NYC-WTC_000230575

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Gambling: Let’s talk about Officer Dillon Stewart and the guy who has been indicted as of today for first degree murder Allan Cameron. You and I have talked about the gun issue. I know how adamant you are about reducing the number of guns on the street. Obviously if Cameron didn’t have a gun this wouldn’t have happened, but there’s the other question about the system and recidivism and people on the street, mistakes done in court...

Mayor: Well clearly this guy is a guy that shouldn’t be on the streets, shouldn’t have been on the streets, and in fact from what I can tell there was a warrant out for his arrest in Philadelphia and I think we have to really look and see. Is there a better ways to share information? That’s one issue. Another issue is the judges who have to make decisions that turn out to be life and death decisions but aren’t easy ones in all fairness to them, I think they’ve got to looking the mirror and say, ‘Are they doing the right thing.’ They can’t incarcerate everybody for every crime, the system just couldn’t handle it. And when you see a case like this, and you say, ‘We should have never let this guy out,’ and it would have prevented this terrible tragedy from taking place, was it that the judge did what a judge should do given that bit of information, or did he just not pay attention, or whatever. Maybe the judge did exactly what he should have done and it just isn’t a perfect world. You know, judges have to make decision all the time, put somebody back on the streets or lock them up and you don’t know which ones are going to commit crimes and you can’t lock up everybody.

Gambling: How much pressure is there on these judges to maybe err to the side of letting them go because the pressure of limited space, cost, and the like is...

Mayor: 1 think there is some of that but there’s also pressure on the other side to keep them incarcerated because of the editorials and the talk shows, which tend to stir things up. Judges don’t have an easy job and you know, I wasn’t in the position that judge was in. I don’t know the exact facts, I don’t know, nor do you know, nor does anybody else know what we would do if we were in that situation. Everybody acknowledges it would have been - including the judge I’m sure- would have been better had he decided to keep this guy in jail, but you have to make these kinds of decisions all the time and the real world is there is a limited number of lawyers and court rooms and the public will only spend so much money and you know, there’s no easy answer to these kinds of questions. I think that if you really want to do things long-term there are some things to do. We know how to do this. Good police work, keep supporting your police department and training and numbers and the NYPD, even- murder arrests, murders are down, murder arrests are up so we’re actually doing an even better job...

Gambling: of policing.

Mayor: of policing. Right. You want to do both those things and since some murderers might commit second and third murders the quicker you incarcerate- catch them and incarcerate them- you really are helping to bring down the crime rate. So that’s one of the things. Improving the school system. In the end, people who don’t have the skills to get a job and knowledge of how to deal in a society and deal with each other, those are the

CITY_21MC100_010822476

NYC-WTC_000230577