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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now the New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. He was a City Council member until his election last year in a district adjacent to the one where the 36th Street Sunset Park subway shooting has taken place this morning. He was originally scheduled to talk about the state of the city more generally as both he and Mayor Adams hit their 100th day in office on Sunday. We'll do some of that too, but obviously, the shooting is top of mind right now. With the arrest of Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin on campaign finance charges this morning, that's relevant to Brad Lander too. It was Lander who won that comptroller's primary against Brian Benjamin and others last June.

Comptroller Lander, we always appreciate your time. Who knew it would be this kind of morning, but welcome back to WNYC.

Comptroller Brad Lander: Good morning, Brian. Yes, horrifying news from Sunset Park. It was really chilling to hear your colleague Giuliana, that's just a few blocks from my home as Steven Nelson said right around the corner from the Sunset Park High School. Just really terrifying. Incidents like this have us all on edge.

Brian Lehrer: It's not officially a comptroller function. Officially you deal with money and auditing city agencies and things like that, but it's close to home for you in Brooklyn, as you say, and of course, you care anyway as a city-wide elected official. What can you tell us about what your office is learning are doing?

Comptroller Brad Lander: Yes, we're in real-time with you, but as you say, that's our train right there, I get on it, the 9th Street Station, but it's the same train, just a couple of stops away. Lots of friends and neighbors in Sunset Park and on Bay Ridge coming up on that train. Look, these are really anxious times, COVID has put us all on edge, elevated levels of crime and mental illness, and then you get an incident like this. It's just super frightening. Today we're just checking on people, making sure people are safe, listening, and finding out what we can do. We do need to be taking thoughtful action guided by what evidence tells us will work.

We don't know enough about what this is yet, but I don't know if you saw Farhad Manjoo had an interesting article in The Times this weekend about a new book on-- We don't know for sure that this is a mass shooting, but it seems to have that characteristic. Did you see that?

Brian Lehrer: No, I did not see that op-ed. What would you like to tell us about it?

Comptroller Brad Lander: It's focused on a new book on looking at what you could do, what we could do together to address and stop mass shootings, which of course are really hard to confront. He talks about practice of behavior or threat assessment, bringing together mental health specialists, law enforcement, school administrators to help officials both recognize and redirect potential shooters away from violence. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting article, and it jumped to mind this morning, as we're trying to think, what do we do to keep all our communities safe?

Brian Lehrer: Steven Nelson reported on the scene that he saw high school students milling about outside Sunset Park High School, which indicated to him that authorities are not concerned about an active shooter on the scene and further danger necessarily, though, they haven't explicitly said that. We're getting a question from a listener on Twitter who writes, "Parents of kids in Brooklyn schools are wondering if all schools are sheltering in place. Some have notified parents but not all have notified one way or another." Do you have anything on that?

Comptroller Brad Lander: The NYPD has not reported this morning whether they have a suspect in custody. What it sounded like from what Steven reported is either they have a suspect in custody or they have reason to believe he fled the scene, and that there's not, as Steven was saying, active threat right at that location at this moment, obviously, there's panic and terror and people trying to make sure their loved ones are okay. We're going to have to learn more from obviously the NYPD in the coming minutes. Obviously, they've responded very quickly, and we want to know the condition of the apparently five people who were shot, and then, of course, got to learn more, were there explosive devices?.

Anyway, we're going to learn all of that in the days to come. I think what Steven was saying is that they don't have people on lockdown at the Sunset Park High School, which is just about a block away.

Brian Lehrer: Right. The NYPD and FDNY saying 5 people shot, 13 people injured. We don't know if all the injured were also shot or perhaps, in the bedlam of trying to escape this seen people accidentally got hurt, but those are the numbers coming from officials so far.

Comptroller Brad Lander: Yes, could have smoke inhalation, sounds like from wherever the smoke was.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, obviously this is a fluid situation, and we'll keep updating you on the program during this morning as we get more information. I want to ask you about Brian Benjamin, your rival last year for comptroller, now indicted on a campaign finance scheme in that campaign, and multiple media reports are saying arrested this morning. What are you learning about that?

Comptroller Brad Lander: Yes, these are serious charges. That's for sure. I read The Times article this morning. I'll start by observing. I'm a big fan of our campaign finance program that provides public matching dollars. What that means is people can run for office who aren't connected, who don't know a ton of wealthy people. If you look at this new City Council that has just come into office, first council, that's majority women, that's majority of people of color, a lot of working-class folks. It's great that they were able to use the system to raise resources and get there, but obviously, we got to have strong guardrails to make sure public funds aren't misused.

It's a good thing that there's aggressive oversight and investigation. Apparently and we'll have to wait to hear the charges and see the evidence. There's an allegation that there was a directing of public funds to an organization where the treasurer or an individual in leadership then made a set of illegal contributions that would actually been reported last year.

Look, the lieutenant governor deserves the presumption of innocence like everyone else, but these are serious charges because obviously, people's confidence in government, that the resources that they get dedicated to nonprofit and community organizations are going where they're supposed to be going, and that our public campaign finance system really has the attention it needs to do what it's supposed to do. Those are really important. Public trust is at a low and we need to make sure there's oversight and attention to make sure we're all doing what we're supposed to.

Brian Lehrer: We mentioned the uncertainty about lockdowns at any other Brooklyn schools, getting back to the shooting at the 36th Street Subway Station. Delilah, a public school parent from Park Slope is calling in with a report from one school. Delilah, thank you for calling in, you're on WNYC.

Delilah: Hi, Brian, thanks for having me. I've spoken on your air a couple of times. I listen every day religiously, and I love you and you're wonderful. I was walking home from drop-off from school and I saw a bunch of police cars flying towards that way. My best friend lives right by there. It's very close to me. It's like a seven-minute walk probably. I get the notify NYC texts, which I find very helpful, and I got that right away. Then I heard the helicopters and more sirens, and then I think you guys started reporting on it. I'm on the parent conference or whatever at my school, so I called the front desk and told them and we were all messaging on our school app, and they said that they're on lockdown now.

Comptroller Brad Lander: Delilah, do you mind saying what school?

Delilah: PS 10.

Comptroller Brad Lander: Okay. Yes, a few blocks away.

Delilah: Yes, because that's pretty close to there, so that makes sense to me. There's a bunch of schools around there, and right in that area, there's a ton of school.

Brian Lehrer: Delilah, thank you [crosstalk] very much for that report.

Delilah: Actually, people on the PTA group chat said, "Where are you hearing this information?" I said, "WNYC 93.9. Get the app. Are you crazy? I listen every day to get to know what's going on." They all say, "Okay, thank you."

Brian Lehrer: Thanks for the nice words, Delilah, and of course, hope that your child's school as well as everybody else everywhere, stay safe. No report of an incident at PS 10, but lockdown out of an abundance of caution, it sounds like. I'm also told now that a preschool about two miles from the scene of the shooting is canceling outdoor activities today and keeping kids indoors. There Comptroller Lander is an example of the risk calculation that everybody must make all the time.

In the pandemic, we say, "It's safer to be outdoors" and today's a pretty warm day to take the kids outdoors, but under those circumstances, at least at this moment in the short term, they're saying no, we're going to keep these masked two to four-year-olds inside today.

Comptroller Brad Lander: Yes. Part of what these crises do is just shake our sense of risk and how we keep each other safe and how we show up for each other. One of the things that I found most difficult in the pandemic is ink the nation is to protect each other by showing up together through a hug, through shared support. When you come to doubt what are the ways that I can keep my kids safe, that I can show up for my neighbor that's been part of what's been so challenging about the last two years from the pandemic. Then of course rising crime made crime rates also increase those levels of anxiety.

I think one thing that means we need to be doing is focusing on how we use public resources, we just put up recently federal online tracker for all the federal COVID funds that New York City is getting. We're going to release a little later today report on the money that New York City Department of Education has because they got a lot of money to help the student's social and emotional well-being, academic recovery, a variety of supports in schools. They've had a hard time spending it, we're 3/4 of the way through the year and only about 1/4 of the money for students supports has been spent.

This is one of the things we've got to be doing making sure we use that one-time set of resources both to keep each other safe, to give people, students in this case but all of us the supports that people need to thrive. That's where we really got to have our focus if we want a thriving and inclusive recovery from the pandemic and then one that keeps all communities safe and confronts some of the inequalities that we've seen so dramatically over the last two years.

Brian Lehrer: Well, let's talk about your and Mayor Adam's first 100 days. The mayor has made public safety his main focus as we all know you have pushed back on some of his policies toward that end. I don't know if one incident no matter how bad should change anyone's approach but of course this happened this morning how do you assess the state of the city right now this morning never mind 100 days.

Comptroller Brad Lander: As I was saying part of the real challenges these are anxious times and we do need smart evidence-based investments in communities that do confront crime increase you're right. I've disagreed with the mayor on some issues here but I think we all agree we've got to be investing in community and community-based programs that get guns off the street and support in evidence-based mental health programs that provide the supports that people need. One area where I have disagreed with the mayor but we all know we got to do something is around homelessness.

I want to see more money in the budget for supportive housing, for a housing-first model that moves people into permanent housing rather than just encampment sweeps that might for a minute look like they're doing something but don't really change the conditions on the ground get anyone in better shape. Look, what we have to do and there's a lot of areas where the mayor and I do agree are invest in a more inclusive recovery that brings our kids back into schools with the supports they need, that creates good jobs and that brings our city back to life.

This morning is a really terrifying one but as spring comes, as more people are able to get back out into activities, bringing our city back in all the ways that we know we can and in a way that's more inclusive and supportive of a broader set of people, central workers, healthcare workers, amid rising inflation, low wage workers that's got to be our focus as well. Certainly in the controller's office where we focus on the economy, focus on the city's finances, real really making sure we have that inclusive and supportive recovery has been our top priority for these first 100 days.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned the homeless encampments and disagreeing with the mayor sweeping those encampments, destroying people's stuff. The mayor was on the program on Friday and I asked him about that and this is part of what he said.

Mayor Adams: You have the legal right according to law to sleep on the street, you don't have the legal right to build encampments on the street. That's not acceptable and I'm not going to continue to ignore that in our city. We're giving people options, I visit our shelters unannounced two, three in the morning walk in and I want to see the quality of product that we are producing. Clearly, we have clean, safe sites for New Yorkers who are looking for a place as we transition into permanent housing.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor here on Friday. Comptroller Lander since your office audits things and technically you audit for financial purposes as the city controller but I know you also audit for quality. You're new in the job I don't know how much you've gotten to the question of how the shelters are doing so far but the mayor paints a picture there of shelters that are welcoming enough to people who want to use them as transitional housing before they can get permanent housing.

Obviously, since they've cleared out 100s of encampments and at last report only five people have agreed to go into the shelter system there's a difference between what he says and what people experiencing homelessness are experiencing. What's your take on that?

Comptroller Brad Lander: Two points here, so first we've done three audits in the first 100 days. One of them was of the Department of Homeless Services and what we found was that actually quite a few families who were seeking shelter got turned away by the Department of Homeless Services because they couldn't prove every place they had lived in the prior two years. Instead of getting help, documenting what they needed to in order to get shelter were turned away so Department of Homeless Services agreed to change some of their procedures but that was evidence that says, "Okay we're not making our shelters welcoming to all who need them."

The second thing I would say is we all know that what is needed to combat homelessness is housing, it's not that people want the right to sleep on the street or the right to put up structures or encampments or even the right to be in shelter though that is very important in New York. What we want is housing and the mayor's preliminary budget does not include increases in supportive housing or in some new strategies that really move people more rapidly from the streets of the subways into housing. To me, this would be a time to be really increasing resources.

There was a report that there's a couple of thousand empty units in our supportive housing system because it takes time to process so that's where I really think we're all New Yorkers. Almost New Yorkers and everybody else want to see the focus is what can we do to ramp up say decent, permanent supportive, and affordable housing for homeless New Yorkers first and foremost and then obviously lots of others as well.

Brian Lehrer: What about the state budget in this respect that was just passed the other day and there's a big progressive faction in the state legislature? Yet I haven't seen reports of massive amounts of funding for the supportive housing with wraparound mental health services and whatever else individuals who are living on the streets might need to vastly scale up that system. There's some money but have you looked at the state budget and what its impact could be or should have been on New York's City in that respect?

Comptroller Brad Lander: It's a mixed bag. The governor did announce yesterday a significant increase in capital investment in housing from the state level. I confess I haven't had a chance to dig into all the details of it but two things were left out that I really hoped were going to be in the budget. One was a protections against unfair eviction called good cause evictions. I've got neighbors who are paying actually quite a lot of money for their housing but a private equity bank landlord came in, bought up their buildings, and is raising their rent from $3,000 to $5,000 so we need protections against evictions that we don't have in place.

Then there was a proposal for thousands of new housing vouchers. Those are really good because it takes years to build a new building we got to do it but that takes longer. Putting vouchers on the street means somebody can afford a new unit right away and there was hope that, that was going to be in the budget but I think you're right it did not include significant investments or significant new protections in housing. Now we come back to the city level where the preliminary budget did not include them, the mayor is releasing his executive budget next week at the King's Theatre, and certainly, one thing I'll be hoping to see in it is a really significant investment in supportive and affordable housing.

Brian Lehrer: We're getting other reports now after the subway shooting at the 36th Street Sunset Park station of schools going into lockdown or sheltering in place that are not far from there or not doing so. I was just told by my producer we heard one report from a school near the Barclays Center not in lockdown, I'm not sure which school that is but we're getting a report from a listener on Twitter who says their school in [unintelligible 00:19:58] is locked down. That another one in Fort Greene is not. Another listener on Twitter writes, "My son's school MS 443/New Voices middle school on 19th Street, and Sixth Avenue is on lockdown and [unintelligible 00:20:14] I presume PS 295 in the same building is too." We're getting a caller, Matt in Brooklyn, and Matt for time we're not going to be able to put you on the air, but we appreciate your report. Says he lives on Sixth Street, daughter at MS 839. They are in lockdown.

These are not if you're just joining us from any rash of school shootings, or any knowledge that any school is even potentially being targeted right now, but if you haven't heard the news this morning listeners there was a shooting at the 36th Street subway station where the [unintelligible 00:20:56] go in Sunset Park, five people reported shot. According to city officials, 13 people reported injured. We don't know if all those injuries are from gunfire. There was smoke at the scene. There was an alleged perpetrator reported to be wearing a gas mask at the scene.

It is not known at last report from our transportation reporter Steven Nelson who was on the scene, whether anybody has been arrested or is still at large, but some of these school lockdowns or school shelter in place policies that we're hearing in Brooklyn out of an abundance of caution obviously. We have a few more minutes with New York City Comptroller Brad Lander who also lives near there. Let me play you one more clip of the Mayor from last Friday show, and this is about crime. You have disagreed with him on his desire to roll back the 2019 bail reform law, and I asked him on Friday do you have any data?

The critics of rolling back the law which would incarcerate more people say that there's no data that indicates there's any more crime as a result of bail reform than there was before, and this was part of his answer to that.

Mayor Adams: There are many rivers that feed the sea of violence. You have to dam each river. When you hear people say, "Well, only 500 people that came out that were criminals, and came out back out and committed a crime." That's 500 shooters, that's 500 potential victims. Those are 500 potential robberies. The reforms I called for was not rolling back our successful reforms, it was tweaking those areas where those small number of people who are repeated offenders are creating havoc and crime in our city.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Adams here on Friday. Comptroller Lander, there's a lot in there that actually requires fact-checking. I know what he was trying to say, but certainly, there have not been 500 shootings in New York City by people released on bail since 2019. I think what he was saying is that there were 500 total crimes perhaps committed by people released on bail. What we don't know as we try to put this in the real context of real data is how many of that compares to before the bail reform got enacted. What do you make of those numbers, and as a critic of his policy what do you think? [crosstalk]

Comptroller Brad Lander: That's what my office looked at. We actually put out a report last month looking specifically at bail reform, and what the numbers tell us the results have been. We looked at a range of things. We looked every month both before bail reform and after bail reform at what numbers and percentages of people were rearrested on new charges. There's no statistical difference before or after bail reform in the numbers or percentages of people who are then rearrested on a new charge while awaiting trial in the community.

Basically every month it's 5% or fewer people that are out awaiting trial in the community who are arrested on any new charge, and about 1% that are arrested on a new violent charge. Of course, if that one person has committed of violent crime against someone you love, these numbers don't mean anything to you, but statistically, the vast majority of people who are awaiting trial, awaiting their fair day in court in many cases contest to improve their innocence are not rearrested on any new charge. The whole reason bail reform was necessary was because disproportionately Black and brown and low-income families were waiting months and years on Rikers Island where a humanitarian crisis is underway. We've lost 19 people on Rikers since January of 2021. Bail reform has meant more people who are awaiting their trials are able to await it in the community. Again, the evidence just does not show that bail reform had any increase in crime. Look, the mayor is right that we need to be taking action to make community safe. There are plenty of areas where we agree on investments in my [unintelligible 00:25:39] interrupter programs what they call the crisis management system. Investing in community groups, strengthening our evidence-based mental health programs. I hope providing more supportive housing to folks who are homeless to help them get off the streets.

We need to be taking action, but you want it to be grounded in what the evidence tells us, and we want to make sure we don't have an overreaction that takes away people's civil rights. It means more folks sitting on Rikers when they don't need to be.

Brian Lehrer: We're just about out of time, but that 1% that you cite of people released without bail who commit violent crimes, is that 500 people over the last year, is that 1% and the Mayor's stat of 500 is that the same? Are they the same numbers expressed different ways?

Comptroller Brad Lander: I hadn't heard the number the mayor gave, so I'm not totally sure. The number I'm citing is a monthly number. It's in any given month how many people out of all of those awaiting trial in their community committed a new offense. Obviously, people are out for more than one month, but by looking at it monthly we're really able to compare before and after bail reform.

Brian Lehrer: So as the last thing, the calculation that policymaker has to make is well, 1% of thousands and thousands of people passing through the criminal justice system, it's still going to be some meaningful number of violent crimes committed by those people, but is that worse or would it be worse to lock up the other 99% out of an abundance of caution with the impact it would have on those relatively innocent lives?

Comptroller Brad Lander: These are the hard calls and on a morning like this one, you totally understand why people lean to like, "Let's do everything we possibly can to keep people safe." Of course, we do. We feel it in our kishkas, but as your show tries to do, we also need thoughtful conversation to make a more holistic set of judgements about what the right thing is to keep every kid safe, to keep all our communities safe. That's why we'll keep trying to bring data to these questions. If folks want to know more about what we did in our first 100 days beyond this morning's awful news, check out our website. We put a report out.

Comptrollers underwriting bonds, and doing audits and managing the pension funds, and overseeing the budget, and we're just working hard to make government work better for all New Yorkers, and also getting ready for the future we face

Brian Lehrer: New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, not the conversation we were expecting to have this morning for the most part, but with the breaking news of the shooting at the 36th Street subway station in Sunset Park and the indictment this morning of the New York State Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin thanks for rolling with the breaking news as well as talking about the first 100 days of your administration and Mayor Adams administration and the state of the city. We always appreciate your time.

Comptroller Brad Lander: No matter the news, it's always nice to talk with you, Brian. Thank you.

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