Q&A
Mastro outlines legal strategies for addressing public safety issues
8:03:59
·
3 min
Randy Mastro responds to Council member Paladino's question by outlining various legal strategies to address public safety concerns in New York City. He emphasizes the need for creativity and collaboration with the City Council.
- Mastro identifies key issues including guns, drugs, gang violence, and organized crime
- He suggests using forfeiture laws and affirmative litigation to combat these problems
- Mastro proposes creating a task force to address illegal smoke shops and other public safety concerns
Vickie Paladino
8:03:59
Thank you very much.
8:04:00
I'm just gonna shift it a little bit also to a public safety issue.
8:04:05
What do you believe to be the greatest threat to public safety today?
8:04:10
And how would you use the position of a corporation council to address it?
8:04:16
What specific legal strategies would you employ to address this issue?
Randy Mastro
8:04:24
We're talking legal strategies now.
Vickie Paladino
8:04:26
Yeah.
8:04:26
I should begin.
Randy Mastro
8:04:27
And I and I I take I again, as corp counsel, you take your direction on policy from the council.
8:04:34
You take your direction on policy from the administration, and hopefully on policies that the 2 agreed to, and corp counsel can help facilitate communication in terms of potential legal remedies for public safety issues.
8:04:51
You have guns.
8:04:54
You have drugs.
8:04:56
You have gang violence.
8:04:59
You have organized crime still a problem in certain industries in our city.
8:05:06
You have the potential to forfeit the ill gotten gains of crime, which actually adds to the city's coffers.
8:05:13
The feds do it all the time with the federal forfeiture laws.
8:05:17
And the state has analogs racketeering statute and and similar statutes.
8:05:24
I think when it comes to drugs, I know there's already affirmative litigation that the city has joined on the opioid crisis.
8:05:31
How about fentanyl?
8:05:32
How about going after the country's and the parties responsible for the influx of fentanyl in our city and trying to sanction them, trying to find them 1,000,000,000 of dollars.
8:05:49
We have to get creative.
8:05:50
We have to get illegal guns off the street.
8:05:53
We have to get illegal drugs off the street.
8:05:55
And my God, we have to do something about the illegal smoke shops.
8:06:00
And state law has been reformed recently.
8:06:06
To do that.
8:06:07
It gives us the tools.
8:06:09
I wanna have a task force at Co Counsel's office to do that instead of the problems that folks have had so far.
8:06:17
And I've read about Council member brewers problems trying to close in a legal smoke shop in her neighborhood.
8:06:23
It shouldn't be that hard.
8:06:25
And now that state law has changed, court counsel should play a role in doing that.
8:06:29
Mhmm.
8:06:30
That's what I mean about working with individual counsel members.
8:06:33
The problems you have with drugs, violent gangs, gun violence, illegal smoke shops.
8:06:38
I wanna work with each one of you to identify what are the problems in your district and to help through affirmative litigation.
8:06:48
Like we did when I was at the US attorney's office, and we used the racketeering law to go after organized crime and illegal business enterprises, Like, we use the forfeiture laws to forfeit illegal drug proceeds and tendencies in public housing of drug dealers when the city couldn't even get them evicted under local law.
8:07:09
So these are all things imagine how much good we could do if we did this together.
8:07:17
That's what I'm asking this counsel for the opportunity to do.