Curtis Sliwa Talks Public Safety

On Monday, Oct. 6, in the second of a series of sit-downs with New York City mayoral candidates, Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa took questions at a Vital City event co-sponsored by Columbia Journalism School. Sliwa was quizzed on his public safety philosophy and proposals by Errol Louis, Spectrum News NY1 political anchor and Vital City contributing writer. What follows is a complete, unedited transcript.

Personal safety, security detail, campaign climate

Errol Louis: Thanks so much for being here, and in the interest of time, I want to jump right into some things. You made a little bit of news, I noticed, on the way up today: that you now have a full security detail that you did not have before. According to the reports, it said this was because of credible threats.

What can you tell us about that?

Curtis Sliwa: I’m the oldest candidate, 71, and Errol, you’ve seen me come and go. I’ve never had security. But both I and my wife were subject of direct threats, and so over the weekend I had armed security with me for the first time. Now you gotta understand I’m a guy who was targeted by the Gottis and Gambinos and shot five times with hollow point bullets, I never had armed security.

But my wife is the most important thing in my life. Obviously, the rhetoric is way too high. Zohran Mamdani is getting all these threats. We need to lower it, let the people decide in the election. And in order to have a safe and secure election, I’ve agreed to have armed security with me, and my wife will have armed security with her.

Errol Louis: When you say armed security, you mean the NYPD?

Curtis Sliwa: No. These are former members of the NYPD. They’re part of a private security team who have liaison with the NYPD.

Errol Louis: You’re entitled to a police detail the same way Zohran Mamdani as the democratic nominee has received. Did you specifically not want that?

Curtis Sliwa: Yeah. In 2021, when I ran against Eric Adams, I felt that police were better served to be in the community. We didn’t have enough police. And at the start of this campaign, I made the same claim. And you know, I’m in the subways every day — the only candidate to actually campaign in the subways and the buses and the express buses.

Never felt the need for security. But when you have credible threats, then you have to do what’s best for the campaign, and also try to bring all this craziness that exists. “You gotta get out of the race. You are responsible for Mamdani.” Guess what? Let the people decide who the next mayor is and not the billionaires.

That’s my opinion. They’ve interfered too much in this race, the professional political class. I trust the people you know. I’ve always trusted the people. I’m well received by the people. But there are people out there with their agendas, and we’re gonna make sure that everything is safe and secure up until November 4th, and I’ll live with the decision that the people make as to who their next mayor is.

Errol Louis: As far as you know, are the threats from within New York or from somewhere else?

Curtis Sliwa: We’ll discuss that with police intel tomorrow when I go there.

Errol Louis: Okay. One of your opponents around Momani joined us for a forum just like this, sat right in that chair last month.

Another, Andrew Cuomo, has not yet agreed to attend. I’m wondering if you think you should and if you’re, well…

Curtis Sliwa: Of course he should. Because I’ve said about Andrew Cuomo that he is not the law-and-order candidate that he pretends to be because he is the author of No Cash Bail, Raise the Age, closing Rikers Island.

I know Zohran Mamdani shares that belief. I’m the only person outside of that, who was opposed to that. Obviously, when we debate, the two debates, we’ll have one with NY1, I’m gonna bring those subjects up. But I probably have more experience in the public safety field than both of them together.

Stats, strategy, tactics, staffing

Errol Louis: In general, I want to talk less about what is working as a political campaign position and more about what’s gonna happen in 88 days or so from now when the next mayor is sworn in. And what happens if that happens to be you. Let’s start out with, how safe is the city now and I don’t just mean a static quantity of safety, more or less this or that number, but the profile, the shape: How are things going as far as you’re concerned?

Curtis Sliwa: Because I am in the streets and subways every day, I hear from a wide variety of people. The people who feel most stressed out? Women — and I don’t think in this election cycle, women’s voices are being heard. Because my wife, who made our first TV commercial — and Errol, I stayed quiet. Everybody who knows me, I’ve never stayed quiet in my life.

She pointed out how, even in the subways and streets, men are sexually harassing women. They’re perving on women. They’re making life so threatening in what they call these “random attacks.” A random attack? They’re targeting women. And we don’t seem to be prioritizing them. Look, they’re the majority of the workers. Many of them are the single parent leaders in the household who pay all the bills and raise the kids. And if you consider nightlife, they not only own restaurants, bars and nightclubs, they manage ‘em. They work there. And one universal thing they say to me “I can’t keep affording to pay for yellow cabs, Lyfts and Ubers.” We’re not focused on their needs. And I think we do ourselves a disservice because a lot of them are just not coming out into the streets and going into the subways at different times.

Errol Louis: So now, for the first quarter of this year, homicides are down 34%. Shootings are down 23%, assaults are near 25-year highs. So there’s these different numbers that are out there. What number do you want be judged by if you’re sworn in 88 days from now?

Curtis Sliwa: I’ll give you an example, Errol. I heard the police commissioner Jessica Tisch say over July 4th, Wow. First time we never had any shootings. I’m a street guy. I heard a lot of bullets being fired. If the bullet does not hit the intended target, it doesn’t go on the stats in the precinct. It doesn’t go up to CompStat. So that means if we are gang members and I’m firing at you and I hit a tree, or I hit a bird, or I blow out the back window of a Toyota Corolla, that’s a crime. Doesn’t go on the books. 

So I truly believe that a lot of the statistics are suppressed. Just to give you a few: 90,000 packages a day are stolen in New York City. The mayor has admitted that publicly. So that’s FedEx, Amazon, USPS, UPS. You go to the precinct and say, “Hey, few of my packages were stolen.” They won’t take a report because if it’s over $1,000, it’s a felony. 

Then when you look at all the shoplifting that takes place. The men and women who do that, they have an E-ZPass to go in and out. A lot of that is not reported.

And the last category is stolen mail, which definitely affects the outer boroughs that I represent. Towards the end of the month Social Security checks, debit cards, credit cards. They go right into the box. They don’t even wear a mask. They wave. Try to go to a local precinct and report that. They won’t even take a report on it. 

So that’s the way they cook the books. I’ve been into all 350 neighborhoods in this city. Some are friendly, some are not. I’ve yet to find one person, say, “Oh, Curtis, you’re really exaggerating this. I feel so much safer and more comfortable in New York City.”

Errol Louis: You, you have an interesting proposal to create a long-term plan for crime reduction. Could you say more about that? Because I never really thought about it, but you point out on your website, New York City has no long-term plan to dramatically lower crime. How would you do that?

Curtis Sliwa: First and foremost, it starts with the police. I don’t think people quite understand that not only do we not have enough police, but they are the only civil servants who have had the insurance that we all pay for stripped from them. It’s called qualified immunity. It’s a fancy name, but it’s really the insurance that guarantees that if something goes awry, we, the taxpayer cover it. 

Now, judges every day sentence, men unfairly. They get out 25 years later. We find out it was wrong. DAs. All of a sudden they don’t get sued. Cuomo himself, sexual harassment charges, 13. [State Comptroller] Tom DiNapoli has said, we’ve paid out $60 million in settlement. He doesn’t pay a penny because of qualified immunity. I’ve got to fight to get that restored because not only do we need 7,000 new cops, we need them to feel comfortable in doing their work, which they don’t do now.

So that’s step number one. Step number two, we need to bring back the homeless outreach unit. These were men and women police officers dedicated to dealing with homeless and emotionally disturbed. When Bill de Blasio and the City Council pulled $1 billion out of the budget for the police in the summer of 2020, they disbanded this great unit.

They knew the clients. They would go into the homeless shelters, they’d speak with the directors, the security, they’d speak with community leaders. Once they disbanded that, they left it to the local precinct. And those are men and women who are not trained to deal with that. It takes a very strong skill level. And number two, they don’t have the connections to deal with that. And we’ve seen the rampant rise of homeless, emotionally disturbed, not only in the subways, but in the parks, in the streets. So I think long-term, that’s what we do.

Errol Louis: Okay. I wanna come back to that in a couple of minutes, but let’s get into the staffing of the NYPD. The department currently has about 33,000 officers down from 37,000 in 2018. You want to hire 7,000 more. Why is that necessary given we saw a steep decline in crime over the last 20 years, and the size of the force was declining along with it?

Curtis Sliwa: We don’t see visibility now. Visibility is such a key to making people feel more comfortable. So whether you’re merchants, whether you’re residents of a community, the women, the elderly, the infirm, who are being targeted for attack. When you see the blue uniforms out there — and by the way, they better put their caps on. They know there’s the cops. They don’t put their caps on. Gotta put your caps on, that’s how you spot them in a crowd. So there are certain things I would do tactically. 

In the subways, they have the police assigned to what they call the transit police, but they never go up and down the trains as they used to. Now before they could patrol by one. Because of all the emotionally disturbed, they determine they’re safer if they patrol by two. I don’t care, but in uniform, they should start in the rear car, walk all the way up, all the way back. You’d be surprised how many people will tell, “You there’s a man in another car. He’s having a problem. He’s banging his head on the side of the door.” That’s not a crime, but they can then take him out and get him the help that he desperately needs.

These are the kinds of things you’re never gonna know if you are assigned to a platform. And by the way, they get assigned near the turnstiles, they do nothing about fair evasion. Fair evasion has cost us $1 billion according to the Citizen Bureau [Citizens Budget Commission] that has determined that.

Errol Louis: Did you pick this up from your years of patrolling with the Guardian Angels?

Curtis Sliwa: Oh yeah. Remember 46 years and had pretty much seen what works in the subways, what doesn’t work. I cannot comprehend why they are not putting police officers on the moving trains. Now last year we had a subway crime crisis. Kathy Hochul, to her credit, assigned close to 1,000 National Guardspersons.

The big time was when Debrina Kawam, who they all want to forget, that’s the woman who was set on fire like a torch on December 22nd of 2024 in the F train at Coney Island Stillwell by the migrant who watched it, the pyromaniac. The cops didn’t know how to handle it. The people who were all filming it live at five.

And I see this on a repeated basis. That’s a stain on our soul, that we’re not resolving the emotionally disturbed and the homeless issue. These people live in the trains. It’s not good to live in the trains.

Errol Louis: Does that, does any of this change because there are now cameras on apparently all of the cars?

Curtis Sliwa: No they’re not in all the cars, but they’re in a lot of the cars. In fact, we had on the train down at Whitehall Street, this was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever experienced in the, since I was five years old, 1959, I’ve been riding the trains by myself. A man comes onto the train, it’s on camera. Unfortunately, a migrant has died on the train. He rapes the migrant on the train. It’s a dead person. You then watch the film, continuous people come on. I guess they thought it was filming a TV show. A woman comes on later, unattached to the guy, the rapist, and she then picks the dead man’s pockets. No police. Sure you have it on, but no response because we just don’t have enough cops. 

I’ve never seen anything so egregious in my life, all the years that we’ve focused on subway patrols. And it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse.

Errol Louis: The department is struggling to fill the seats that are currently vacant. How would you hire 7,000 more, and are you worried about quality declining?

Curtis Sliwa: Well, that’s always a problem because a lot of the potentially young and middle-aged men and women who might seek a career in law enforcement, sometimes they’re being lured away as soon as they get into the NYPD. I remember showing up at Jacob Javits Center, they were having a sergeant’s test, about 4,000 of the men and women, you know, the number 2 pencils, they were there. They had RVs outside from the Tidewater Peninsula in Virginia. Tempe, Arizona, come on in offering them, they would bring them to their community, pay the first year of housing them, improved opportunities and moving up the ranks, feeling better as a police officer in those communities.

And that’s the problem. We end up recruiting a lot of men and women, and they end up leaving the department three years later because obviously they have the experience of the NYPD. We’re not offering anything to keep them, to maintain the police officers. 

The first five years are miserable for a police officer. They’re usually sleeping in the basement of their mom and dad’s house until they eventually have enough money to get their own apartment. Affordability is a crisis for everybody in New York City. The rent is too high to pay, as Jimmy McMillan said in 2010 when he debated Governor Cuomo. It’s now way too high to pay and include police officers and say, “I can’t find anything affordable on the five boroughs.” That’s why sometimes you see them going all the way up to Dutchess and Orange County in order to find something affordable.

Errol Louis: You have called for increasing salaries and benefits on the front side. And you say that would reduce the need for overtime?

Curtis Sliwa: Oh, absolutely. Look, overtime should exist because there are plenty of men and women who need the overtime. But there are plenty of men and women who don’t want the overtime because it’s affecting their family life, their domestic life. So if the overtime is available and there are those that need it, fine. But don’t force it. That’s what’s destroying the morale of the police department now. And by the way, after eight hours, you’re not as effective. If you’re on 12-hour tour, you’re not as effective. 

And speaking of that, the group that gets no attention, no recognition, the most dangerous job in the city — because I’ve been on the rock — Rikers Island, the Department of Correction. They’re on 12-hour shifts. It’s a perpetual, Errol, 911 call. They can’t do anything about the tiers. The gangs control the tiers. It’s predominantly women of color now who are the correctional officers, they’re getting sexually assaulted, sexually harassed. Where’s the #MeToo crowd? They’re not around for women of color in corrections. And you know what? They end up getting sent back to the same tier, there’s no discipline of the inmates who are harassing the female correctional officers.

Errol Louis: We have a lot to talk about with the jails in a minute. Let’s talk about quality of life though. Generally speaking, do you think the broken windows theory is correct? Meaning, if you let small quality of life violations go unaddressed, it will actually lead to serious crime?

Curtis Sliwa: I think there’s a variation of that. I’ll give you a perfect example. We know that the recreational use of marijuana is legal. You go into a state-licensed store, you buy it, you use it for your personal use, whatever you want to do. But when people are whipping out blunts and smoking it in public, and then I show up with an interview for you, Errol Louis, and you’re saying, “Oh, you’ve been doing puff pass, huh?”

It’s like there’s a purple haze that hangs over the city. It’s not legal to smoke it in public. There’s no enforcement whatsoever. You go on a beach,: you see you can’t smoke cigarettes, cigars, tiparillos. What if I got a blunt on the beach? Nobody does anything about it. You have to enforce what is. It’s legal, it’s recreational, obviously medical marijuana. I’ve used that, medical marijuana, series of injuries I had. I had prostate cancer. I had Crohn’s Disease, shot five times. I know the benefits of that. But you can’t let people be smoking it out in public. Then you smell like, yourself, like you’ve been, like, you’ve been doobing up.

Errol Louis: So do the idea or the question of having cops respond to relatively minor quality of life violations — shoplifting, fare evasion, public urination, public intoxication of whatever kind. What about the argument that it is wasteful to have one of these highly trained, highly paid officers that you want to recruit chasing after a guy for stealing a $20 bottle of shampoo?

Curtis Sliwa: Yeah. Unless you happen to be in the store, and then it’s learned behavior. Isn’t it crazy that the number one question I get asked by people who come into New York City, whether they’re tourists or they work, or they live here, “Curtis, we live in a city where we lock up toothpaste and we don’t lock up criminals.”

We lock up toothpaste. You know how many times you’ve been in a pharmacy and you have to wait 20 minutes for an attendant to come with the keys to open up something because it’s constantly being stolen. Men and women will come in with duffel bags and fill it up and then just walk out like they own the store.

There’s no enforcement whatsoever. Part of that is the responsibility of the DAs. The DAs will cut ‘em loose under what premise? No cash bail. Thank you, Governor Andrew Cuomo, because you are not only the author, you inspired it. And in the primary against Zohran Mamdani and the other Democratic challengers, remember, he doubled down on no cash bail.

Errol Louis: Let’s talk about the DAs. The district attorneys — and I moderated many of these debates, followed this, interviewed them many times. They have decided, and the voters ratified this decision, not to use prosecutorial resources to chase shoplifters, fare beaters and minor violations. They got elected on a promise not to do. If you are the mayor and you disagree with what they’re doing, where does that leave you?

Curtis Sliwa: I’d put it up for charter revision. I believe, as you know, Errol, in initiative and referendum. I favored term limits, I favored ranked choice. I think it’s the people’s right to make those determinations.

If the people make that determination — like sanctuary cities, I would’ve put it out there for a vote. If I’m the mayor, I’m opposed sanctuary cities. But if the people vote for sanctuary cities, then I have to do what is the will of the people. I don’t trust the politicians and the lobbyists and the professional class of people who try to control those things.

I trust people to make the right decisions. I think they should. Now, I happen to know one of the DAs, Melinda Katz, who is the mother of my two youngest sons. So when I visit, we have conversations. “Would you let go of this, that guy who set the dog on fire after killing it. No cash bail.” “I had no, I was handcuffed because of the Cuomo law, no cash bail.”

So whether it’s humans or animals — and as you know, I have the first independent line ever Protect Animals, which is no-kill shelters, animal abusers go to jail — but every time I ask, the blowback I get is “the Cuomo…No cash bail. No cash bail.”

Errol Louis: But let’s put the responsibility where it belongs, which I think is with the voters.

I mean, I moderated that debate with Melinda Katz. The same thing went down in the Manhattan District Attorney’s race. We’re gonna have another debate in a couple of weeks, and I don’t expect it to go any different. The voters have said to the district attorneys, “we do not want our highly paid six-figure cops chasing after $20 fare…you know, shoplifters. We don’t want that.” The district attorney then follows that guidance from the voters, stops prosecuting those cases and we end up where we are.

Curtis Sliwa: Well, that was before we saw the complete catastrophe. As you know, with charter revision, you can come back two years later. Why not put it up for a review in simple language and let the people make the determination? I think people have had enough of this no cash bail. I think if you put it up for a vote, people would say, “I’m tired of the fact that I’m watching people go in and out of a store with an E-ZPass stealing products that I have to pay for. And obviously the prices go up. You don’t think the store owners are absorbing that loss. You just raise the prices. That’s part of the reason that prices are so high and it’s unaffordable.

Homelessness, mental illness and street disorder

Errol Louis: Let’s talk about disorder on the streets and in the subways and mental illness in particular. For people who are visibly unstable or in need of help, what would be the street-level triage you would favor? Like when do you send engagement teams? When do you call EMS? When do you send the cops? When do you mandate involuntary transport or even arrest? How do you do that?

Curtis Sliwa: It’s always been the goal. We saw that with Bill de Blasio and his wife Chirlane, who ran a program called Thrive. In five years, they spent one and a half billion dollars. They were gonna have Thrive members, specially trained, go out there and deal with the emotionally disturbed, sometimes in tandem with police. What happened? Never happened. Eric Adams said the same thing. Never happened. I don’t have a problem with that, but it’s gotta happen at the precinct level. Your first responders are probably gonna be the police. This also goes for domestic abuse. Zohran Mamdani said, “I’ll send social workers.” Apparently, he hasn’t had the experience I’ve had with the Guardian Agnels.

You go in, domestic abuse, it’s the most violent situation you can face. You are always wrong. You’re never right. The police sometimes would come later. It is the most dangerous situation for everybody involved in that room or that apartment. I don’t think social workers alone can deal with it. I’ve dealt with emotionally disturbed persons. As you know, I have really good feel for these men and women. Some that I know on a first-name basis. They need hospital care. Again, I have to go to Andrew Cuomo. When he came into office, 40,000 beds in the state mental health facilities. By the time he fled, fearing impeachment, to the Hamptons, 4,000 beds. He cut dramatically the number of state beds.

Errol Louis: So if you’re mayor on January 1st, what do you do? 

Curtis Sliwa: Well, because the state may not respond — Hopefully Hochul would, or maybe the next governor — but you would have to increase…

Errol Louis: She funded, I think, about 700 beds…

Curtis Sliwa: Right. You would have to increase the number of municipal beds. Now, remember during the lockdown and pandemic, we were all frightened. Nobody knew what would happen. Friends of ours healthy one day would go into the ICU, ER, come out in a body bag the next. I knew of people, you probably knew of people. So they released all the mental healthcare patients in the private hospitals and the municipal. I get that. They had to do that. They needed the beds, but they never went back afterwards to find them.

Some of them still walk around with the hospital tags. I read ‘em all the time. “Oh, you were in Bellevue. This is the medication you’re taking. Have you had your medication since?” “No.” “Have you gone for therapy?” “No.” All that does is exacerbate what ails them. Now, if we had a child crawling around — obviously, the thought process of a child, we would immediately rescue that child.

We have elderly and we have adults who have the mind of a child who’ve lost control of their mental and physical faculties, wallowing in their own defecation and in their own urine, and we just go like this [covers eyes]. We Guardian Angels, we don’t. We care for them. We try to give them food, clothing, sustenance, try to get to know them on a first-name basis.

I don’t know of anybody in the city who does that, and we supposedly spend millions of dollars in order to do outreach.

Errol Louis: So talk about it though. If this person that you’ve encountered on the street, who should respond, should it be EMS? Should it be NYPD? Should it be somebody else?

Curtis Sliwa: Could be a combination. Let’s take Jordan Neely. That’s the case that everybody remembers. He ended up being restrained by Daniel Penny. And everybody has a different point of view on that, but Jordan Neely was living in the subways for years. I knew Jordan Neely. He used to come entertain the…Guardian Angels during Christmas. He was a great imitator of Michael Jackson. He lived right in Washington House. Then he digressed. Imagine he was living in the subways. You had some outreach units who listed him as part of the 50 most dangerous individuals who were living in the subways. Well f they’re dangerous to themselves and everyone else, why do we then just let them live in the subways?

Errol Louis: Okay, so January 1st or January 2nd, who do you give an order to? That same top 50 list. The names might change, but there will be a list. And it is a relatively small universe, which is what makes it so frustrating, right? There’s probably not more than 2,000 or 3,000 from what I’ve been told by…

Curtis Sliwa: It’s a lot of people.

Errol Louis: It’s a lot, but you have their names. What do you who do you call in as Mayor Sliwa? Who do you call in? And what order do you give them?

Curtis Sliwa: You sit with your police commissioner. I would hope that Jessica Tisch would continue to serve, only to maintain stability, because Adams created chaos at One Police Plaza.

And then you say, “I want to put back into effect the homeless outreach unit.” Trained professional police officers If we want assign them with healthcare workers, mental healthcare workers, so be it. But let’s do it, because we talked about it for eight years with De Blasio. We talked about it for four years with Eric Adams, and they haven’t done it. I’ll make sure it gets done.

Errol Louis: There’s some findings from other jurisdictions, and I think this is what was behind the idea of a 988 instead of a 911 phone system for New York, that cops showing up with guns and handcuffs is a non-therapeutic approach that freaks people out. They don’t want the services, it’s not necessarily gonna stick. They might even regress rather than get help. Any thought to that?

Curtis Sliwa: I’ve seen that sometimes. The psychosis of the individual is so strong that they have a negative reaction to almost anybody who approaches them. A combination of the two: specially trained police officers who can work with healthcare providers, mental healthcare providers. I think that’s the route to go. But sometimes, remember that 911 call comes in, it’s an emergency. Somebody has a knife to their throat. It’s a domestic situation. The cops are gonna be the first responders, you can’t wait. Zohran Mamdnai’s plan of just having social workers respond will lead to the deaths of women and children. I’ve been in too many of those situations to see mostly men….

Errol Louis: You’ve also seen cases going back to Eleanor Bumpurs, Gidone Busch, Deborah Danner, we could call out names all day. Saheed Vassell.

Curtis Sliwa: Eleanor Bumpurs, I knew that situation personally. She was in the Sedgwick Housing Project.

Errol Louis: Somebody emotionally disturbed, the cops show up first, and they kill the person. Usually within minutes.

Curtis Sliwa: I remember at that time, [Phil] Caruso and the PBA [police union] was going at [longtime Bronx DA] Mario Merola who I knew personally, who was a friend of mine, and I stood with Mario Merola, got a lot of blowback from the PBA. 

Errol Louis: How do you prevent that from happening? It’s been going on for decades now.

Curtis Sliwa: I understand. And that’s finally we’re gonna prioritize that. It wasn’t prioritized by de Blasio. It wasn’t prioritized by Eric Adams. You have the people train first. Remember, the one thing that the police department really does well. Training training training training. Obviously anti-terrorism unit, disaster, OEM, Office of Emergency Management. A lot of the time, it’s training, training. There’s no training involved in this. That’s why the homeless outreach unit is so important. There are men and women who are dedicated to helping these people, and then you team them up with mental healthcare workers. But it has to be rapid response. And I know, I’m the person who can do it, because they’re all…I do it all the time with the Guardian Angels. I’m very proficient at this.

Criminal justice reform

Errol Louis: Let me switch topics and talk a little bit about bail and court reform. You’ve mentioned even just this morning that you have some problems with the bail reform laws from 2019. Let me just ask as a threshold question: Do you accept the basic premise that the only reason for bail is actually to ensure that a defendant shows up in court? I mean it’s not intended as a crime control measure.

Curtis Sliwa: I don’t accept that premise because if a person has had a history of violent crimes being committed, crimes in which people’s lives are threatened, I think a judge should have to be able to consider that. That’s not part of no cash bail. So we see a turnstile.

Now, I’ve been arrested, you know, Errol, 81 times the first 13 years. The police hated the Guardian Angels. I’ve been on Rikers Island in the dorm in what they call Punk City, protective custody. I’ve seen the system inside out. I’ve gotten wooden shampoos and concrete facials from cops who didn’t like us, and then eventually they learned: Wow, these are really good young men and young women who want to make a difference.

So I know what it’s like to be abused, but I also know the differentiation between those who should be available for being released back into society and those who have proven themselves to be a danger to society again and again.

Errol Louis: Why should cash be the tool? So like, if two people are arrested on suspicion of robbery, one happens to have money, they walk free waiting for their day in court, the other has to sit on Rikers Island ‘cause they don’t have a few hundred dollars. Is that fair? And how does that make the city…

Curtis Sliwa: You want to change it to Venmo? One of those things?

Errol Louis: The average person, at the time that they passed these, the average person was staying on Rikers Island for hundreds of days. And they were staying on average, I think it was like less than $500. 

Curtis Sliwa: Understood. And that needs to be reformed. But I also know of many families who have the wherewithal to bail out their sons, their daughters mostly, and they won’t put up the bail. That tells you something right there, because they know this is a person who is a danger to the family and a danger to everybody else.

Look, I’m open to working on it. It’s really more of a state issue because that was imposed by Governor Cuomo. It can be dealt with, but I think by experts in the field…remember, when Cuomo imposed no cash bail, he never contacted police. He never contacted prosecutors. He never contacted people in the field and put together a cross-section of people to come up with a plan that was fair. He basically just shoved it down our throats. And we’ve been suffering with this ever since.

Errol Louis: I know he’s your opponent and he did sign the law, but my sense, my memory of it was that this really came from the legislature.

Curtis Sliwa: Oh, who ever forced Andrew Cuomo to do anything, bully boy that he was? He threatened, he used intimidation.You remember Ron Kim, the assemblyman. “How dare he stand up and accuse me of having killed 15,000 elderly because of my executive order?” He tried to drive that guy outta the assembly. You know how Cuomo operated, like the head of an organized crime family. That’s why he was able to come back from being like Napoleon on the Island of Elba escaping, being impeached, because everybody was afraid of him.

They all endorsed because they said, if you don’t endorse Cuomo, he’ll get retribution and revenge on you. That’s the only reason he came back.

Errol Louis: So it sounds if elected, you’re going to put on your wishlist when you go up to Albany, the first session trying to change the bail reform laws. Does that include…

Curtis Sliwa: Alter it, sit down and say, “Hey, I’m somebody who’s been on both sides of it.” 

The other thing is the gang issue. We have a gang roster. I’ve recruited gang members into the Guardian Angels. I know that there are some young men and young women, they haven’t had affiliation with a gang in five years. They’re still on the gang roster. 

You gotta take ‘em off. It’s like okay, you put ‘em on. If they’re active, you take ‘em off. If they’re not active, I always suggest to the young men and women, especially the older ones, you get laser, you get the tattoos off, ‘cause you are walking around, MS-13 on your neck like a giraffe, people are gonna think you’re MS-13. You might no longer be involved with them for five years. But that should be reflected on the roster. And if you’re a gang member, I would suggest get rid of the gang tattoos because people are gonna think, you’ve got tattoos of a gang, you’re a gang member.

Errol Louis: So when the City Council says we should get rid of the gang intelligence unit, it sounds like you’re on the same page. 

Curtis Sliwa: You can’t do that. We’ve had an uptick of gang violence, mostly juveniles, 16 to 18 because of the Raise the Age law that Zohran is in favor of that Cuomo did. I’m opposed to that because older gang members then use the younger ones to go out and do the drive-by shootings and commit the violent acts because they know there are almost no consequences for that, they end up going to family court.

Errol Louis: When they changed the law, New York was an outlier. I think it was only New York and North Carolina that were treating 16-year-olds as adults. You Want go back to that?

Curtis Sliwa: No. You alter it, but you also make special accommodations that you’re not gonna be sending hardened criminals who have been killers or people who have raped to juvie prisons. You’re just not gonna do that. You have to be able to bifurcate this. 

See, I’m open-minded. I don’t think I’m omnipotent, as much experience that I’ve had in public safety. I would say, let’s sit down. Let’s have town hall meetings, let’s have forums. Let’s try to work on something that’s viable.

We’re not doing that. It’s basically “My way. That’s the way it is.” I don’t think many of the legislators are street smart. In fact, I know they’re not street smart ‘cause they never ride the subways. They never walk the streets. They’re not taking buses, they’re not dealing with the working-class people.

That’s why I’ve dubbed myself the mayor of the working class people, who never, their considerations are never put up and prioritized.

Errol Louis: Given the case backlogs, are there process reforms like digital discovery or remote arraignments that you would favor in order to speed up trial readiness. That’s partly why so many people are sitting in jail.

Curtis Sliwa: Oh, yeah. I love the old fashioned newspapers, the Jersey Journal, which was over in Jersey City by Journal Square, they would show you all the arraignments that were done vis-a-vis television, teleprompter. The attorney is there for the accused, the judge, they’re able to give speedy justice to the accused and also make the system more malleable.

The way it is now? No. It’s so slow that nobody benefits from this process. And in an age of technology, where we should be able to…Errol, I gotta tell you a story. ‘cause I know your whole family was involved with the police: In order to make overtime, when the cops busted me, they had to get three sheets of carbon paper and they would type it out. “How do you spell your name?” “S-L-I.” At the end of the report, they say, “Oh, Curtis. That last piece of carbon paper didn’t work. We’re gonna have to start the process all over again.” I said, “How many kids am I putting through college for you by doing this?” We have such great technology now. A lot of the old school ways just don’t work.

Corrections, immigration and civic management

Errol Louis: The next mayor is gonna have to deal with a federally appointed receiver over Rikers Island to address the violence and the poor management. The Adams administration resisted the appointment. Do you agree outside intervention was needed? And if you’re elected, would you be cooperating with the monitor?

Curtis Sliwa: I would say to the feds, “How dare you assume that you could do a better job on Rikers Island?” We have one fed lockup in Sunset Park. It’s miserable, as you know Errol, it’s horrible the conditions there. So having a federal monitor, basically because Eric Adams and the Adams administration ignored communication back and forth… his correctional commissioners. I think had he been more forthcoming, had there been more transparency, we wouldn’t have gotten into this draconian situation. 

But remember recently his police commissioner who filed charges against him saying that Eric Adams ran the police department as if he was a head of organized crime. No transparency, not revealing what’s going on in an agency that we as citizens have a right to know what’s going on, I think is true to form. And that’s why you have a federal receivership: refusal to deal. Like with the Campaign Finance Board. How many times did the Campaign Finance Board ask Eric Adams, “How could you account for these contributions from Turkish American business people?” And they never responded and always acted like they were victims. That was part of the Eric Adams administration. Non-response. I would have a totally transparent administration. The good, but also the bad and the ugly. We like the good news bears, right? But you know, in government, a lot of bad news bears. 

And the other thing I would elevate are the civil servants, many of them who have served for Democrats and Republicans, they’re the silent number of people who keep the government going. Because elected officials, I don’t care if they’re Republicans or Democrats, are too busy dialing for dollars. The staff does all the work. As you know, Errol, they never get put on a pedestal.

They’re never given an opportunity of exposing great ideas. There are correctional officers I deal with all the time. They have some great ideas. As mayor, I would sit back, I’d analyze, I’d have to sign off on it, I’d say, “But you, George, you are the one who was the architect of this. You’ve been a correctional officer for 32 years. You know the system inside out. I want you to give the press conference and explain how this works.” Wouldn’t that be a novel idea?

Errol Louis: I mean, it’s reminiscent of how you know Jack Maple and some of the other lieutenants….

Curtis Sliwa: Wouldn’t that be a novel idea? The people who actually know what goes on, the people who do the heavy lifting, who are silent, who are never given their due, would actually introduce these concepts to the citizens, and all I would have to do is just sign off on it.

Errol Louis: Let’s talk some more about Rikers. Under New York law, the island has to be closed by 2027, or no new people housed there. The four borough jails are behind schedule. They’re over budget. There are too many people in Rikers to fit in those borough jails. You’ve said you want to keep it open, but the law says otherwise. So what, how do you plan to address that?

Curtis Sliwa: Okay. First we have the four borough jails. Staten Island somehow got exempted. How did that happen?

Errol Louis: Well, they have a couple hundred people on…

Curtis Sliwa: The point being is they got exempted, so we got four borough jails.

The original assumption was it would cost $8 billion. Sounds like an MTA project, you know, when they’re building a new station. Now It’s $16 billion. It’s expected when they’re completed, $32 billion. What I would do is say, “No. Let’s slow down the process on Rikers. Look, I know I’m gonna get sued. We’re gonna get sued. Legal Aid, New York City Liberties Union. We have 1,000 Corporation Council members. We go into court, we battle, we win some, we lose some. “But I would say to the people who need affordable housing, “how about we convert what was built to be a jail into affordable housing?” 

Because the circumstances are, they’re brand new. You wouldn’t have bars, you wouldn’t have a prison. You make affordable housing. It’s not gonna work as a prison. As you said, we have more inmates than we have space in those new jails. What are we gonna do? Shut Rikers Island down? Since I’ve been on Rikers Island, I would have some of the sections for the mentally ill — who shouldn’t be in Rikers Island, because they have severe mental problems that we should be working on until the time of their release. We’re not doing that now. We mix everybody together.

And we have to separate the gangs. When you go on to Rikers Island, everybody from MS-13 is all together with MS-13. Everyone who’s a Trinitario. It’s like homecoming! Bloods with Bloods. Crips with Crips. That is a recipe for insanity. And who do we leave to deal with that? Predominantly women of color who are correctional officers, who are almost incapable of dealing with that as the male correctional officers are, because the system says keep the gang members of the same gang together. Anybody with common sense knows you gotta split ‘em up.

Errol Louis: Let’s talk about immigration for a minute. Exactly how much do you want, and how much would your NYPD cooperate with ICE? Should they hand off people accused of serious crimes before they get their day in court?

Curtis Sliwa: Everybody’s entitled to due process. Everybody. That’s the law. So even if you are, as Trump has called them, the bad hombres — okay? Drug dealers, gang bangers, narco terrorists, sex traffickers — you get charged here. You go to court here. Let’s say you plea out or you’re found guilty. You do your time here. Then the detainer gets issued and ICE comes and picks you up and deports you to your country of origin. You should not be sent to a gulag in El Salvador.

I understand why the Trump administration did that. You don’t want people coming in, especially people who are narco terrorists, sex traffickers, which is a real problem that I’d have the FBI, Patel, deal with ‘cause we’re not handling it very well. In parts of Queens on both sides of the Grand Central Parkway, where open prostitution flourishes in Corona, Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Flushing. And the sanctimonious hypocrite that Cuomo is, he says, you know, Zohran Mamdani is for legalizing prostitution. He is. You know who signed the law into effect? Governor Andrew Cuomo. He said it was okay. No more loitering, loitering laws go away.

Errol Louis: I don’t wanna belabor the point, and you can talk to Melinda Katz about this, we did a story on NY1. Prostitution is not being prosecuted. The district attorneys, I mean, you might get a couple of dozen cases in the course of an entire year…

Curtis Sliwa: I would say, first of all, you have absentee landlords take the building. They’re allowing their facility to be used for prostitution.

You have madams and you have pimps. Prosecute them. You have Johns. Expose who they are because they are the ones that keep this business alive. I would help the women — many of them who have been forced here from either Asia or from Central America and South America, who need help, a lot of ‘em want to go back. They can’t. I understand it from the street level. I would not hold the women responsible, but the pimps, the madams, the landlords who are making money, hand over fist and live in Delray, Florida because they’re absentee landlords. Absolutely, they gotta be prosecuted.

Errol Louis: But you’re gonna have your cops make these arrests even if the DA has no interest in it and…

Curtis Sliwa: Over and over and over and then shine the light on the DA and force the public, you say, “I’m trying to do our job. Look at what the DA is doing here. I want to protect the women in this trafficking.” I wanna go at the sex traffickers, some of whom are part of the narco terrorist organizations that exist in foreign countries that are imprisoning their own people. We gotta help them. Help them in. That’s what I’m saying.

This whole discussion of being mayor never talks about the plight of women. Have you ever heard them talking about the plight of women, how they get abused, how they’re in sex trafficking, how we don’t do anything to rescue them, how they’re targets of random assaults, sexual harassment, perversions? I wanna prioritize women and take care of them.

I was raised by my father and mother, you take care of the elderly, the infirm, the children, and especially the women. What kind of a man is not gonna take care of women who are in distress, especially if we know it?

Errol Louis: Okay. This is a question from Zach Jaworski. He’s a Stabile student here at Columbia Journalism School. In 2021, you said that you don’t believe the mayor of New York City needs police protection specifically if they call for defunding the department. Do you stand by that statement today, even with the increased political violence in America?

Curtis Sliwa: No. No. Like other things, I amend that. I see what Zohran Mamdani is going through. I’m aware of the threats. They’re serious. He has a different political philosophy than me. He’s got a wife, he’s got staff, he’s got people that are loyal to him that are under threat. We need to make sure we take care of everybody. Whether you’re running for office, elected office, the temperature is too high.

And remember, 71 years, even though I was targeted by organized crime, I never had armed guards. Today the first time I officially am taking armed security and my wife, who’s also under threat, armed security. You know how bad that makes me feel, that I can’t walk the streets of the city that I love, ride the subways by myself, which I’ve been doing since I was five years old in 1959? And that’s because the rhetoric is too hot.

Errol Louis: One of your opponents has called for — this is a First Amendment question. One of your opponents has called for reassigning the Strategic Response Group, which was designed and armed to repel terrorist attacks, but is also used to police constitutionally protected protests and demonstrations. Does it make sense to bring the department’s most lethal unit out when people want to hold a demonstration?

Curtis Sliwa: I would be a little different when it comes to demonstrations. You should be able to get your permit for a demonstration in a day, which is normally the case, your sound permit in a day, but then you’re in a restricted area. Ever since Bill de Blasio was the mayor, all of a sudden there are no restrictions. A demonstration becomes a parade, and then you walk wherever you want to go. That’s why you need this strategic unit. Used to be, normally the police from the precinct, they would put up, you know, the wooden horses. You had an area you could demonstrate, certain time you could start, certain time you’d eliminate.

When de Blasio became the mayor, he threw all that out the door. And so I’m gonna try to get everything back on track. Everyone is entitled to demonstrate. I believe that the way you deal with hate speech is more free speech. I don’t want to abridge anybody’s right of hate speech. I was a talk radio show host for 35 years, probably the longest here in New York City. We gotta keep free speech alive. That’s the greatest thing about the United States. If you’re bothered by hate speech, the remedy is more free speech. More free speech.

Errol Louis: Last couple of questions. You call for the city to invest a few million dollars to support auxiliary cops and neighborhood watches, presumably like the Guardian Angels. To the extent that there’s a conflict of interest there, how would you handle it?

Curtis Sliwa: Look, I’ve dealt with auxiliary police. They dress ‘em up in a police uniform and they move them around like pawns on a chess board to give you the impression that they have more police than they really do. These are dedicated men and women. They never get attention. They never get recognition.

We should make sure, for the volunteer service they do, that some of their needs are met. And that would require us sitting down. Now there are a lot of different patrol groups that exist in the City of New York that have cooperation with the NYPD, but again, they rarely get attention and recognition because the attitude of One Police Plaza is, they really don’t like volunteers. I know how they treated me like a hemorrhoid in a red beret and they were looking for Preparation H to rub on me and the Guardian Angels and hope we dry up and…

Errol Louis: Let me be more specific. You wanna put resources toward volunteers? Would you give money to the Guardian Angels? Cause that would be a conflict of interest.

Curtis Sliwa: No. Because clearly that would be a big conflict of interest.

Errol Louis: In that same section of your website, I noticed you don’t specifically talk about the violence interrupters who follow the Cure Violence model. I was wondering what you think of those groups and whether the city should keep or overhaul or defund them.

Curtis Sliwa: I’ve dealt with violence interrupters where they started in Chicago, where we have Guardian Angels, in Washington, DC and here in New York City. There’s only one problem with the violence interrupters. They’ll tell you straight out, “we are not going to give information to the police.” Many of them will tell me straight up, “Curtis, snitches get stitches and end up in ditches. For us to maintain our relationship with gang members, guys and gals who are doing bad things, we can’t snitch ‘em out to the police.”

Now, some of these are really serious criminals. There has to be an understanding. What are you gonna do with that information? If you know somebody was out on a warrant for murder or rape or really serious crimes, you’re not gonna convey that to the police? This is gonna ruin our effectiveness. I’d sit down with all the violence interrupters, ‘cause I’ve dealt with them for years.

I agree with them in some instances, I disagree in others. We find out a way to accommodate one another. I don’t think this mayor has done that. The previous mayors haven’t. Andrew Cuomo talks about violence interrupters. What, in the Hamptons, violating people as they’re going out for their martinis and cocktails? What does he know about violence interrupters? He’s not a street guy.

Errol Louis: Is what you’re describing there, is that done at the precinct level? Is that done at One Police Plaza?

Curtis Sliwa: It’s the higher crime areas where you have the violence interrupters, where you can see there’s been a pattern of crime.

Look, they do some really good work. Some of them were bad and wayward themselves and they’ve rectified their life and they have vans and they’ll go into intense areas, but there is that Maginot Line that many of them will not cross. And again, if they’re saying it, young people pick up on that. “Snitches get stitches and end up in ditches,” which has caused enormous numbers of problems in our city.

Errol Louis: What’s the standard for Guardian Angels? If you come across information that would be of interest to police or prosecutors, you turn it over?

Curtis Sliwa: Absolutely. Obviously, you go through the leadership, make sure that everything is tightened up, that you have your information correct. We work with the police, but again, we’re outliers. We’re not an auxiliary police department. And there were times initially in which they wouldn’t even give us the time of day. They looked at us as if we were the criminals, and then eventually that was resolved.

Errol Louis: Okay. That brings us to the end of our time. Thanks so much. Great discussion.

Curtis Sliwa: Thank you. Thank you very much.