Buck Brief - Joe Borelli

Published Jan 23, 2024, 11:00 PM
Joe Borelli is the Minority Leader of the New York City Council and represents the cities 51st Council District.

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Welcome to the Buck Brief. Our friend Joe Burrelli joins with us. He is the Sage of Staten Island, a man who needs no introduction, but we will give him one on this podcast anyway, because he is a city council member in New York surrounded by communists, holding the torture freedom and doing so for Staten Island. No less, we have our friend Joe Burrelli here with us. Mister Joe, good to see.

You, always, good to see you, Buck. Thanks for having me.

Okay, so I saw this. You know you got to give us the update and what's going on in America's biggest city. Because I saw this and there was a part of me that thought this can't really be real. But there's a law, a city statute, right that's under consideration, city ordinance whatever. That would mean that members of the NYPD, for any interaction direct interaction with the public while on duty, would have to note the race, gender, and age of the person they talk to. Can you give us first? Is that basically right, I mean bring us into this conversation. What's going on up there?

Ye?

So the city Council passed a local law for the city requiring the police department and their officers to basically fill out a checkbox form and an explanation or a level one stop. So NYPD, like many police departments, per case law, you know, years of Fourth Amendment, case law has three levels of stops. So level three is when you actually search someone. You go in their pockets, you search in their waistband, a little bit more invasive. The New York City Police Department already reports on those type of interactions as to who we are stopping and frisking, et cetera. The council passed a bill saying that now level two and level one investigatory questions will have to have the same basic treatment. So basically, if a level one stop could be anything like, you know, an officer going around with a picture of a missing kid saying, hey, have you guys seen this girl? She's missing sin yesterday. If they go up to a group of people and say, hey, have you seen this girl, that officer at the end of his or her tour has to actually go back and do paperwork one document for every person in the group she encountered and say their race, their gender, their ethnicity, and an explanation of why they ask them some sort of investigatory question.

So it could be that kind of thing.

It could be you're a police officer doing what you're supposed to be doing, you know, maybe going to a street corner where there's a high perpensity for crime and gang activity. Maybe you see a group of young males and you decide to go up to them and say, hey, what are you guys doing here? You know, there's been a lot of complaints around here, you guys behaving. Those sort of things that were for many years encouraged by police departments to embrace that's called community policing, are It's now going to be just ways to generate more bureaucratic paperwork, wasting more hours of police officers time Level one stops. There were something like eight point five million of them in the City of New York last year, so we're talking of hundreds upon hundreds and thousands of hours of police work. The sad thing is this is also a case where the Left just goes a little bit too far. They're never satisfied, the police department said, if you actually just limit this to level two stops, they said, basically, hey, you know, there's not that many Level two stops. They are a little bit more intrusive, and we'd actually be okay with this law. This is the direction the council wants to go in. But for the left, you know, no inch is good enough. They always want that mile. And now they're putting basically the public in jeopardy by requiring countless hours of nonsense every time an officer makes a general question to mever of the public.

Joe, why do they want to do this? What's the real reason?

Right?

What do you think is behind trying to make it so that cops have to do these level one stops and record them.

I think there's two schools of thought.

One is that police departments and police officers are inherently racist, so we have to get to the bottom of who they're stopping, who they're questioning, and why. And that's one view. The other view is really even more extreme than that. It's that we don't want police officers to be engaged in our neighborhoods. We want police officers to almost not exist in the City of New Yorker in a lot of urban areas, and we're going to do everything we possibly can to impede the works that police officers do, because again going back to that first view, they're inherently racist, evil, fascist, you know, boot licking the whole nine yards. So if we can impede police officers, that's a win for the violent and vocal left.

So it's meant possibly to just overwhelm the system. I mean, I remember when I had a friend who was working in the New York Manhattan District Attorney's office. He said that one of the things the activist, the anti cop activist you know groups and you know, lawyers associations, et cetera, we're very happy with was creating such a massive paperwork burden on district attorneys that they end up they they don't actually have the man hours to fill out the paperwork to prosecute people for lesser offensive so they just have to dismiss it.

Right, And we always talk about bail reform as sort of the culprit of sort of the lawlessness that's happening in New York's major cities. But you're right, So the new discovery laws that were pasted the same time as the bail reform laws are in some ways a lot worse, so you're less assuming we even have a prosecutor that wants to prosecute. Certainly not Alvin Bragg, but there are other prosecutors in the other four boroughs who would like to to sort of ramp up their enforcement. From time to time, they have to make a choice, you know, do you allow prosecutor a do you allow them to waste you know, eight hours of their working day filing discovery, emotions and documentation for someone who's shoplifting or someone who committed some sort of a violent felony. Obviously you're always gonna go with the violence felon just about nine times out of ten. But that just means that people that are competing participating in repetitive, lower level crimes are just simply getting away with it. So they're getting out on no bail basically when they first get arrested because that's the law. And then when it actually comes time for them to show up in court, oftentimes these prosecutors, through no fall of their own, in many cases, have to plead down the case just because they can't possibly comply with the discovery requirements of prosecuting this particular person.

I want to come back and ask you about how things are going for the Adams Administration New York City, And basically you're gonna have to tell me is it time for going to move back? Have they cleaned it all up yet? Shoe. We'll get into this in just a second. The first stop, do you feel prepared with everything going on in the country? Do you find yourself thinking about self defense? Home protection? Financial protection? More than ever one form of protect diversification. Gold has often been used to protect assets against inflation. It's a global reserve asset and countries are buying massive amounts of gold as a hedge against inflation and financial collapse. It's time to help protect yourself and invest in gold. My friends at the Oxford Gold Group. They will help you understand what's a reasonable size for your portfolio to be and how you can invest in real gold and silver you can actually have in your hands. This is how you do it. You go to Oxford Goldgroup dot com slash free that's Oxford Goldgroup dot com slash free to order the free investment guide and you can make a purchase of precious metals also and earn up the twenty five hundred dollars in free goal. That's Oxford Goldgroup dot com slash free Oxford Goldgroup dot com slash free Joe. How's it going in my fair city? Are they locking up criminals and cleaning up the streets or what?

Well, we're making a few more arrests.

Look, Eric adams original in when it comes to the people of New York City is the migrant crisis. I mean, now he's trying to back himself out of it, But just eighteen months ago he was more than happy to stand at the Port Authority bus terminal and smile and greet people and promise them the entire world. Now, obviously he's trying to to sort of reverse that trend and get things under control, and a lot of people will never ever ever forgive him for that on crime though he really is not that bad.

We were just at a gallo the other night for.

Some of the big real estate moguls of New York City, a room full of billionaires and millionaires, and he leveled into these people and he actually gave a really good speech just talking about how nobody wants to come to New York City when the first question everybody asks is are the communities safe and the schools are good? And he gave this whole thematic speech on how we have to cut you know, obviously, you know, stop crime, and the crime numbers in fairness are down since he took off, so that is a good thing.

He's right to tout that.

However, you have a city council that's passing this bill that we're talking about him tooth and nail. They also passed the same day a ban on punitive segregation in Rikers Island jail. So now someone who stabs someone on video will essentially be put in a thirty minute timeout rather than be put in a solitary cell where they can't do themselves someone else or a correction officer armed. They're actually going to give them the same punishment that I give my eight year old when he says a four little word.

I mean, this is the city that, unfortunately he has to navigate.

And I give him credit for finally, after eight years of build a Blasio, finally saying the right things and focusing on public safety as an issue. I just wish we had a better system that he can allow the NYPD to do their jobs. We're actually stuck right now with state law where we have these you know, pro hamas protesters shutting down airports and shutting down bridges, and the NYPD is so restrained.

We met with their legal bureau the other day and some of their chiefs.

They are so restrained as to what they can do that even when you have someone that says, hey, let let's push the envelope a little bit, let's be more aggressive, the law is actually the limiting factor and not the able factor.

What happens to people who block let's say, you know, the George Washington Bridge or something. I mean, what actually do they face as a as a punitive sanction in New York?

Nothing?

At the very best, if they push a cop back as they're being arrested, they get charged with an e felony, which is a bail ineligible crime. Eventually, the prosecutors can't keep up with discovery, so it'll be dismissed to a disorderly conduct ticket and nothing will happen to them. And you know, they have people We have heard these calls with these liberal groups, you know, prepping the the advocates quote unquote who are going to protest, and they are squared away with attorneys. They're ready to face any type of prosecutor. They're ready to back you up in court, ready to pay your fines. I mean, this is sort of when we talk about the Soros funding of liberal violence. The material result is that these people have lawyers, they have access to money, the fines get paid, et cetera. Nothing happens. I give credit to a prosecutor in Queen's Melenda Cats. She's a progressive district attorney by every other stretch of the imagination, but she pushed for federal charges when people drudge block the JFK entrance ramps. And I give her credit for that, for basically tying in a federal crime of obstructing an airport or something of that nature. So we do have some people pushing back, but we're so limited. We don't move back.

Don't move back yet, All right, don't move back yet.

That's good.

What is this about a forty percent reduction in street trash can pickups? I saw this in the post and I thought, God's going to get very smelly and very messy very quickly.

Joe.

Yeah, this was one of the cuts that Adams had proposed to make with respect to the amount of money we spend on migrants. So two things happened since that announcement. Number one, I think the governor got the message and decided to give almost another billion dollars of state funding to the city for the purpose of, you know, meeting the need of needs the migrants. The other thing is that the economy has recovered a little bit better, and now we're predicting, like most economists around the country, more of a soft landing as opposed to a recession. So some of our projections, and rightfully so, we're based on a worst case scenario that really hasn't materialized. So now we can be a little bit more liberal with the money. So we're starting to restore some of these cuts. But going to like, you know, shorter basket pickup service would have been horrible.

For most of New York City.

It would have meant obviously more trash on the streets for longer, although that adds up to rats and roaches.

And all sorts of things like that.

So I'm glad the mayor made this cut as the rest of ration of the problem.

But there's still a long way to go.

We're still facing budgetary headwinds just not as much as we were about three months ago.

Let's have you explain the migrant crisis as it affects New York and the budget and everything else here in just a second. But first up, speaking of budgets, a lot of us are struggling to keep up with everyday bills. It's very expensive these days inflation. You see the cost of goods, the things you need every day. But if you own a home, there's something you can do. Call my friends at American Financing. Interest rates have dropped into the fives, the lowest they've been in a long time, and they're saving customers an average of eight hundred and fifty four dollars a month by tapping into their homes equity and wiping out high interest credit card debt. Eight hundred and fifty four dollars a month is like a ten thousand dollars raise. Credit card interest rates are insane, and most of us are still carrying a balance from the holidays. You can wipe that out now. Call American Financing and you can take care of it. If you call today, you may not have to make February's mortgage payment. Call eight six six eight nine zero nine three nine two. That's eight six six eight nine zero nine nine two. American Financing dot net NMLS one A two three three four mls Consumer Access dot Org APR for rates in the five start at six point four zero six percent for well qualified borrowers. Called eight six six eight nine zero nine three nine two for details about credit costs and terms. Migrant crisis. How bad is it? Where is it going?

Joe?

Well, it's still an unsustainable situation. You know, even with some of the cuts that were now restored by Mayor Adams and his administration, we're still spending more per day on migrants than we do on the Department of Sanitation and the Parks Department to two pretty critical uh uh city agencies, not just for our city but for any municipality.

Uh. Again, this is not something that can keep going in the long term.

I mean so Mayor Adams has said it might it's destroying the city. Is that fair?

Yeah? I think it is fair.

I think we got lucky with the recession not panning out and the governor giving more money, but it doesn't stop the problem. The problem is the spending and the unrestricted spending that seems to be happening. You know they're doing a decent job finally of giving sixty day eviction notices to some of these people. I know it's working because today, as we speak, some of my more liberal colleagues are outstanding in front of some homeless shelter protesting the mayor's sixty day eviction policy.

So that's a good sign.

Even though we've received more than one hundred and sixty thousand migrants at this point, right now, the population of people under our care is down to about sixty eight thousand, which means that a lot of people are getting out of the system.

That's really what we need to happen.

Unfortunately, the mayor knows this and he won't say it, but nothing's going to stop this until President Trump gets re elected. President Trump committed last night that he'll steal the border on day one. Nobody doubts that he will. Nobody doubts that the policies will change. I think a little part of Eric Adams is probably hoping that either Trump wins the election or that Biden, you know, finally wakes up and sees the reaction that most of America's large cities are facing problems larger than they've ever had.

Happened before as a direct result of a federal failure.

Joe Burrell, everybody, New York City Council, the most famous Staten Islander as far as I'm concerned. I don't know who else lives in Staten Island, but Joe BURRELLI is mister Staten Island. And come, here's us down here in Miami. All right, you gotta come hang out.

We certainly will.

Joe Brell, everybody. Good to see you, my friend.

Thank you,