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NYPD officials discuss emerging gang threats and the importance of intelligence gathering
1:59:25
ยท
4 min
NYPD officials, including Deputy Commissioner Michael Gerber and Assistant Chief Jason Savino, discuss the emerging threat of new gangs, particularly Tren de Aragua, and emphasize the critical need for intelligence gathering through the gang database.
- Officials highlight the challenge of tracking new, violent gangs without proper intelligence tools
- Assistant Chief Savino describes recent Tren de Aragua gang takedowns, emphasizing the seizure of numerous firearms and the presence of members with no prior criminal history
- The importance of rapid response to gang-related social media activity is stressed, with some influential figures having millions of followers
Michael Gerber
1:59:25
And if I may, just just an additional point that we it hasn't really come up yet, I think is actually really important is, you know, one of the many phenomena with gang violence is we have some longstanding gangs, but unfortunately we have new emerging gangs.
1:59:39
Tran Daragua being the most prominent example.
1:59:42
Here you have it's a new gang, incredibly violent, incredibly dangerous.
1:59:47
And it's new.
1:59:49
And it's precisely in those situations where you have a new emerging threat to public safety, you need intelligence.
1:59:57
We desperately need intelligence.
Robert F. Holden
1:59:59
And you and you have a a database on those gang members too.
Michael Gerber
2:00:03
Right.
2:00:03
Well, it it
Robert F. Holden
2:00:04
So that's we should take that away and not know who they are.
2:00:08
I mean, that's what this bill does.
Michael Gerber
2:00:09
And and that's the thing.
2:00:10
I mean, chief of the petri was saying before that it's it's it's a piece.
2:00:13
Of course, intelligence is only gonna be a piece.
2:00:15
It's intelligence and then using that intelligence soundly, carefully, precisely with the expertise that our chiefs have, the executives have.
2:00:26
Right?
2:00:26
So sure, it's not intelligence alone, but but intelligence is a crucial part.
2:00:31
And the notion that you would simply, like, remove the intelligence piece, that that makes no sense.
Jason Savino
2:00:38
Yeah.
2:00:38
And if I could just piggyback that trend day at Agua portion, we spoke it's really hard to get into that database.
2:00:44
We spoke to that, you know.
2:00:46
Even in the world of gang members, you know, there's very few individuals that go into not every gang member is in the database.
2:00:54
It's truly the worst of the worst.
2:00:56
Right.
2:00:56
But we spoke about arrest history and how many arrests individuals had.
2:01:00
Trendy aragua.
2:01:01
Right?
2:01:01
If there's ever a time we need this, it's now.
2:01:04
Now I wanna speak to we we we spoke to the 99% of individuals in the database that have somewhat a a very robust arrest history.
2:01:15
But then there's that one percent.
2:01:16
Right?
2:01:17
There's that one percent which really has no arrest history and that's our trend day at AGLA individuals that we need to really monitor now more than ever.
2:01:24
Now I wanna paint a picture for you.
2:01:26
In the month of January, we had three three Trende Aragua gang takedowns.
2:01:33
Now embedded in those gang takedowns, we had several members that had zero criminal history.
2:01:40
You know what we took from those gang takedowns?
2:01:43
In excess of 70 firearms, several ghost guns, an a r 15 ghost gun, a switch which essentially makes a nine millimeter fully automatic.
2:01:54
These are the individuals that need to be tracked more than ever.
2:01:57
And if we give that up, we cannot track it.
2:02:00
I also wanna just speak very very briefly to how time sensitive this is, right, for the rapid deployment.
2:02:06
I'm just gonna give you two quick scenarios.
2:02:08
The first is just and it's because of social media.
2:02:11
Individuals go, they post themselves on the opposition's block.
2:02:15
Right?
2:02:16
We have to respond to that immediately because the world is watching.
2:02:20
We have individuals out there, especially in the world of drills, that have an excess of 40,000,000 followers.
2:02:26
And what do they do?
2:02:27
They're actually enticing and encouraging violence.
2:02:31
So now you need that quick response.
2:02:33
Right?
2:02:33
And you're gonna get it almost immediately.
2:02:35
You need that response immediately.
2:02:37
And if we don't have this gang database, we just painted a picture on how challenging, how difficult it is just to get into the database.
2:02:46
Imagine starting from scratch each and every time we're faced with those scenarios.
2:02:52
But I hear the Yes.
Michael LiPetri
2:02:53
And I just wanna Yeah.
Robert F. Holden
2:02:54
But still with a limited and I know detectives in in my precinct, it's about half the size of what it used to be.
2:03:01
And then we have we have more cases now.
2:03:03
But talking about Tren de la Agua, they like they were trained to shoot at police officers in their home countries.
2:03:10
Right?
2:03:10
And you have to know all this stuff when you go after these guys.
2:03:14
But more often than not, let's just talk about general gang activity.
2:03:19
When they shoot and they shoot, they don't go up to the person usually.
2:03:23
They're shooting from a distance many times, and they're hitting innocent bystanders.
2:03:29
We had children that were killed, shot, mothers with babies that were shot.
2:03:34
This is this is what you are going to see happen more often if you take away the gang database.
2:03:40
It's a it's a key police tool.
2:03:43
Thank you so much.
Michael LiPetri
2:03:44
Couldn't agree with you more, and I'll give you three examples.