Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul, Brooklyn District Attorney Gonzalez Announce Criminal Charges in Brooklyn Gang Takedown

Governor Kathy Hochul and Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, together with New York City Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch, today announced that 23 alleged members of a Brooklyn-based gang have been charged in a 176-count indictment with conspiracy to commit murder, weapons possession, and many other related offenses. The defendants, who were arraigned yesterday in Brooklyn Supreme Court, are charged in connection with 26 shootings, including one homicide and 12 non-fatal shootings across Brooklyn and Manhattan that resulted in 23 victims. Since taking office, Governor Hochul has prioritized public safety and made record investments in law enforcement, including quadrupling funding for District Attorneys from $41 million to $183 million, to ensure they have the tools needed to keep guns off our streets, reduce crime, and keep New Yorkers safe.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Thank you, Mr. DA, and I did not want to miss this momentous occasion. The largest takedown ever from this office of extraordinary, hardworking, dedicated public servants who step up every day to make sure that they work together in coordination from the DA's office to NYPD. There's no other police entity - policing force, in the entire world as tough and as diligent and as dedicated as our NYPD. I want to thank District Attorney Gonzalez and also Chief Joseph Kenny, the Chief of Detectives, and also all the teams, all the individuals who are here who made this their career and their passion.

As Governor, public safety, keeping people safe has always been my number one priority, and I'm honored that mission has been fulfilled here today with the incredible work, as I mentioned, with all the individuals today. Busts like this take months of investigative work. They don't happen overnight. They take long hours, weekends, but also there's that sense of mission here that every single person who steps up to serve in these offices, in these capacities shares, and we are the beneficiaries of that, and I want to thank them over and over because they're often the unsung heroes, the people you see here today, who are the ones doing God's work, keeping us safe. For the DAs and the police the job is never done. You have the guns that we are accustomed to. You also have ghost guns, which we'll talk about in a couple of minutes. So I never take your hard work for granted.

When I first came into office five years ago, we sent a strong message to criminals, "Your days are numbered. We're coming after you. And if you endanger our communities, you endanger our neighbors, we'll find you, and we'll prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law." Now, 22 members are learning that lesson here today. Today you're seeing the results of our historic investments in police and public safety as well. More than $3 billion, unprecedented investments throughout the entire State of New York, and particularly here in Brooklyn, which had seen an increase in crime at the time I became Governor, and you've been serving a long time here. And now look where we are today. It is extraordinary, the work that's been done and the accomplishments we can talk about today.

But also, as you mentioned, putting real money on the table for district attorneys. [...] They have to do so much more with less. And I understood that if we could allow them to expand the workforce and give them new technology and the equipment they need to do their jobs, that they could work together in a way that is going to make a real difference, and I've seen that here today.

We've quadrupled the amount of money going to our district attorneys from $41 million to $183 million just in the last few years. As I mentioned, that's personnel, equipment. It helps them zero in on specific problems. They find patterns, they link crimes and they build strong cases. What's quite extraordinary is that this is your third major takedown in just a few months. So unbelievable work that's being done here.

The 22 dangerous criminals who've committed horrible crimes, and I do want to point out, one of them was a ghost gun. Of all these guns, I want to point this out in particular. This looks like an ordinary gun. You cannot tell the difference at all. But this is what we know as a ghost gun, starting to show up more and more in these prosecutions because they're untraceable, and literally these can be manufactured at your kitchen table with a 3D printer. And I'll talk about what we did because we do not want to see a surge in these. We have to tackle this before it gets too far out of hand. So I thank everyone who helped us identify that gun. But this gun in particular was used at that horrific shooting at the party. Teenagers, 15 to 17 year olds, six of them shot, three of them girls just last December. That gun was used in that violent mass shooting that rocked the people's sense of security here in Brooklyn, and now we have it confiscated.

So these untraceable guns are showing up more and more, and they're trying to find creative ways to evade our laws. That's why here in New York, we're meeting the moment. First-in-the-nation law that requires that every 3D printer sold in our state to include software that makes it impossible to build a firearm like that. I hope other states will follow. We have to do everything we can to get ahead of these criminals, stop them from using this technology and turning their kitchen table into a machine where they can make weapons of mass destruction. It's literally little pieces of plastic that they can create that allow you to have 1,500 rounds per second.

So what we're going to do is talk about how to make sure that the punishment fits the crime as well, and also continue to make New Yorkers safer. Can you imagine this? This is extraordinary. I don't know how many more times you can say this, but last year - record lows and then the murders dropped 20, 30 percent from the record lows. That's unbelievable. That's extraordinary. We're building on that momentum. But no matter how far we come, this is not a mission accomplished moment, never will be. We're always letting people know that we're going to remain vigilant, continue delivering the resources, the support, and changing the laws when necessary, as you mentioned, the discovery laws and the bail laws and what we've had to do to increase penalties.

Even retail theft. Retail theft was off the charts. People were just walking into stores and bodegas. Remember, they were all locked under key because no one felt secure, and we changed the laws, and now our DAs and our law enforcement have the tools they need. So that's how we make busts like this one, that's how we get gangs and illegal guns off our streets, and that's how we keep our communities safe.

So again, because of all your hard work here, know this: that because of your effort, there'll be more teenagers making it home safely from playing basketball with their friends. There'll be more toddlers who are not caught in the crossfire of a stray bullet. There'll be more senior citizens who can walk to the community center and meet their friends safely because of what you're doing, what you've done, removing these criminals off the streets and getting these guns out of their hands.

I am here just to say how grateful I am, how grateful I am that I have all of you here protecting the great State of New York, and certainly this great borough. So thank you, Mr. DA.