another step on the journey. will you be ready when growth presents itself. realize your buying power at open.com. >> this is "eyewitness news upclose with diana williams." >> the signs are pointing more and more in the direction that it was a bomb, and if it is a bomb, of course, the most likely culprit is isis. >> u.s. senator charles schumer of new york was something of clarion call. is it time to beef up security at those airports that haven't yet cracked down? the government's agreeing it is, and we here -- are we in for another round of tighter security at u.s. airports? this morning on "upclose," senator schumer is our guest, but first... >> you are relieved of your duty as a new york city police officer, guardian at the gates of new your city. and we send you on your way to your new assignment to be a

heaven. >> an emotional and eloquent new york police commissioner bill bratton giving yet another eulogy for a murdered cop, this time at randolph holder's funeral -- the fourth new york police officer killed in the line of duty in less than a year. this morning, we talk to commissioner bratton about those deaths and the challenges facing cops on the streets of new york city. good morning, everyone. i'm bill ritter, in for diana williams. so, how many of you aspire to be commissioner of the nypd, the largest, by far, police department in the country? i'll take a show of hands. not many. it is a job that seems, by definition, drenched in no-win situations -- a lot of crime and violence and death, politics, underpaid police officers who risk their lives every way, and a vocal and large number of citizens who firmly believe they are treated differently because of their economic status or the color of their skin, and sometimes they might be right. this is one tough job, and this morning, our guest is bill bratton, the man who has had the job not just once but twice.

who would ever want the job of new york city police commissioner? you've had it twice. >> i hate to contradict you. it's a great job. what job can you get up every day and if you get it right that day, you have a positive impact on 8 1/2 million people, 35,000 cops? >> and if you get it wrong? >> if you get it wrong, then, basically, you get to correct it the next day, so that's the -- the good part about it. >> but it's serious, and the consequences are enormous. >> it's deadly serious sometimes. >> consequences are enormous, and i know -- i have followed you and talked to you enough to know that you look at some of this stuff and i think it must drive you crazy -- the extreme positions people take, especially nowadays, on every issue big and small. >> well, it's the challenge -- the challenge to bring them to common ground. i wrote a book several years ago, co-authored with a friend, "collaborate or perish!" and the era that we live in currently, there was -- there's never been a time when there's more need for collaboration, and there's probably never been a time -- you have to go back to the

so little of it, a congress that is here and here and nowhere in the middle, a country that is increasingly, seemingly, divided against itself. and in our city, over a period of time, a city that has many divisive issues that keep us apart. so, the challenge is that where i can have influence and impact is to try to find common ground where i can bring people together so they can see each other, hear each other, listen to each other, and maybe, hopefully, work together. >> is that working? how is that working out for you? >> i actually think it is, that it's probably not apparent in a very significant way at this time. the message of success tends to get colored by the politics of the town at this time. i work for a mayor -- a great mayor from my perspective -- who's been very supportive of all that i've tried to do -- more cops, more technologies, literally nothing i've looked for that i haven't gotten.

never had a time like this in 45 years. but because of the politics of the -- the town, that the successes are not felt and they're not responded to. and that is frustrating for me, for him certainly, but i think also for my cops because a lot of the changes that they bring about in the city are not... understood or appreciated, and one of them is clearly the crime rate. you're -- if you're just reading the newspapers, watching the news, you'd think that we were in the midst of a crime wave. it's the opposite. we're gonna have the safest year in the history of the city this year -- safest. 100,000 reported crimes in a city of 8 1/2 million people with 59 million tourists who still come here because it's safe. universities are overflowing because foreign students want to be here. this is an extraordinarily great city, but that story is being muted. >> so, why is it that since -- that you think that people think that crime is up?

one reason -- one reason is that there are allegations out there that some of your commanders make felonies into misdemeanors, which fudge the numbers, fudge the real numbers. >> not the case. that's -- that's terribly overblown. when that occurs on occasion -- and it has happen on occasion, unfortunately -- but the reality is that doesn't impact our report. no, i think what's going on is that -- is things that people see every day, one of the things they see every day is the increase in the homeless population, not just in this city. i travel around, and it is everywhere. there is an explosion of homeless around america. what raises concern is, so many of them are mentally disturbed. we estimate maybe about 40%, and that problem is being compounded at this particular point in time with the effort to release from our prisons many people who we feel we have put in prison for

over-incarcerated, and so that there is this feeling that, geez, all of a sudden, it looks different, feels different. >> but you -- you have been an advocate at times in the past of prison reform, of using rehabilitation instead of just punishment. we have 2.2 million prisoners in this country. $80 billion a year we spend as taxpayers, housing them. they're not producing. they're just incarcerated. do you think that some of them, the non-violent criminals, shouldn't be let out, try to get back into society? >> well, i don't have a problem at all with letting some of them out, and i mean some of them because in the state prison system, the majority in state prison are there for violent crimes. in the case of the federal prisons, a significant number of them are in there for drug-related offenses, and so that's the effort on the part of the federal government to start letting some of them our early, usually cut two or three years off their sentence. the issue is, though, with 2.2 million, there's not gonna be a significant decline in that population in the short term, but even as that population

system -- cities, states that are not prepared to receive them. jobs aren't there. housing's not there. training's not there. >> you're listing all of the social ills -- education, jobs, everything that goes far beyond just the scope of enforcing the law on the streets. >> well, the problem is, i end up -- "i" meaning law enforcement -- we're -- we become the last resort. we are at the bottom of the safety net, and that safety net has so many holes in it that many of these people are gonna end up right back being dealt with by us. >> i'm gonna talk about community policing. i've gonna ask you to stick around for another segment, but before we get to that, i want to talk quickly about terrorism because it's in the news again, of course. it's never far from your mind, i know, and you have a whole -- >> not here in new york city, certainly. >> the airplane crash in egypt, the russian plane -- looks like it was probably a bomb but hasn't been determined yet. we're taping this on friday. we don't know it as of yet. any precautions here, any red flags that you see from that for us here? >> no, because the security of

the planes is largely a federal issue -- tsa. we certainly, through our counterterrorism operation -- huge counterterrorism operation here in new york city -- very intimate with it. but security of those planes really falls under the mandate of the federal government. like everybody else, we are waiting to see. however, if, in fact, this was a bomb, and if so, was it isis, which then becomes of concern because isis has never operated in that arena. that's always been the domain of al-qaeda. >> okay, let me go back to your crime stats. we do have a graphic i want to show up for the viewers at home, a year to date overall crime, and, as you said, it is down 3.1% for the first 10 months of the year, but if you look at that breakdown of that -- and this is what makes the news -- murders are up 7.7.%. rape's up 4.2%. shootings are down, and transit crimes, which you, i know, are an expert about from your earlier careers, is up 7.5.%, which affects a lot of people, millions of people every day --

i think it's the murder rate that has people so nervous. your position has been, if i can paraphrase it, is not all over the city. it's in directed, specific neighborhoods. >> let me speak first to the transit crime number, up 7.6%. we have six million people a day crowd into that subway system, up from 3 1/2 million when i was chief in 1990. on average, we have six to seven crimes a day. that increase of 7.6% is about 100-some-odd crimes. your chance of being the victim of a crime on the subway is one in a million. half of our crime is committed upon sleeping passengers. they will steal their iphone, et cetera. so, the subway-crime increase is -- it's... there's almost no crime on the subway. on the murders, they're up about 21, 22 as you and i are sitting here today. that's up from last year's historic low of 333. we have just about the lowest murder rate in america of any major city.

we are below the national average, so we will have these spikes and trends -- something you know about in your world. you watch spikes and trends all the time for viewership. it's an issue that we can get our arms around. it's unfortunately largely concentrated in two areas of the city -- brooklyn and the bronx. 70% -- >> and you flood those areas with more cops. >> well, we focus more attention on them. so, this year, we'll end this year as the safest year in the history of this city. >> that's got a nice -- >> so, we have these aberrations that we will deal with. >> if you can stay around for another segment, we'd love to talk to you some more, and i have to admit, i have fallen asleep on the subway, but i do it less now. talking to the commissioner of the nypd, bill bratton. our conversation with mr. bratton continues after

>> welcome back to "upclose." we're continuing our conversation with nypd commissioner bill bratton, his second go-round. any regrets taking this job again? you like it better? >> not at all. as my wife rikki will tell you, i get up in the morning, always happy to get up, always wake up optimistically. >> let me talk to you about one thing that did make some controversial headlines these last two weeks, and that is the so-called ferguson effect. the fbi director and the nation's top drug enforcement officials saying that there was some effect by all the controversy from ferguson and everything else, the eric garner case. anti-police perspective in the country, and it's made it more dangerous, and there may be some pullback by the police. first, your response to the fbi director talking about the ferguson effect, so-called. does it exist? and second, do you think that your guys are a little more hesitant on the streets? >> well, i met with the fbi director in chicago the week he was making those comments, heard

the three speeches in which he expanded on them. they were anecdotal. he was expressing frustration that the current way we keep statistics did not allow him to make a definitive conclusion on that, and so he was advocating the second part of the speech, which was not reported in any great way, was that he's looking for a new record-keeping system >> right. >> what -- >> but the anecdotal was powerful, and that's what made headlines. >> anecdotal was powerful. in new york city, it was real. we know quite clearly last year after the murder of our two detectives, liu and ramos, that we had a period of time for several months where the activity of our officers dropped very significantly, but there were other things churning in new york at that time. we have consciously been seeking to push down the number of arrests, the number of summons, in new york city. this year we'll have about one million fewer incidents of summons, arrests, stop, question, and frisk, than we had in 2011. so we have been consciously pushing that activity down. why? because we don't need it. crime keeps going down.

crime this year is gonna be the lowest it's ever been with one million fewer interactions with people by the new york city police department. >> you are not, per se, an opponent of stop and frisk. you're an opponent of the way it was done under the prior administration. but it is one of many tools that you talk about that work in law enforcement. >> i'm a strong advocate and supporter of stop, question, and frisk. it's an essential tool of american policing. the mayor never committed to getting rid of it. i certainly have not committed to getting rid of it. what we were committed to is like a doctor dealing with a cancer. you use the right amount of radiation and chemotherapy so you don't injure the patient you're trying to cure. i firmly believe that in 2011, with 700,000 stops, the patient, the citizens of new york, were getting too much chemo. now this year, we're gonna have 95% fewer stops and crime is down for the fifth straight year after 2011. >> you have 1,600 new cops you got in the new budget. you have new training going on. what is your real intent to do?

what are you gonna do with these 1,600? >> oh, this is part of a much larger set of initiatives that those cops are going to be able to go for our pilot precinct program. we're going into, by february of next year, the 20 most violent precincts with a new style of policing, a new form of policing. it consists of better training recruit officers, it consists of neighborhood coordinating officers, volunteer officers, it consists of field training officers. we are totally redefining and redesigning how we will police this city starting with our 20 most problematic precincts. i couldn't do it without more cops. the mayor, city council's supposedly giving them to us. >> first time in a long time the new york police department's increased its police force. >> since 9/11. on 9/11, we had 41,000 cops. >> and now you have 42,000, 43,000? >> now with these new officers, we'll have about 36,000. >> quentin tarantino has made headlines, of course, by what he said. you came out against it. but a lot of police officers here and across the country have come vehemently out against it.

in fact, there was a call today that from the fraternal order of police that they're gonna take a surprise action against -- not just boycott tarantino's films but take a surprise action against him. what do you say about that? >> well, i have no idea what they're talking about in terms of surprise action. my assumption will be lawful, that the protests, the boycotts are appropriate to do. but i spoke out quite strongly when i first heard his remarks that it was coming in the middle of the funerals that we were holding for officer holder, detective holder, who had been murdered, and i thought that very inappropriate to have an anti-police rally particularly murderers. bed. he's gonna have to lie in it. and he's been getting a lot of adverse reaction for his comments, and appropriately so. >> but it's not your first-blush style to go in and get angry and push people to their corners. you want to bring them together and act as some sort of compromiser.

that's your innate style. >> sometimes you have to confront somebody when they really go off the reservation, and he really, at that time, and the nature of his comments and the people he was standing with, in that group, there are all of anarchist types who hate the police. so if you, again, want to lie down with them, well, then you're gonna basically have to suffer with them. >> quick question -- the mayor has made it clear he's gonna run for a second term. if he gets reelected, are we gonna see bill bratton as the nypd commissioner? >> well, the mayor has made it very clear since his appointment that he is a strong supporter of me, and we make a good team, i think, going forward. so i've put no cessation date on my term of office with him. i'll stay around as long as he wants me to, as long as i'm having fun, as long as i'm having success. >> you're open to another four years? >> i'm open to basically consideration. i put no time frames on my time in office, but i'm not going anywhere any time soon, so let's knock that down before those who would love to see me go. sorry. i'm around for a while.

>> okay. bill bratton, we have to go to a commercial break, but i really do appreciate you stopping by and talking with us. >> well, it's great to spend some time with you. >> thanks, commissioner. when we come back, we're gonna continue our conversation about gun violence and so much more, including the latest on the crash of that russian plane in egypt. signs now increasingly pointing to terrorism.

senator charles schumer. >> welcome back to "upclose." how do prevent gun violence -- new york senior u.s. senator charles schumer hooking up with his young cousin, the standup comedian and actress amy schumer, hoping to get more young people involved in the discussion to stop guns from spreading. this morning, senator schumer's our guest.

we recorded it earlier and talking about a host of issues. i started by asking him about the possibility that terrorists brought down that russian plane in egypt. >> well, the signs are pointing more and more in the direction that it was a bomb. and if it was a bomb, of course, the most likely culprit is isis. both american intelligence and british intelligence are leaning in that direction. obviously they don't have proof positive, so you got to be tentative about it. but they're ruling out all other explanations. the only other possible explanation is some kind of mechanical malfunction. but it's very hard to conceive of a mechanical malfunction that would just blow the plane to bits so quickly if it weren't a bomb on board the plane. >> let's assume for a second that that's what it is, because security. security lacks at the sharm el-sheikh airport in egypt. what recommendations can you make here to crack down on security there and are you surprised that there wasn't more security?

>> well, no, i think sharm el-sheikh is not known as one of the most secure places, and to boot a russian charter airliner doesn't have close to the security checks that a u.s. commercial airliner would. so, it certainly doesn't mean that we are as susceptible as this plane was if, indeed, it was terrorism. having said that, if isis is beginning a new phase of smuggling bombs onto planes, obviously we're gonna have to redouble our efforts around the world because we all know that isis reaches out to lone wolves. these are individuals disaffected, angry. they find them on the internet. and if they start encouraging them to make bombs and try to smuggle them onto planes, we have to redouble our efforts. having said that, the good news is, our intelligence agencies are pretty good at detecting these lone wolves because the only way they communicate with isis is over the internet, and

that's the kind of thing we can listen in to. >> puerto rico -- let's talk about that for a second. it's in financial straits, as we know. this week both governor cuomo and new york mayor de blasio were there. rare to see them marching together, and they seem to have spent more time than usual together. what's happening with the u.s. bailout possibilities in puerto rico? >> well, yeah, well, we have legislation. senator blumenthal and i are the sponsors that simply lets puerto rico do what the other states can do, and that is while states can't declare bankruptcy, the localities and entities within the states, whether it's a power authority or something like that, can declare bankruptcy, and that's the best way out because there's a restructuring, there's a way to repay, there's a way to get the puerto rican economy moving again, and at the same time, it doesn't cost the taxpayers anything. it does cost the bondholders things, but they took that risk, and that's the price they'll have to pay. now, our legislation is in the committee.

we have not gotten the chair. obviously republicans are in control and they haven't moved the bill yet, but we are beginning to see some support. we have about 20 sponsors of the bill, and we're gonna keep pushing and pushing and pushing until we do it, because this is the best way out, not only best for puerto rico, but best for the united states and the credit ratings of other states and the u.s. treasury because bankruptcy is not a cost to the taxpayers in america. >> you mentioned about republicans controlling congress, the house, anyway, where you don't serve, but i want to talk about the house because congressman ryan now the speaker of the house, what do you foresee about his tenure there? a lot of people thinking -- and i don't know whether this is a pipe dream or not -- that perhaps there will be more deal-making between the republicans in the house and the obama administration. what do you think? >> well, i've worked with paul ryan on a number of issues, trying to get a highway bill funded by international tax

reform, on the immigration bill, which he was supportive of, and he's a fine man. he is smart, he is hard-working, and he knows he can't always get his way. in other words, when each side has to give a bit so we don't have gridlock, ryan knows that. the problem is, he's got a tiger by the tail. he's got about 50 to 60 members of this freedom caucus, the tea party folks, who don't want to let him do anything. and the question is, how does that push-pull work out? i have some confidence that ryan, after he gets his footing, will begin to rein them in, but it may take awhile and there may be casualties along the way. let's hope that the final chapter in the funding the government for the next two years -- >> and your cousin, amy schumer -- and who knew you were related? >> yes. >> you did, but a lot of us didn't until this whole thing -- talking about a serious issue, and that is gun control. they are out of control. we all know that. nothing has seemed to work. lack of gun control doesn't seem

gun control, frankly, being intellectually honest, doesn't always work, either. what are you proposing? >> well, the best thing to do is a universal background check, not to take away guns from people who have a legitimate right to have them. but to make sure that felons, those who are adjudicated, mentally ill, spousal abusers can't get guns. and the system works except the fact that in some states, it's not enforced at all. 95% of the guns come from the south that are used in crimes in new york city. new york city. if we had a wall and no guns could come or leave new york state, our laws would be quite effective. but unfortunately, that's not what we are. we're a federal republic. and so getting the background check, build on universal background checks, which, incidentally, bill, 85% of all gun owners' support is possible, and i've teamed up with my

schumer, because she has a lot of reach to people who normally don't get involved. >> right. >> and she's getting a whole bunch of movie stars and well-known personalities who have, you know, twitter accounts, facebook pages, that reach millions of people who are normally not involved in politics and trying to get them to e-mail, to call, to tweet their congress members and ask them to change their views. we came close last time. we had 54 votes in the senate. you need 60 'cause, you know, that's the rules in the senate. but if we could get a few more votes, we could get this done and really do a lot of good. i'm hopeful we can. this new approach, not just putting a bill on the floor and letting ito f. bill out there and getting all kinds of personalities, not just politicians, to push for it, particularly those in the movie and tv industries like cous amy, might really succeed. >> senator charles schumer, it's always a pleasure. we could talk for an hour, but

we've run out of time. but we'll have you back on "upclose" some time soon. senator, thank you. >> bill, great to talk to you. keep up the good work. i'll tell you a quick story about amy. she put me in my place. so my cousin, mack schumer, started college. his roommates broke into the room and said, you know, they ran in to see him when he came in, said, "are you related?" he said, "well, of course. my uncle is senator schumer." they said, "who's that? are you related to amy?" so i'm now put in my place. >> there you go. well, modesty's always good. all right, senator schumer, thank you. take care. >> true that. true that. >> i would have said one time, "who's amy schumer?" that was u.s. senator charles schumer from new york. and on that note, that's gonna do it for this edition of "upclose." if you missed any of today's program, you can catch it again on our website, abc7ny. thank you all for watching. i'm bill ritter in for diana williams. and on behalf of all of us here at channel 7, enjoy the rest of