today, more so than five years ago. Arresting those people, locking them up, isn't going to address either the mental health crisis or the homelessness one. The Department of Community Safety offers a big picture approach to addressing and tackling many different issues, not just saying everything looks like a nail, and so we use a hammer.

Brian Lehrer: As we run out of time, Assemblyman, I'll give you 30 seconds for a quick follow up, and maybe to this text from a listener, that says, "We've had four years of a pro-cop mayor. Has this changed the public's perception of safety?" 30 seconds, the final response.

Michael Tannousis: First, in response to that comment, it depends how you define pro-cop, because the morale of the New York City Police Department today is not as high at all as where it should be. I'll leave it at that. In regards to the mental health issues, I, as a prosecutor both in the Bronx and on Staten Island, I would come across defendants that needed mental health services, and they received these mental health services as part of a court mandated program. In situations that I've seen, when they were in a court mandated program in front of a judge, there was reports, they were coming into court.

From what I observed, they tended to be more cooperative and actually receive the help that they needed. The minute that they weren't under that court mandate, then they would return back with another case, because they weren't taking their medicine, or they fell into a trap again. I understand that Zohran is coming up with this public safety type of program that he wants to implement in regards to public health, but it really depends on how it is implemented. I strongly believe, as a prosecutor, as an attorney, that when that program is implemented through the court system, I believe it would be more effective.

It's not just about putting people in jail. I'm not saying that they have to go to Rikers, necessarily, for those types of small crimes, but somewhere with a judge and with a prosecutor and with an attorney, defense attorney-

Brian Lehrer: Under court supervision.

Michael Tannousis: -under court supervision to ensure they actually get the help that they need. I think that makes-

Brian Lehrer: There we have to leave it. We thank both our guests, Assemblyman Michael Tannousis, representing as a Republican, District 64, parts of South Brooklyn, and the East Shore of Staten Island. Insha Rahman, director of Vera Action, an organization that works on the politics and policy of crime, public safety, and immigration. Thank you both very much for engaging. We really appreciate you joining our 30 Issues in 30 Days series.

Insha Rahman: Thanks for having us, Brian.

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