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Every single day, we have hundreds, if not thousands of police officers protecting the lives of not just New Yorkers, but the millions who come to New York City to work and to vacation.

Los Angeles for many years had operated with a police department that was far smaller than other police departments had in areas of comparable or larger size, New York and Chicago being the most obvious examples.

The New York City police department is more representative of the city it serves than most law firms, university faculties, and media companies.

To be a police officer in New York requires so much more than just we, as a citizen, need to walk around. Your job is to put yourself in this place where a horrible event has happened and try to figure it out. That's what you do, day in and day out. You have to have a certain distance to it. You can't let yourself go too far into it.

I think the over-militarization of local police forces is also true of the over-militarization of the federal government, so I don't really run and hide from the comment that I think there are 48 federal agencies that have SWAT teams.

You are not going to put 100,000 police officers on the streets overnight and do the right job. To put them on the streets, to see that they're properly trained; you have to do it in an orderly way over a period of time.

I believe that most police are conscientious and want only to provide safety for us.

Police use of deadly force is rare in America. You wouldn't know that by listening to some of the blowhards out there: the newspaper, the mainstream media, the race hustlers. They make it seem like this stuff happens several times a day. It's rare.

I believe it's important that we ensure that the police have a modern and flexible workforce. I think that's what is necessary, so that they can provide the public with the service that they want.

New York cops are very specific in terms of the way they talk and the way they handle themselves.