FBI’s Efforts to Keep Dangerous Criminals Off the Streets

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Well, with us today is James Barnicle, and he’s the assistant director in charge of the FBI office in New York, and it’s the largest FBI office in the country, or one of the largest. And James Barnicle, welcome to New York, and tell us what you’ve been doing before this.

0:23 Speaker 2 Well, thank you, John. Thanks for hosting us today, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. As you know, I’ve been in this role since January of this year, and prior to that, I was the head of our office down in Charlotte, North Carolina.

0:39 Speaker 1 Well, I mean, Charlotte, North Carolina and New York, you’re in the major leagues, I guess. And tell us some of the experiences that you’ve experienced and things that the FBI office is watching in New York. Because I guess New York has always been the target for the last 20, 30 years. We just celebrated 25 years of 9-11. And.

1:04 How do you feel? Should New Yorkers feel safe right now? Is everything under control?

1:12 Speaker 2 Yeah, look, everything is under control. And we have great people working very hard to keep this city and this country safe. Let’s talk about some of the things we’ve seen. Our national statistics on violent crime, we’ve seen the largest year-to-year decrease in violent crime rates. since the FBI started estimating crime rates in 1936. We have a nearly 20%

1:41 drop in the murder rate across the United States, and we’re seeing similar decreases in New York City. In the last few weeks, we and all of our FBI offices participated in an operation we called Summer Heat 2.0, which was a four-month violent crime initiative that resulting in 8,900 arrests across the United States and this seizure of over

2:08 680 kilograms of fentanyl, which is just a huge amount. That’s enough fentanyl that could kill millions of people. But here in New York. We focused on violent crime as well. We executed federal warrants on violent criminals and fugitives. We were dismantling violent gangs and transnational criminal organizations, and we rescued children. In New York alone, in the last few

2:35 months on violent crime, we made 300 arrests as part of Operation Summer Heat. Just this week, We indicted, through the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney’s Office, Jamie McDonald, a great partner of ours, we indicted eight members of a gang in Newburgh, New York, for distributing crack cocaine in a brazen open-air drug market. And we worked with

2:58 our local and state partners to bring that drug market down. Additionally, a leader of the 9D gang in Brooklyn was sentenced to life in prison. for orchestrating the murder of a federal witness back in 2020. And then two weeks ago, out on Long Island, we worked with our state and local partners from the New York City Police Department, the

3:22 Nassau Police Department, the Suffolk Police Department, and we located missing children from Queens, Nassau, Suffolk County. Over 30 kids were located in that joint operation. So really good results here in New York City as well as nationally.

3:40 Speaker 1 Understood. Is there any particular crimes that have a priority? And I remember when some of your predecessors were at the FBI, and I’ve talked to the U.S. attorney, Jamie McDonald, and we’ve talked to Jay Clayton, who was in charge in New York before. Yeah. They were looking for crimes that the local prosecutors did not prosecute and that these

4:17 people committed federal crimes that they want to take the people off the streets.

4:23 Speaker 2 Yeah, no, that’s right. I mean, look, we see nationally and we see it in New York, a small percentage of the population commit quite a few crimes. And a lot of those folks are recidivist defenders, meaning they get arrested, they get convicted, and then they go and they get out of jail and they go commit other crimes. So

4:41 we’re looking at how can we target the most violent offenders that are often former felons, formerly convicted as felons, And now they’re out there committing brazen crimes and they’re carrying a firearm. And that is something there is a prohibition of felons for carrying a firearm. So we can look at felon in possession. We look at gang activity,

5:04 the violent gang activity, and we look at how can we identify those worst of the worst offenders. We target those criminal activities, and we try to federalize the cases where, like, the federal prosecutors are great, the federal judge and the federal court system is very good, and our defendants in the federal system go to jail for a long time.

5:25 And in many states and many cities, we have a prosecution problem or we have a court problem where people aren’t sentenced for very long, and therefore they’re back on the street committing more crimes. When we take things federally, we take those people off the street. We put them in jail. That is protecting the American public. That is

5:46 protecting New Yorkers from the bad guys.

5:50 Speaker 1 Understood. Now, that’s a priority because, you know, and I’ve discussed it with the president. I’ve discussed it with Jay Clayton, and I’ve discussed it with everybody. The fact is, the getting rid of the, I guess, the criminals, the bad criminals that came into our country over the last four or five years. What is the pulse of that situation?

6:17 Do you think we have a majority of them? Do you think we got rid of 50 percent of them, 60 percent of them, 70 percent? Do you have any pulse of the situation?

6:29 Speaker 2 I can tell you that our number of cases are going up. Our number of agents that are working these matters has increased. And our task force officers, so we’ve brought in, since I’ve been in this role, we’ve increased the number of task force officers, that is state, local, law enforcement officers, police officers that come and join our

6:50 Safe Streets Task Force, the FBI’s Violent Crimes Task Force, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, We’ve increased our TFO count by 84% since I’ve been here. And so we’re getting that cooperation from state and locals because they see the impact in their communities when we get bad guys off the street. And I could tell you... How many

7:16 fewer bad guys are off the street? Other than we can give you the numbers, we can tell you that we’ve arrested 89. Well, in the last year as an FBI, it’s 53,969 violent crime arrests, which I guess since the Trump administration came into office. So we know there’s nearly 54,000 violent criminals. off the streets of the United States. But

7:40 there are still a lot of work to be done. And John, you asked about the priorities. Violent crime. We want people to feel safe to be able to walk down the street to go to a bodega with their families and feel good about it. We also... want to make sure that people don’t lose their money to fraud.

8:01 And so we’ve created a top 10 list, or a most wanted fraudsters list, and we’ve arrested six of those offenders in the last few months. And those six offenders contributed losses of over $ 2 billion. On the violent crime side, we have captured nationally 10 of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives.

8:25 And so we’re making that impact nationally, results on the back end as crime is going down. But our prioritization is constantly shifting. This FBI right now has the flexibility to shift the resources to the crime problems we have in this area. We have gang problems in this area.

8:44 We have violent crimes in this area. We have... to prevent a terrorist attack on the greatest city in the world and so we have resources working that violation we we also have spies in this area and we have we have foreign adversaries we have cyber actors trying to get the intellectual property of american businesses that are on

9:08 the forefront of creating new technologies and american ingenuity And so we’re protecting our business and American interests as well. And so what I’m telling you is we’ve got a lot of priorities. We have the ability to flex our manpower to address the things that concern us most in New York.

9:27 Speaker 1 Well, James Barnicle, assistant director in charge of the FBI office in New York, one of the largest offices in the country. Thank you for bringing all New Yorkers up to date. Anything else you want to tell them before we hang up this Sunday morning?

9:44 Speaker 2 If they see something, say something. Don’t be afraid to call 911 if you’re in an emergency situation. Feel free to report crimes to the FBI as well. Is there a number for the FBI?

9:56 Speaker 1 1-800-CALL. 1-800-CALL-FBI and 911 for the, I guess, the police department and NYPD. Well, thank you so much for coming on this Sunday morning. And we look to continue our conversations and how we keep New York even safer.

10:18 Speaker 2 Thanks, John. And just remember, we can’t do it without the partnerships of the NYPD, the New York State Police and all the surrounding counties. So thank you very much for your time today.

10:30 Speaker 1 God bless and God bless America. Thank you so much. Thanks, John.