Editorinchief, james bennet. Thank you, commissioner, for being with us today. [applause] i thought id open with a familiar, oftrepeated statistic that i thought i should repeat again. Youll correct me if i have it wrong. In 1990, there were 2,245 homicide in the city of new york, which i think was the record mark. And last year there were 333 homicides in the city of new york. Though the population had grown by a Million People in the meantime, and there are however many millions more visitors to the city every year. I can remember what the social implications of that statistic were for neighborhoods across the city in the early 90s, and the transformation is nothing short of astonishing. You arrived in new york to lead the Transit Police this 1990. In 1990. And while there are no doubt many factors that explain the decrease, the source of strategies and tactics you put in place from aggressively implementing the broken windows philosophy to pursuing datadriven methods of policing are widely credited with this transformation. So youre the guy to ask, i think, about whats next. And ive heard you talk a lot in the last couple of years about predictive policing. And i thought we might start there with what does that actually mean . Okay. Predictive policing is the evolution were now going through in policing. The period of time were in right now is called the information intelligence era that we have learned the importance of gathering as much information as possible and as quickly as possible, making intelligence out of it. In policing that was the com stat system we put in place in 1994. That was the engine that really drove the crime declines that allowed us to move from the alltime murder high in the city to, last year, the alltime low. Good news is so far this year we have 18 fewer murders than we had same time last year. To the good news is that crime can continue to go down. The challenge to do that is to find ways to, in fact, do it. And predictive policing, i think, is going to be one of those tools. With the huge amounts of information that we can gather, with algorithms that have now been developed and are being continually improved upon, we have the ability within a Geographic Area to predict with some certainty within a certain time frame that a crime will likely be committed there unless we put that by putting a Police Officer there. Cops on the dots. Same thing as we did in the 1990s. It does sound a little bit like minority report. Youre not identifying the criminals in advance though, youre identifying the likelihood of a crime being committed . Can you give a concrete example . Actually, in some respects you are identify aing the criminal because the algorithm also takes into account whos live anything that area, whos been arrested, who just got out of jail, the patterns and trends of crime that are being reported matching up against who does that type of crime. So the minority report you referred to is the tom cruise movie in the late 1990s that looked so futuristic, and now everyone in the audience with your iphone can do exactly what tom cruise was doing that seemed so futuristic as recently as ten years ago. This is the reality of policing, and as we go forward into the 21st century, its going to become much more common place. The idea of using technology, using big data, using all of the new ways of collaborating with each other to effectively keep crime low, and most importantly, prevent it from occurring in the first place. So what, in the future, can we as citizens expect our public spaces to feel like . I mean, there are now 6 or 7,000 cameras in the streets of new york. Do you imagine more in public spaces, the use of drones and so forth be as has been pecklated a lot lately speculated a lot lately . We had 7. 5 Million People in 1990, we now have, we believe, 8. 5 million, probably more, and with the 56 million tourists, that number is growing. Were going to live in a densely crowded city where public spaces will, in fact, be more crowded. From the police perspective, one of the things well attempt to do is to try to continually improve our ability to police those public spaces. My principled successor, commissioner kelly, post9 11 implemented the program called domain awareness initially in the wall street area and growing up to 59th street in manhattan and now moving north. That eventually will be throughout the city, and thats the camera systems. Currently 7,000 cameras, private sector, Police Cameras that are all interconnected so that we have the ability to very closely monitor particularly in manhattan public space. We also have license plate scanning capabilities that in the future it will be impossible to come into the city of new york and not have your license plate scanned in some fashion at ezpass or some location where that number is being recorded. All of this is constitutionallyprotected activity, the if you will. It has been deemed by the Supreme Court to be lawful to, in fact, do it, and quite frank with you, its one of the ways that we, in fact, will keep you increasingly safe. That in exchange for giving up some degree of privacy that we will be able to, one, prevent crime which is more important than solving it after the fact. Theres not one of you that doesnt want, that wants to be the victim of a crime. Every morning at my 9 00 crime briefings and my 8 30 terrorism briefing technology and big data is an essential part of just about every crime i look at in that briefing in the morning. You have pulled back from one of your predecessors policies. Youve disbanded the socalled demographics unit that was monitoring muslim communities very closely, keeping files on people, listening in on conversations in restaurants and so forth. Do you think that we either in the city or, and or nationally, i guess, did lose our balance a little bit in the struggle against terrorist threats in recent years . No, not really. The entity youre referring to had other names, called the them graphic name demographic name, i think, was most commonly used. At its peak, numbered about 15 officers. When i arrived in january as new commissioner, the unit was down to, i think, three officers, so it effectively had been disbanded prior to my arrival and the remaining three officers out of 1,000, by the way. To read some of the tabloids, youd think armageddon had arrived on january 1st. We have over a thousand officers in the city of new york that spend their time on counterterrorism activities. So the removal of the last three officers from a function that had, basically, over the last several years ceased to occur, it was not going to diminish in any significant way our capabilities. And it was also, i point out, its function was not just to effectively try to learn more about the muslim community. With any community that the department did not have a sense of or idea of, we are incredibly mixed society t in new york city, 200 some odd different population groups here. And from a policing standpoint, the more you know about those various communities, the better off well be able to police them, to develop collaborations with them so if there is an issue happening in their native country that we need to be aware of because it might generate concerns here. We do need to be aware of those commitments, but i dont think we need of those communities, but i think we can do it through census tracking, through many other methods. Are some of the methods of the unit still part of the practice of the rest of the force . Well, certainly we have Community Service officers in each of our 77 precincts, and their role is to intimately understand what communities exist, that their role is to go out proactively, introduce themselves, understand issues in those communities, ways that we, the police, can understand them, interact better with them and protect them better. So thats what im talking about. And ive got hundreds of Community Service officers that are doing a lot of the same work that this entity was doing. Were doing it in a much more collaborative manner, much more trustbuilding manner than the idea that somehow or another we were spying on a particular community. If i could ask you the balance question from the other direction. I wonder do you worry, do you think that the public we are as 9 11 recedes a bit are becoming less, less concerned than we should be about terrorist threats . Is this i dont want to presume that anything keeps you up at night, but is that what does keep you up at night mostly in this job . In this city the concerns about terrorism, i dont believe, have diminished. Its every day in the newspapers, well have the event on the 15th of this month, the opening of the 9 11 memorial museum. And then in october well open the new world trade center. So inasmuch as thats where 9 11 occurred here, its constantly in our memory and constantly in our daytoday lives. Throughout the rest of america, i think theres been a significant dropoff. I really had to fight in los angeles the seven years i was there, 20022009, to get resources to build up a counterterrorism capability. Again, each though los angeles has been the subject of several plots, it had not it had experienced two airportrelated incidents, but nothing on the scale of new york. So americas second largest city, 9 11, the network of it, had faded very quickly. It certainly has not, i dont believe, faded in this city. And certainly for the new York City Police department, well be in this for the rest of our existence as anybody who lives in new york, your children, their children, the issue of terrorism is going to remain a fact of life here. Let me ask you about another controversial practice of stop and frisk or stop, question and frisk. You made clear that its an essential part of the tool kit, that you cant really police without it. But youre reforming it here. So what is a reformed version of stop and frisk look like . I actually think the term reform might be the inappropriate term. What we are doing, we are modifying it. Stop, question, frisk is a constitutionallyprotected activity, terry v. Ohio, Supreme Court of 1968, that outlined the parameters within which police would have to operate. That you have to police constitutionally, respectfully, consistently. You cant police different in a poor neighborhood than a rich neighborhood. The issue of stop, question, frisk is that a Police Officer has to have reasonable suspicion , and reasonable suspicion is less than probable cause. Its a lesser proof, if you will. But it has to be something that he or she can articulate as to a belief that a person or persons has, is or is about to commit a crime. And they have to be able to articulate why they feel that. That then entitles them to stop a person, it entitles them to question a person, and if the officer fears for his or her safety or fears that the persons theyre interacting with might be a risk to the safety of the public, that they might be carrying a weapon, the officer can then frisk that person. Its a basic tool of american policing. Its something that you could not function effectively without. Myself and mayor de blasio, that really felt that over the last several years in new york city i shouldnt say the last several years, several years ago that the practice had grown too large for the extent of the problem it was addressing. 6700,000 stop, questions and frisks documented. While crime was going down dramatically. And that was the Mayors Police professional, that belief was certainly different than the former mayor, mayor bloomberg, and the former police commissioner, commissioner kelly. Although over the period 20122013 the numbers of stop, question and frisk had declined dramatically from a peak of about 6700,000 down to sever hundred thousand. Several hundred thousand. Meantime, crime, with fewer stops, continued to go down. And so far this year we do probably anywhere from 50100 stops a day, down from the peak of several thousand a day. Crime continues to go down. So my belief is that we were doing too much of it. The cops who are asked to do it believed they were doing too much of it. The unions that represent them believed they were doing too much of it. Similar to you going to a doctor for cancer, hes going to treat you with radiation, chemo, surgery. And you want it to be appropriate to the extent of your disease. And after youre feeling better, you dont want him to keep giving you more radiation, more chemo or more surgery if, in fact, the disease is being dealt with appropriately. So i liken stop, question and frisk in new york that the patient was Getting Better. Crime was down dramatically. But particularly in minority communities, more and more medicine was being applied, and the patient was not feeling better about what the doctor thought was an improved condition. So in any event, the issue has now been, i believe, diffused because were still practicing it, and well continue to practice it, and at the same time crime is continuing to still go down. And hopefully, relationships between the police and particularly in the minority communities that experience still as much of the remaining crime, that those relationships will have an ability to be improved upon. But are the actual tactics changing, the Actual Exchange between the Police Officer and the person on the street . I mean, i would imagine even if the volume comes down, that minority communities will still find themselves, people within those communities disproportionately targeted. Challenge that premise if i have it wrong, please. If thats the case, how do you avoid having the same kind of friction . First off, youre not targeting them. The unfortunate reality that a number of the precincts around the city that there is more criminaltype activity thats irrefutable. You have more shootings, you have more crime. And so we tend to have more police in those neighborhoods, so youre going to have with proactive policing more stops. But the challenge is to do them constitutionally always. You cannot break the law to enforce it. You have to have reasonable suspicion that you can articulate. You want to do it to the best of your ability respectfully, and you want to do it consistently, that i dont stop you and treat you differently as a white person than if i was dealing with a black person up in harlem. That there has to be a consistency, the way we do it. And in all instances, you have to be able to articulate what the reasonable suspicion was. So effectively, were constantly trying to improve our training, improve our supervision, and i think thats an area that with the increased focus were putting on that will also help to reduce some of the tension that existed over the last several years in some of the more severelystressed commitments because of their crime problem communities because of their crime problem and the fact that police had to be more active in those communities. All right. Our shot clock is down to about one minute in this, so id love just as maybe to hand it over to them, id love to hear your thoughts on what meaningful gun control might actually look like in a country where there are 350 million guns said to be in circulation. That seems as big or bigger an obstacle than the Second Amendment to gun control. I wonder what you think. Well, first off, i think the term gun control, its over. We lost control. [laughter] 350 million guns [applause] lets face it. Largely because of the lack of political leadership, and all credit to mark and gabby for their leadership on the issue. What were dealing with really is gun reform, trying to find new ways to deal with the issue of gun violence. One of the ways we certainly can do that is through policing. Those who would use guns, being very aggressive in finding them, arresting them and working with the courts where that use of the firearm results in grievous injury, put them away. That the idea police exist to control behavior, but to do it lawfully, to do it respectfully. And in dealing with crime and particularly gun crime, the idea is that the better focused we are on those who are committing the violence which, fortunately, are still a relatively small number in our society the better were able to identify them and get at them, the better for all of us. The good news is were Getting Better at that all the time as reflected by, in this city at least in the insanity that is america, in this city were still leading the country in our gun reduction incidents and violence. Thank you very much, commissioner. Thank you. Appreciate it. [applause] thanks again to commissioner bill bratton. Thanks for all you do. For my boss, james bennet. Pretty good job. [laughter] you know, i think that the way that james bennet and bill bratton just left their conversation, talking about the 350 million guns in the United States, is the perfect pivot point into an important discussion. For nearly 15 years, Gabby Giffords has been in public service. She was the youngest woman ever elected to the Arizona State senate. She represented her community in the Arizona Legislature from 2000 to 2005 and then in the United States congress from 20062012. And she was consistently ranked as one of the nations most centrist members of congress. In 2007 gabby married mark kelly, a naval aviator who flew 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm and was a nasa astronaut. Mark flew his first of four missions in 2001 aboard Space Shuttle endeavour, the same shuttle he commanded on his final flight in may 2011. Hes also commanded the Space Shuttle discovery and is only one of two individuals to have visited the International Space station on four different occasions. After representative giffords was wounded in 2007, she and mark have been become known around the world. Were grateful to them for joining us today for a conversation with hannah rosen about their lives before and after the shooting and hear views on responsible gun ownership in the 21st century. I have one other thing to add, and i just want to say that this is a bit of the fun element to it. Im a fan of bono be, i went to his concerts, and the thing that both enlightened and yet now, you know, mark has just deflated me. Bono be would, from his concerts remember when he was speaking to gabby from up in space and we all thought that was live . None theless, it was taped, b