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Welcome back to ask your advocate right here on news. 12 Public Advocate Janti Williams here with us answering all of your questions. And we've been talking a lot about the much talked about how many stops act here in the city that is awaiting a decision from the city council after being vetoed by the mayor. And this is your chance to ask questions of the Public Advocate tonight in regards to this act. And one of you is already on the line right now. I want to hear from him. Uh We've got Brian joining us. He's calling in from Mott Haven. Brian. Thank you so much for calling in. Uh What's your question for public advocate Williams? Um My, my question is, are you going to basically overturn the mayor's, you know, the mayor's decision that he be, that he being, that he vetoed the bill? And it, I wanted to know, are you going to basically overturn because it'd be, it'll be greatly appreciated if you do? All right, Brian, thank you. And again, that's gonna go to the city council, but you're in favor of them pushing this forward. Obviously, I am. Thank you. And I, you know, the, the speaker Adrian Adams has been amazing on uh so many of these issues and she overrode uh mayor veto on housing. Uh which kind of uh is a similar discussion about the people we wanna assist in this city. Uh And she owed the mayor veto the housing bill that can help the city and they overrode it and I fully inspected the city council override it again. Um You know, it's important to, to just really make sure folks understand that what the mayor is putting out there just isn't true. And some of the doomsday scenarios we've heard over and over again has never come to pass. Um, and almost every, you know, Republican mayor Giuliani Bloomberg, it's been pretty bad, what they say is gonna happen and it never does and this is no different. Uh, it's just the same, the same old, same old handcuff, the police. We're gonna do this and this and that. Uh, although they have better graphics now, the Eric has better graphics than some of the previous mayors. Uh, but the horror of what they're saying is gonna happen just isn't true. And, you know, when my mother, a bullet goes through her car door, like it did a couple summers ago, she calls, if she called 911, she want them to come. I had a family member whose neighbor was actually stabbed in that horrific, uh, stabbing that occurred and multiple stabbing when they had the arrest and the mayor had the audacity to use as an example of some police work they wouldn't be able to do. And that affected my family. That's disgusting. And that's what should stop. If we have a disagreement about a bill, let's talk through it. But don't cause a mass hysteria particularly when, what you're saying is verifiably false. That's what Donald Trump does and that's what's getting this nation down the wrong path. Don't take a playbook from Donald Trump using people's emotions and fears against him, use a different playbook. That's what the city needs. Brian. Thank you for calling in with the question there as we sit here talking about this act and everything that's been going on. This is something else that concerns me when I talk to you, what happened because this bill will likely be overridden and it will likely the act will become what we expect. But when you have the mayor's office talking so often about, for example, that people may not be as willing or trusting to speak with police going forward because of what is perceived to be in this act. Are you worried that even if the act is goes through, it becomes law, people won't be as willing to talk to police just because of what they think this bill does. I'm actually worried that law enforcement may not want to do their job based on what the mayor has told them not to do. And so he's spoken to recruits that have not even been jaded, uh, by real world experience that can often jade us and telling them that the council wants you to do more paperwork than policing. It's just not true. There's no paperwork here. And so if law enforcement decides not to do something, they should. It's because the mayor has told them not to. And which is why we really want to have honest conversations kind of on a flip on what you're saying. Uh The, the regular New Yorker has no idea and cannot differentiate a level 12 and three star. He just can't. So when a law, so what the mayor was trying to say, oh, a level one, you can just walk away. No one knows that. And when a law enforcement stops someone, they think they're stopped and they can't tell you, oh, this is a level one, I'm gonna walk away. This is a level three, I'm gonna stop first. So there's no idea what we're trying to do is not use anecdotes to make policy. We're trying to get real information. And what we came up with was is the easiest way to get information by basically put it in the framework of what law enforcement already does. Police work. This is why I was saying this reporting is not preventing police work, it is police work and the patrol guide is very clear on what law enforcement has to do uh when it comes to body one cameras, when it comes to law at level one, level two, level three stops and all we did was add to that framework. Uh We have another bill and none of that. It was vetoed this week by the mayor. Uh talking about the one that would effectively end solitary confinement in our city jails. He says the city doesn't use solitary confinement. He's saying that the bill would make department of corrections officers and people in custody more uh unsafe in these facilities. What are your thoughts on that bill as well? You know, it's interesting there, there are some things that we have wanted to talk about in this bill. By the way, both these bills have six months before they become law that gives people like magical the start again. We did that on purpose to make sure we gave people time with the solitary. It's interesting because I think what people conjure up when it solitary is kind of Shawshank redemption. Um That's not what we're talking about. So we did take some time to kind of redefine what we're talking about. And I will say people are uh left in uh spaces for over 24 hours sometimes and sometimes they don't want to report it. Those are things that people that is not systemic, but we know what's happening. What is systemic is that people are held themselves over 24 hours sometimes with emergency lock ins um on two regular basis. And so you want to stop the use of emergency lock ins without figuring out what the threat is. Let's fix it and then try to let people, uh uh be able to move primarily what we wanted to do is stop the use of isolation to correct behavior because it's not working. So what we said is you can separate someone, you can isolate them for de escalation, you can put them in restrictive housing. So they're away from the, the P uh P uh general population. You can restrict commissary and privileges. But let's not use the isolation of a cell to correct behavior because what we found that doesn't work and can actually make the person more violent. And that's what we've had trouble trying to scale back. We've had a law enforcement, break the arm just this, just this week even worse. We had another detainee die in ri uh And so it's not safe for correction officers or detainees. So what's working status quo is not working? And we have to do something new. If you wanna uh have something new, you have to try something new. And again, we expect that bill to go back to the city council and they plan to vote and potentially to override that as well. So we're gonna have a very busy week with the city council, uh coming up, that's for sure. All right, we're gonna take more of your calls in just a couple of minutes. Stay with us. We'll be right back here on news 12.

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All right, welcome back to ask your advocate here on News. 12 Public Advocate Jamani Williams here with us and we've got a little bit of time for a couple of more questions from you tonight. And we want to go right to the phones. We got Joyce from Prospect Leer's Gardens calling us tonight, Joyce. Thanks for calling in your turn to ask your advocate. Go ahead. Uh Yes, I wanted to know about Downstate hospital is supposed to be closing and I wanna know what's gonna happen to all of us uh patients that have a lot of different doctors in the facility. I go to the clinic there, the different clinics in the hospital. So what happens to us because they're talking about going to Kanes County. Kings County is overcrowded already. Joyce. Thank you for calling in with that. We were talking about that earlier today on News 12 of us. So this is a big news here in, in the borough now. Thank you Joyce for that question. Um My uh my primary care physician is at Suny Downstate. Um I actually, that's where I first heard uh a, a murmur that this might be happening and then um we started hearing about it from my office. So my office is actually looking into it now trying to figure out what's going on, uh downsizing or actually closing down would be horrific. We see this happening in Manhattan as well. Um We actually um helped uh work to organize a community with a lot of electors and now there's an injunction on that one. hoping we don't have to lead to this the same thing, but really, we're not just trying to gather information to see what's going on and what we find. A lot of times it's about money. Somebody wants to make more of it. Um And we just wanna make sure that that community um gets what it needs the services it needs because it's a, it's a community that has um one of the hardest hit when it came to COVID. Um And so it's very clear that the health uh care is needed there. And so I'll be very disturbed if this turns out to be true on the direction that they're really trying to go in. Yeah, we're gonna keep an eye on what goes on there because as you mentioned, it's an area that needs those services as all areas. Do Joyce. Thank you so much for calling with the question there and we will continue to keep an eye on what's going on there. I wanna thank everybody for calling in tonight too. Some great stuff. From everyone and from questions and thank you for talking a lot about what everyone's been talking about lately. Which is this? How many stops act? What's your final message you want for everybody? What do you want everyone to take away from this as we move forward? I guess in this process, the, the, the real takeaway from this is, this is really just a reporting bill. It doesn't add a significant amount of time um for law enforcement, this work they're already doing and it's not gonna stop them from answering a call or from doing an investigation in the manner that the, the mayor has said. And so we invite everybody to, uh you know, look at the information, do your own research. Um and don't let folks who wanna push fair um over actuality win. Um because that's what's happening to this country and we shouldn't let it happen to New York City. We want everybody to be safe, feel safe. That includes our law enforcement, our police and our corrections officers who are in tough situations and in the grand scheme of things, I know these things often get put as, you know, two people against each other. You, you the mayor, the council NYPD. Everybody wants to work together here in the grand scheme of things, right? I mean, this is basically where we're at at this point. We should and particularly in communities who have been sandwiched between very real violence that they want assistance with and sometimes over policing to that violence people just wanna be able to call law enforcement and know that they're gonna get transparent, accountable and fair policing and this bill just helps report out so we can all look at it and do a better job to make sure that happens. All right. Absolutely. Well, hopefully when you're back with us here next month, we can, uh, have some more news on this real quick before we go. We always talk about him. Nick, how you feel about what's going on right now. I feel very good. I very much miss quickly. Uh, but it looks like the trade has been working out for everybody. Um So it's, it's hard to see, uh, quickly go. I'm glad to see RJ. Quickly get some nice applause when they came in the best of all worlds. They played well and we still beat them and you're moving up in the standings. Knicks are right there where they need to be right now. We'll check in with you. Public advocate. Thank you as always for all your time. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next month, everyone.

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News 12 welcomes Jumaane Williams to answer YOUR questions for the January 2024 edition of Ask Your Advocate. 

Ask Your Advocate: January 2024

News 12 welcomes Jumaane Williams to answer YOUR questions for the January 2024 edition of Ask Your Advocate.

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