Question: I wanted some clarity from the Commissioner on the NYPD's involvement with the organization of last night's funeral. So former City Councilman David Greenfield tweeted that this was organized with the NYPD's approval. I don't know if your department knew there would be so many people who showed up.
Mayor:You've heard in great detail, telling people they cannot gather, from all religious communities, in their houses of worship. That's been going on for weeks. Telling people they can't even do services in a living room because that's going to endanger lives. We've been talking about all of these dangers and the fact that we're not going to tolerate them. And we are going to enforce. And we've talked about funerals before as well. That's why I'm so angry. That we have given plenty of warnings, worked with community leaders to ensure they gave the warnings. And they have by the way, overwhelmingly. I want to thank the rabbinical leadership who have consistently said people should not gather for religious services or anything else because it will endanger their own community. I have seen total unity. And I appreciate that unity. And so it's up to everyone in every community to respect these voices of their City government, of the leaders of their communities. What is so frustrating to me is after all those messages were so clear that so many people would still choose to gather. I understand that they lost someone very dear and important to them, but this is still a pandemic. People's lives are put in danger when people gather. So what is shocking to me is that after all the warnings, something of this size would happen. And that's where I'm making very clear, unapologetically, that the next gathering will be met by summonses and arrests. Period. No more warnings. And that's true in every community, equal opportunity, New York City. I'm not talking about a few friends hang out in the corner. I'm saying if you have a large gathering, hundreds of people, thousands of people that we're not even going to have a discussion. It's just we're going immediately to summons. And if we have to use the arrest, we'll use arrest. Go ahead, Commissioner.
Commissioner Shea: We've been in constant contact with leaders of different communities throughout New York City of different faiths. Just last week I could tell you members of the Muslim community, members of the Jewish community, I spoke to the Cardinal just this week. This is what we do. And in terms of social distancing, probably not a day goes by that myself and the Mayor don't talk about whether it's social distancing in parks, whether it's the sick rate of our employees, and certainly funerals and religious events comes up. I don't know of anyone in New York City that doesn't know what's going on, two months into this. I think from the Mayor's executive orders, from the Governor's executive orders, from watching the news every night, everyone knows what is acceptable and what is not. And conversations between members of the NYPD and leaders of the Jewish community who have been extremely helpful in navigating circumstances with this over the last two months, because there have been a couple incidents. But planning for what shouldn't happen is in no way having a conversation condoning a particular event. That event last night never should have happened. It better not happen again. It can't. We can talk about this until the cows come home. It doesn't get any crystal clearer than this for me. You are putting my cops' lives at risk and it's unacceptable.
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