Testing testing. Sounds good. Yep. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's public safety briefing led by Chief of Operations for the Office of Public Safety, Justin Meyers. Following our last speaker, we will take a few questions from the media, followed by some questions that have been submitted by the public ahead of today's briefing. I would now like to turn it over to Chief Meyers. Welcome to our weekly public safety briefing here in the City of New York. I'm joined here today by a number of my colleagues from various different public safety agencies across the New York City portfolio. We're going to be talking about a number of important issues and major focuses of Mayor Eric Adams Administration when it comes to public safety. Today we're joined by NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Collaborative Policing, Chauncey Parker. The Deputy Commissioner actually holds two hats here in the City of New York. He is both the Deputy Commissioner for the NYPD, but he is also the director of a federal program called the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Task Force, otherwise known as HIDA, for the New York, New Jersey region. We're going to be talking to us about a number of different collaborative approaches that both HIDA and the NYPD is taking to make New York City safe against a number of different public safety challenges from fentanyl and drug trafficking to guns and illegal weapons on our streets. We're also joined by the Department of Environmental Protection Deputy Commissioner for Police and Security, John Cosgrove, who will be providing us with a deeper look at the work of the DEP in protecting our water supply here in the City of New York, and give us an inside look at some of the pretty cool, frankly, tools and technologies they're using to make sure that the 10 million folks that live, work, and visit New York City every day have the best drinking water in the country. And then we're joined by our Chief of Transit for the NYPD, Chief Michael Kemper and Sergeant Patrick Kwan, who are going to be giving us some safety tips and important information for those of us who use the subway system here in the city every day. Before we get into each of those topics, I wanted to give a brief update to the folks who join us every week on crime stats. As I think a lot of people know, oftentimes in the summertime, crime can rise in the city and really across the country. It's the summertime, folks are out more, you can have more incidences. But because of the major focus that the Mayor, Mayor Eric Adams has on policing and public safety and the incredible hard work of the men and women of the NYPD, we're actually seeing a significant reduction in crime in most of the index crime categories here in New York throughout this summer. So the NYPD released crime statistics for the month of July yesterday, and overall crime was driven down by 5.7% in July 2023 compared to July 2022. We saw a drop in five of the seven index crime categories in July, including a 35.3% reduction in homicides, a 17.3% drop in rape, and a 13.6% decline in robbery, as well as a 17.6% decline in burglary. So at a time where historically crime rises in the summertime, we're actually seeing a significant decrease year to date compared to last year's numbers. Hate crimes in the city also declined by approximately 8% compared to last year, and felony assaults have essentially remained stagnant with a 0.1% increase. One area that the city and really the nation is struggling with is grand larceny of an automobile. So we've seen an uptick in auto thefts in specific, in particular neighborhoods throughout the city, and it's also a target of certain vehicles. So you may have heard of some TikTok challenges that are out there and other social media events that are teaching people how to essentially be able to, with relative ease, steal certain models of kios and hondes. And the NYPD, as well as the mayor, have taken a very significant approach at building a comprehensive, multi-pronged approach to education because the first and biggest thing to deter auto crime is educating folks, right? Most crime when it comes to grand larceny of an auto is going to be a crime of opportunity.  And so we're rolling out a comprehensive approach to addressing that challenge that we're seeing here in the city. And I think we're pretty cautiously optimistic that we'll start to see a decline in that effort in those numbers given those efforts over the coming months. In the city's subways, major crime has decreased 9.9% in July, reflecting the NYPD and Chief Kemper and his team's ongoing work to improve the overall public safety landscape and to enhance the vital operation of the city's public transit system. And we'll come back for a little bit more detail on the work we're doing down in the subway in a little bit with Chief Kemper. But it's clear that we're moving in the right direction and continuing to move in the right direction. Mayor Eric Adams, when he was elected last year, made a firm commitment to the City of New York that public safety was going to be first and foremost. We have seen significant movement in that front, and I think July's crime stat numbers here in the City of New York really reflect that and reflect the fact that the city is not only moving in the right direction, but that it maintains its status as the safest large city in America. So the first person that we have joining us here today, as I mentioned before, is NYPD Deputy Commissioner Chauncey Parker. I mentioned before he holds two roles here in this city. He is both the Deputy Commissioner for Collaborative Policing and the NYPD, which is a really important role that is about fostering relationships, both in terms of law enforcement, community relationships, and all stakeholders here in the City of New York. Because at the end of the day, to really move the needle significantly on some of the public safety challenges of our time, we need to be working together. It has to be a partnership. All stakeholders have to come to the table, and Deputy Commissioner Parker really leads that effort from the NYPD perspective. He also holds an additional role as the Director of HIDA, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area of New York and New Jersey. So it's a federal program that focuses in New York and New Jersey and pulls together federal and local law enforcement partners into one area, one office space, where we can be working together on major trafficking issues that we're seeing in our region. So HIDA is a federally funded program that was created to invest in public safety and public health partnerships, and was designed to reduce drug abuse and its consequences. And Director Parker has been able to build off of that core mission and really implement some innovative ways to leverage those relationships and the HIDA program to address a number of different public safety challenges that the city and the region is facing, including gun crime. So the group now also does a lot of great work on that front in the New York City Metro area, which is of course a top priority for the mayor. And I just want to really briefly, because it's Commissioner Parker's first time with the public safety briefing, and this is really one of my favorite parts of what we do at the public safety briefing. It's kind of pull back the veil of government and get an opportunity to introduce to the public so many folks who work tirelessly every day for years and even decades to make this city the safest large city in America. Commissioner Parker has a 35 year career in criminal justice. He served as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and as a federal prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. He was also formerly the director of criminal justice for the state of New York, where he oversaw all state criminal justice agencies. And of course now he is the deputy police commissioner for the NYPD. So Commissioner Parker is uniquely qualified to oversee the two areas that he does both at the NYPD and HIDA. And I'm really excited to give him an opportunity to share with us a little bit more detail about the work you're doing at HIDA and how important it is to the impact on public safety here in the city. Thank you so much, Justin. My work at HIDA and my work with the NYPD are both based on the same, really the mayor's vision of the importance of partnership of however we have to get everybody from all corners of government or corners of the community to work together to achieve a common north star. And HIDA, as you said, HIDA is a federal grant. It invests in law enforcement partnerships to build safe and healthy communities. Those are the north stars for that program and everything we do in that program at the center of it is the NYPD and all our law enforcement partners. Some of the kind of investments that we're involved in, we invest in drug task forces, for example, the task force that was the lead on the Chapo Guzman-Sinaloa cartel case. So major international drug trafficking investigations, money laundering investigations, fugitive task force investigations, getting America's most wanted. We also invest in a partnership with public health and 20 other partners as part of a city initiative called RxSTAT. And that's getting all our public health and public safety partners to work together to try to reduce drug overdoses and save lives. And it's all about partnership. We also are very much involved in prevention, which is a lot of it is creating the opportunity for young people in the most vulnerable communities is investing in programs. We've invested asset forfeiture money that we take from drug dealers that cause so much harm in the community is then investing that into the community. So with that funding, we've been able to renovate 15 basketball courts in public housing over the last couple of years. We're building an indoor baseball center. We are a big investor in the Saturday Lights program, which the mayor has it started with one gym is now 140 gyms across the city every single Saturday night. There's a place for kids to play through the four corners of New York City. So it's a lot of different partnerships, but always focused on that. Keep us safe. Keep us healthy. I think one of the most important initiatives that we've we invest in that we partner on is called the gun violence strategies partnership with the GVSP. And that was we just celebrated our two year anniversary. And that is 20 plus agencies, federal, state, local law enforcement agencies who meet every single morning at Haida at 10 o'clock in the morning every single morning over 500 days in a row. Focus laser focus is the mayor has told us laser focus on the very, very small number of people who shoot people in New York City and make sure that we're building the strongest cases possible. This is a meeting that was has been hosted. The mayor has the president United States has been to this meeting and every other sort of major leader from there has seen this because it's really a model for the country of the power of partnership federal, state, local law enforcement locking arms toward a common goal. It's on that platform that we're going to be working also to implement the mayor's vision with the gun violence prevention task force, which is what can we do to make sure that young people never ever ever get to that table. What can we do to prevent crime in the first place so it's a great it's all about partnership it's all about working together and it's all about being laser focused on the goal. It's amazing and I've had the privilege of joining you for some of those meetings and it really is an amazing place you know historically law enforcement you know decades ago was not always an industry that was the best at collaborating. But when you're when you're at Haida and you you're in that room for these meetings. It's really incredible to see all of the different agencies that are represented, whether it's federal agencies, New Jersey, local law enforcement, New York State, New York City, local law enforcement, the district attorneys and prosecutors and you're able to sit there with those teams and walk through a particular crime that may have happened in New York and then have someone in New Jersey or a prosecutor raise their hand and say actually we have another case with that we have those details that you may be missing in this case to solve that murder and you're able to you're able to move the needle on multiple cases on significant impact players in the criminal space pretty dramatically. Can you share with us just a little bit about maybe how that kind of plays out on a day to day basis. Well, the way we're on a day to day basis we have a team of detectives who come to work at five o'clock in the morning, and they review the cases over the last 24 hours, and they are laser focused on the people who have a history of gun violence who have now been arrested for a gun felony. So it's a very narrow it's maybe two, two people three people a day but it's a very, very narrow group to really focus on that. And then over the over the next couple hours they they review those cases we send it out to our partners which include all the district attorneys probation parole ATF our federal partners everybody across the criminal justice team they review it and then we meet at 10 o'clock everybody compares their notes and you can see that this person who is out on a gunpoint robbery in the Bronx just got arrested for a robbery in Lower Manhattan. And so those two offices those two partners the Manhattan and Bronx they talk to each other share their notes also turns out that the that the person with the gun is on social media waving a gun around and there's and there's evidence that could be there turns out also that the last time he was in Rikers Island he stabbed somebody in the throat or something you know so there's evidence that a judge really may want to know about that particular case could be that they're on probation and probation would want to know and be able to get the information. It's all about pieces of the puzzle coming to one central place. I think what holds it together because it's remarkable over 500 days in a row. I don't know any meeting that 500 days in a row that people come to that meeting 20 different agencies and nobody has to be there. There's no grant that funds this. It's just the power of partnership that brings people together. But I think it's also the power of the mayor's vision when he sets a North Star as he did when he when he took office and he didn't say let's reduce gun violence. The mayor said we're going to end gun violence. There's nothing natural or inevitable about gun violence is we're going to end gun violence. That's a North Star wherever you are in law enforcement you share that North Star if you can just create the platform to bring people together. And I think that model is what he's doing in all sorts of other areas of city government is the is seeing having people see that they share that North Star and the power of working together how much stronger we are when we work side by side. No doubt. And the future of public safety is really about being precision precision law enforcement precision policing really finding people who are driving violent crime who are major traffickers and being able to take those folks off the street and shut down their operations. Tell us a little bit about how important it is to have strong working relationships with federal and state law enforcement agencies all at the same table as local law enforcement and how that helps you as a deputy police commissioner continue to to drive crime down and and really move the needle in a positive direction. How does that partnership impact. Well I think it's just everybody has something to add and they have value they have a piece of the puzzle or they have tools in their toolbox so to speak. I'll talk about one ATF. So ATF has a vital they you know with guns we want to trace the gun to figure out where the gun and illegal gun came from house was it a long time to crime in other words when was it purchased and when did it get to the streets of New York were particularly focused on short times to crime if someone bought the gun a relatively short period of time was a part of a multiple sale. So they they're a partner that has that kind of information about the trace. I think in particular what ATF has as an example of one just one federal agency is what is called Niven information is that when somebody shoots a semi automatic when they shoot a gun the the ballistics from that gun or as unique as a fingerprint as unique as DNA and the ballistics from that spent shell casing that ends up at a crime scene. If you could find the gun you can match the ballistics to that that particular gun. So now fast forward that we have a case this morning where somebody gets arrested with a gun. Turns out that that gun there spent shell case there were six other shootings that that gun was involved in because we know this because we have the gun that was we have the spent shell casings from six other shootings over the last year. And now we have the gun that the person who gets caught with the lab test it and the spent shell casing comes out. They test the ballistics from that to the spent shell casings. You know that that's not just any gun. That's a gun that's connected to six shootings and this person had that gun.  But that federal agency partner sits at the table every day actually works side by side in the NYPD intelligence center day and night. So it's that that's just one example. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you so much for being here commissioner. I really appreciate it and thank you for your service to the city. As I said it before 35 years of service to the city and to the state of New York. You're someone who is truly a legend in the public safety space has an unbelievable reputation have done so much for the city and the state of New York over the course of your career. I just wanted to say thank you for being here today. Thank you. So next up we have our deputy commissioner for police and security for the DEP police. That's the department of environmental protection. John Cosgrove is the deputy commissioner. Commissioner Cosgrove is also a former deputy chief with the NYPD and he's now tasked with working with the environmental protection office. The environmental protection agency oversees and protects New York City's water supply. And I think it's a really interesting thing. You know when we were talking about you know who to have on to the briefing today and talk about you know the DEP or water supply may not be on the forefront of everyone's mind when it comes to public safety. But the reality is is that clean water supply in a city like ours particularly where our water supply comes from specific areas. The safety and security of those water supplies is absolutely critical. Right. There's there's no room for error. We have to have clean drinking water. We have to have water supply for for 10 million plus people on a daily basis. So it's just it's an enormous operation and it actually takes place mostly outside of the city in in lands that the city owns in upstate New York where we generate our water supply and bring it down here to the city. So the environmental protection agency helps protect those water supplies and the and as well as our environment by reducing air and noise and hazardous materials and pollution here in the city. Many of us take for granted that we have the safest best tasting drinking water in the country. But there is a whole lot that goes on behind the scenes to make sure that when we turn on our taps here in the city of New York. We're getting high quality drinking water and the tools that the DEP uses to maintain a safe water supply have changed to incorporate new technology that just as we have across the entire public safety arena made investments into public safety. So is the DEP they really are taking a 21st century approach to making sure our water supply is is protected on a daily basis. And so you may not have woken up this morning thinking that the DEP is public safety and is something that you were interested in. But I would remind you that without the clean drinking water that we have here in the city of New York, we wouldn't have bagels and pizza. So Deputy Commissioner John Cosgrove, thank you so much for being here at the briefing and tell us a bit about how you guys do this monumental task of protecting the drinking water for the city. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is John Cosgrove. I'm a deputy commissioner for police and infrastructure security at the Department of Environmental Protection. New York City's water supply system traces its origins to the original Dutch settlements hundreds of years ago and to a small pond in Lower Manhattan, just a few blocks north of here that provided inadequate consumption for human consumption and even basic fire suppression. Over the years, starting in 1845, the Croton water system was developed and developed to deliver better drinking water into the city, which was then at that time Manhattan. Right around the turn of the century in 1900, the predecessor to the DEP began constructing the Catskill Aqueduct, developing a series of reservoirs further up in a higher elevation, creating larger and newer water supply for the city. Over the ensuing century, that water supply system has evolved into an engineering marvel that provides New York City with one billion gallons of high quality drinking water each and every day from a watershed that spans an area the size of the state of Delaware, essentially north and west of the city. Our coverage area is vast. It's an unrivaled system that stretches 125 miles north and west from City Hall and runs through eight suburban and upstate counties. The men and women of the DEP police department have been maintaining the security of New York City's water supply and its infrastructure since before the First World War. I think we have a slide, the way in which we protect the 2000 square mile watershed and the technology we use to do it has evolved just the same as we have evolved. During World War I, police were known as aqueduct patrolmen and they rode on horseback for hours just along a portion of the Catskill Aqueduct to ensure its integrity against sabotage. Today, the DEP police aviation unit uses state-of-the-art technology that can survey the entire length of an aqueduct in just one day. That one billion gallons of water per day that we spoke about, it comes from 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes that collect our drinking water through the Delaware and Hudson valleys. The geographic area surrounding these reservoirs comprise what we call the watershed. Many rivers, creeks and streams within the watershed flow into these reservoirs. Through some brilliant engineering that connects these reservoirs and lakes are connected and deliver water through a series of aqueducts that go to a series of treatment facilities and eventually down into the city. At these treatment facilities, the water is tested, treated, retested, stored and eventually distributed throughout the city. We do this using multiple redundant control centers, which not only facilitate the efficient delivery of the world's finest drinking water, but we also ensure a reliance system for continuity of operations and our operational technology for generations to come. The DEP utilizes a robust combination of operation, laboratory and information technology to ensure the safety and quality of New York City's drinking waters from the reservoirs to your faucet. We perform water quality tests upstate in the reservoirs on its way to the treatment facilities, at the treatment facility, when it departs the treatment facilities, when it gets stored and even through its distribution system here in the city. We have nearly 100 water sampling stations throughout the city where we do these water quality tests. Following this September 11th attacks, the security profile of the city's water supply infrastructure was raised significantly and remains at an elevated level today. In the years immediately following the attacks, the city and federal government have invested billions of dollars to ensure the safety and resiliency of our pristine water supply. By law, the city is compelled to allow access to some portions of our reservoirs and adjacent lands upstate in the watershed for recreational use, but we monitor the supply closely. Public access permits are required for certain activities, including fishing and kayaking on the reservoirs, and the DEP enforcement division enforces trespassing regulations through a combination of helicopter, marine and shoreline vehicle patrols. The DEP police have been using drones for over the last five years, and we have several FAA certified drone operators. Thanks to the recent technology initiative from the mayor's office, in fiscal year 2024, we have a plan in place to train an additional 15% of our uniform staff for FAA certification, and to increase our fleet of drones to enable each DEP precinct, of which there are seven, to have a drone first responder for our areas that are difficult to reach by foot. This will enhance our shoreline patrols because we can deploy a drone across the water from shoreline to shoreline, which we cannot do with a vehicle, nor can we circumnavigate a reservoir by vehicle as well. Effectively, one officer can patrol the entire shoreline from one location. This will provide a more efficient use of resources, reduce vehicle emissions, improve on-water safety, and protect against unwanted material getting in the reservoirs. We are continually looking for ways to integrate artificial intelligence in the use of drones and robots, including robot canines, into our existing network of cameras and sensors. Many of these critical infrastructure facilities where we treat and store the water before distribution are not open to the public. They are hardened facilities with traditional physical measures in place to deter, detect, and delay any unwanted intrusions. Access-controlled entrances are supported in most cases by crash-rated vehicle barriers and crash-rated cable fencing, perimeter detection systems, and surveillance cameras. Thanks to Mayor Adams' emphasis on cutting-edge technology, for fiscal year 2024, we will be piloting the use of robots at one or more of these facilities to augment our uniform patrol services there and our perimeter defenses. Naturally, no discussion regarding security of this critical infrastructure would be complete without touching upon the largest category of attack vector, cybersecurity. The DEP has a robust Bureau of Information Technology led by some of the most knowledgeable IT experts in the city government. Our profile on cybersecurity is enhanced through deep cooperative relationships, preparation, and readiness exercises with the FBI, the New York City Office of Technology and Innovation, the Homeland Security, Joint Terrorist Task Force, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of DHS. We continue to exceed all federal standards in securing our systems and infrastructure. Under Mayor Adams' leadership, the DEP police and the measures we used will continue evolving with the water supply itself to help ensure every New Yorker has safe and secure access to high-quality water for generations to come. Thank you, Justin. Thank you, Chief Commissioner. Excuse me. I really appreciate you coming out. So I really only have one question. Like, what is it about the water that makes the bagels so good? I've never made a bagel in my life, but I've eaten plenty. So I'm not quite sure what the, you know... Whatever you're putting in the drinking water, it's working. Thank you. Finally today, I'm joined by the NYPD's Chief of Transit, Chief Michael Kemper, and Sergeant Patrick Kwan, who we're here to talk about subway safety. Chief Kemper has been a member of the NYPD for 32 years, has held more positions with the NYPD leadership positions than I can count, and Sergeant Kwan is in charge of community affairs, education, community outreach for transit. This is a new team, a new leadership team that's come into transit earlier this year and has really done a tremendous job at continuing to drive crime down in our subway systems dramatically. And so, before I turn it over to Chief Kemper and Sergeant Kwan, I want to take a little bit of time to give folks an understanding of kind of the current state of crime in our subway system. You know, we often talk about public safety being two things. Public safety is actually making people safer by driving down crime, but public safety is also making people feel safer. Because if you don't feel safe in your city, in your subway system, in your community, it almost doesn't matter what the reality is in terms of crime statistics or statistical probability. And I think a big part of people feeling safer in the city of New York is to really understand the facts and context of what crime stats mean and how likely of a probability there is for an individual to become a victim of a crime. And that isn't to downplay any crime, right? A single crime, a single person becoming a victim or having to suffer an event is one too many. And it's why the city spends an enormous amount of resources every single year focused on specific crime areas to help drive down crime in our communities and make everyone as safe as possible in this city. And as I mentioned earlier, the city's subways major crimes have decreased 9.9% in July. And that's, and they're down approximately 5% year to date compared to 2022. So we often point to transit crime statistics as a metric of how safe our subway and buses are. But it's, as I just said, it's really important to put those things in context. So here in the city of New York, we have the largest subway system in North America, the only subway system on planet Earth that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. So the transit unit in the NYPD is as an enormous task and unlike really any other law enforcement agency in the Western world who's tasked with protecting a transit system. And the work they're doing is really moving the needle. And I think, as I said, it's important to put it into context, how big our system really is. So in 2023, the average ridership for New York City's subways and our bus system, so our public transportation system is 4.3 million rides every single day. So that's close to a billion individual public transit rides so far just this year, a billion and a half across our subway and bus systems in this city every single year. Year to date, there have been 1,262 reported crimes in our transit system, so in our subway system, right? So that's roughly one incident for every 730,000 rides.  In your lifetime, you have a one in 15,000 chance of being struck by lightning, right? So the statistical probability of becoming a victim of crime in the New York City subway system remains incredibly low. And again, that isn't to diminish the 1,262 people who were a victim of crime. And it's why Chief Kemper and his team worked diligently every single day and every single night, 24-7-365, to continue to make our subway systems the safest systems in North America. And so with that, I want to introduce Chief Kemper. Thank you so much for being here for the public safety briefing. Looking forward to hearing from you and from Sergeant Kwan on some subway safety tips that folks can keep in the back of their mind as they're riding our trains. Thank you, sir. Before I pass it off to Sergeant Kwan, who has a quick PowerPoint presentation, I just want to recognize and thank John Cosgrove and his team at the DEP for making sure we have bagels and pizza. Two of my favorite foods, so I can't thank you enough. The DEP is very proud of the water they produce into the city, and I'm sure they're going to be delighted to hear that. We'll bring that back. Thank you. Sergeant Kwan. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Chief Myers. So this presentation that you're about to see was born out of the city's recovery and rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. We heard from our employees returning workers, they were citing public safety as a major hurdle to them going back to in-office work. And so we heard that and we, the NYPD saw fit to conduct outreach to arm our riders with some really salient points, some safety tips that could really better their commute. And so what you've seen, what you're about to see right here has been broadcasted and presented at multiple corporate venues at council offices throughout the city of New York. Next slide, please. And there you have it. There's the New York City subway map. We've come a long way over a century ago. The first train run roared north from just beneath our feet here in Old City Hall. And we have now grown to a network of 472 stations, upwards of 650 miles of track. And like Chief Myers said, upwards of 4 million riders per day in the subway system alone. Now I would bet that most, almost every New Yorker would recognize the subway map. And the aim of today's presentation is to point out some of the things that have been hiding in plain sight that could really better your commute. Next slide, thank you. So hiding in plain sight on that very subway map is a little blue shield icon. And that icon indicates to a person who's looking at that map where a police facility is located inside the New York City subway system. Now we have 12 transit district facilities that are scattered throughout the city. They range from places in Columbus Circle, which are high traffic areas, Union Square, Yankee Stadium, and to far-fung places like Briwood and Queens. Now when you're in that subway station, you're going to see signs and wave points, like that picture on the right. And that's going to point you and direct you to exactly where that police facility is located inside that subway station. Next. So now we're on street level. Now here we are outside a typical subway entrance, and we have these color-coded globes. We have a green globe and a red globe. Now, these are not Christmas decorations. These globes are indicators to our riders. Again, part of the landscape you might have never understood exactly what they meant, but it's an incredible importance to you as a rider. A green globe indicates to a rider that that particular entryway is in fact an entryway. When you make your way down the steps in that particular picture right here that you're looking at, you're going to encounter a station agent inside a booth clerk or a metro car vending machine or turnstiles or one of those revolving entrances. If you make your way down that staircase with a red globe, you're going to encounter a non-entry gate. You're only going to see an emergency exit gate that can only be opened from the inside out. So again, green means go, red means go. Moving on to booth numbers. Now, booth numbers, again, part of the landscape, incredibly valuable to us in the first responder community. Whenever there is a call for police, fire and EMS, we are dispatched to the station and zeroed in via the booth number. Now, by no means are we asking New Yorkers to memorize every single booth number and commit it to memory. But let's just say you are in your commute and you come across a person in need of a medical assistance and you're in Penn Station, a huge subway complex with multiple entrances and exits and booths. If you can just provide that booth number to the 911 operator, that will really help us zero in exactly where we need those services. Moving on to metro car vending machines. Now, with the advent of the OmniTap system, these metro car vending machines will soon be relics. They might soon become museum pieces. But in the meantime, they're still operational. And what we see at these metro car vending machines is these are places where we have New Yorkers presenting their valuables, their possessions. These are places where you open your purse, your wallets, and it adds to your vulnerability there. And so what we've seen is sometimes we have folks that are opportunistic thieves, try to take advantage of a person who might be unfamiliar with the system, particularly visitors and offer unsolicited help.  So again, something to keep in mind. I mentioned the OmniTap system and there it is. It's been fully integrated into the subway and the bus system. Now it offers payments via a RFID equipped credit card, debit card, a smart phone. And I really want to point out the wearable, the smart watch. Again, these are turnstiles and like the chief will mention in a little bit, these are incredibly valuable points of entry and gateways into the subway system. And here, the one tip I would have you take away is that if you can enter via one of those wearables, that is a payment system that is number one adhere to your body. It's not something that you have to present, fumble around in your pocket for. It's a great option. Okay, so in that circle is a conductor's zebra stripes. The zebra stripes is indicated of where the conductor will be positioned when the train pulls into the station. So for a commuter that feels a bit more comfortable riding in the train car with the conductor. That's a great place to position yourself. Additionally, it's also the place where most of our police officers deployed along the platform. They typically deploy at that conductor station to liaise with the conductor. So it's a great place to find a police officer should you need one. Let's talk about connectivity. The MTA has invested heavily in these recent years in standing up Wi-Fi and cell service within our subway system. So if there's ever a need for police service, if there's ever a need for any type of police service, do call us. We hear this a lot. People, they hesitate to see whether they should call 911. They don't know if this particular thing that they're observing merits police services or fire services. Just call us anyway. Let our 911 operas triage exactly what you're seeing so we can get there and respond. Same for text 911. It's a great way to notify us surreptitiously just through a text without actually getting on the phone. A continuation of the connectivity we have on the picture on the left, a station help point on the picture on the right, a on-train intercom. These are great ways to get in touch with MTA staff and MTA crew. If you depress any of those buttons, you will get either a person at the rail control center where we have fire and police officers standing by 24-7. And the picture on the right, the on-train intercom will connect you with the on-train conductor. Great tools. I want to point out two things. We get asked this a lot. Is there a particular part of the train car that is safer, less safe? I just want to just take a look at this photo right here. We have a person that is buried in their phone, headphones on, full audio immersion. Now listen, I enjoy my movies and my podcasts as much as the next person. But a lot can be said about just being aware of your surroundings. And so I know the noise cancellation options on your AirPods is a great way to drown out the world. But maybe just dial it down a little bit, be aware of your surroundings. I don't think this person realized there was a police officer and a 70-pound police dog next to him for about 15 minutes until he looked up. Next. Okay, we're going to end with this. Dropped items. Dropped items. Now, we've sadly seen tragedy strike with people jumping onto the track bed to retrieve dropped items.  We will retrieve it. There's an MCA team that is on call 24-7 and they will come out to pick whatever you dropped. Now, if it's a slice of pepperoni, leave that to the pizza rats and just cut your losses there. But if it's anything else like a cell phone or an AirPods, we'll be there in 15, 30 minutes tops. Again, just a little bit of timing. I know New Yorkers want to be on the go, but it's not worth your life. I want to leave with this. Now, I know the Chief is going to touch upon this as well and Chief Myers touched upon this as well earlier. The investment by this administration in subway safety is unprecedented. I have about 10 years within the Transit Bureau and I've never seen such commitment to the safety of the Mass Transit Network. And I thank you for your time, sir. Thank you, Chief Keper. Yep, if I may just, you know, write to that, the commitment to public safety in the subway system. Look, it's been said before. We say it all the time. It's the truth. Mayor Adams and his entire administration has been crystal clear from before the day he was sworn in. Public safety was going to be his top priority. And public safety in the subway system, it certainly includes public safety in the subway system. You know, when looking back last year in 2022, the first 10 months of the year, we were spiking in crime a little over 40% in the subway system. And people were concerned, and rightfully so, as were we. And that's when the mayor, you know, working alongside with our state partners, came up with the COPS camera and care program tremendous investment into public safety in the subway system. And, you know, between the subway safety plan, the COPS cameras care program, which was launched in October of 2022. Again, historic investments into public safety were made, which included the increased deployment of upwards of 1200 cops in uniform a day into the subway system to secure it. And those investments, and to be quite frank, the hard work of the men and women in the NYPD are COPS. It really, really paid dividends because crime not only stabilized, but crime began reducing and going down steadily since. So from where we were in the first 10 months of 2022, up 40%. You know, right now, for the year, we're down 5.1% in crime in the subway system. 9.9% alone in July versus last July. But, you know, looking at that bigger picture, the 5.1% for the first seven plus months of the year, that represents upwards of 70 less major crime victims alone in the subway system versus just last year. A lot of questions come my way about, you're not comparing to pre-COVID. Well, I'm going to compare it to pre-COVID right now. And listen clearly, crime is down over 6% this year versus 2019 in the subway system. Crime is down over 6% versus 2018 in the subway system. Matter of fact, when looking at the first seven months of this year and comparing it to historic numbers, this is only three years that have lower crime numbers in recorded history, when not comparing versus the COVID year, which is unfair, but three years only in recorded history in the subway system. Again, this is all part of a plan hatched by our mayor, by his administration, and the hard work of the men and women of the NYPD, the results speak for themselves. Again, and we can't do this alone. Certainly our partners at the MTA and certainly our ridership, so supportive. They deserve to take a journey in the subway system, not only without being afraid of becoming a crime victim, but free from fear also. And that's what we work very, very, very hard on. So before I pass along, I just want to thank our partners in our efforts, and certainly thank this administration for not only the support with the increased personnel, but just really the verbal support which goes a long way to our cops, who again, each and every day come to work with really one goal, is to prevent crime and help people. Thank you. Thank you, Chief Kemper. And thank you to the entire NYPD Transit Bureau. It is a difficult and challenging job to be in NYPD Transit. And certainly when we came into office last year, when Mayor Eric Adams took office in January of last year, the transit system was in a difficult position. But thanks to the hard work of your team and others, certainly not a mission accomplished moment, but incredible work to drive crime back down to historically low levels and return New Yorkers a subway system where they can feel safe and comfortable riding on a daily basis. So excellent work. Really appreciate the effort, Chief, and looking forward to see what you and your team's next act is. Yeah, and I think you just touched on something important. And you know, we are having success with reducing crime, but our work is far from over. And we clearly recognize that we have a lot of work to do. But we're committed to getting that job done. Excellent. Thank you, Chief. And that concludes what we have for today in the public safety briefing. We'll move on to, I think, what's kind of the best part of our briefings is to take some questions from everyday New Yorkers who get an opportunity to talk to the leadership here who helps to impart public safety here in the city of New York. Thank you. Earlier this week, the administration reached out to New Yorkers, asking them to submit questions for the officials that have joined us here today. We're almost up in time, so we'll get to as many of them as I can in the next few minutes. First question is for Commissioner Parker from Rocky in Brooklyn who asks, how do most drugs make their way to New York City? Is it cars, trains, boats? Most of the drugs that come into the United States and into New York City come across the Southwest border. The two major cartels in Mexico are really the base of operations, and it's over the Southwest border. It can be, for the most part, it's trucks and cars coming across the Southwest border. It can be people, it can be drones, it can be tunnels, but that's the key point where drugs, whether it's fentanyl in particular, fentanyl pills, other drugs, that's coming across the Southwest border. Next question is from Ramsa in Queens for Chief Kemper who asks, can you give an update on the department's work for moving homeless people from subways? Yeah, I can. So look, this is the topic of homelessness. It's complex yet it's important that, important work we deal with every day, particularly in the subway system. But first and foremost, it's really about balancing the needs of an individual that sadly sees the subway system as a place of refuge and also the needs of a ridership. I say this a lot and it's so true. Being homeless is not a crime, right? Homeless is not a crime, but nobody should be reduced to having to live or seek shelter in a subway system. It's just New York City, it's 2023, right? We can do better and there are such better, safer, viable options that we have. You know, we're talking about plans and it's part of the mayor's subway safety plan that was released in February of 2022. This very topic was discussed and a unit was stood in the NYPD Transit Bureau. It's called the Subway Safety Task Force and it was stood at the direction of Mayor Adams and his subway safety plan. And that unit's primary mission is to focus on this topic. They work seven days a week. They don't work alone. They work with their partner agencies, whether it's DHS, UHMH, or BRIC, and they go out each and every day. They look for individuals in need. They offer them options. And this important work certainly will continue. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have left for today. On behalf of the Adams Administration, I would like to thank everyone for tuning in to today's briefing. We look forward to seeing you all at our next one. Have a great day.


I've got one here, which could take a little bit of time. It's from Hanson on Twitter. It's your starting 11, your England starting 11 for the first Euros game. Bloody hell, excuse me, this will take a lot of time. Give us a couple of your bankers there, maybe, if not the full 11, Jamie. Give us two or three of your bankers. Well, I'm so... OK, let's go to the important players. I think Jon Stone's hit in form is the best news that Gareth Southgate knows. I don't like how we look to be pre-him-fining this form. I was a little bit worried about it as defensively. Now, how do you match up? He looks like he wants to play over back three.  He's gone with Kyle Walker as well. The interesting ones that we do go over back three is the wing back situation. Trent's not played well this year, and he's not a wing back. So he comes under pressure from Rhys James. Left wing back situation, I think if we do play that way, I think the fact that Killwell's playing so well in that system for Tuchel really helps Gareth Southgate as well. But now it certainly gets interesting because Jordan Henderson might miss out, it looks like, because of this groin injury, and I think they won't rush him. As much as it's important he plays for England, he's come at an important time in his career. He wants to play for his country. He's obviously proud to, but if he's not right, he's not right. So then it maybe feels like you're going to go with Declan Rice as a banker then. Maybe does he then play with Mason Mount alongside him? That could be a situation where you've got super talented players. Up front, it's so difficult. Harry Kane obviously starts. Then you've got Marcus Rashford and you've got Foden. I think Marcus Rashford's got to do more right now. I think he's, it will definitely start, but he might be the one player that comes under pressure if he doesn't score goals and do as well because there will be a clamour for Foden or for Sancho. Sterling's definitely going to start as well. So there's a lot of people looking for that position. I want to see Greenlist play, but right now it looks like I picked 13 aside. So it's hard for me to pick it, Chris. So I don't know, so I don't even know how difficult it's going to be for Gareth. Harvey Barnes has been in great form. Harvey Barnes, until he picks up this injury, he's one of the best strikers. His numbers, his goals and his assists were as good as anybody's. So it's incredibly difficult. I just don't want to see Gareth play safe though. I want to see him go over really attacking team.


So I had a question for Sarah, which is, it's a technical question, but I think it probably has some bearing on the outcomes, the social and behavioral outcomes of babyceak, probably too. And that is, how did you guys decide what conditions to put on this sequencing panel? Because I guess that's such a controversial issue generally, and depending on what results people are going to get back for what conditions, that will probably affect just everything downstream, right? Was that controversial at all? Yeah, it definitely was. And given the research group that I'm working with, there were advocates of including everything. But we ultimately decided to include pathogenic variants associated with childhood onset conditions because there's potential for more imminent manifestations and use of that information. And because parent, not only for the infant, him or herself, but for the parents who may still be making reproductive decisions, those results could more directly impact their reproductive decisions. So we have one PhD postdoc who has been curating the literature for months and months and the existing databases and identifying, starting with a medical exome, going through all of the genes and identifying those that have solid evidence for childhood onset and strong associations with disease. So that's, it was a process, but that's how we settled on it. So just to respond to what you were saying, Laurie, and Danielle can jump in whenever. I think that, so the, I think in terms of collaboration, what I found most helpful is looking really close to home. So I haven't collaborated with lots of big outside groups, but obviously Danielle and I collaborated because we knew we were familiar with each other's research training from being in the program together. And I think we've also had some really fruitful collaborations, as Layla knows, with students involved in the program as well. So I think that that's been really fruitful for us. Yeah, and I would say I'm going to go to the practical side of things, that my day job has nothing to do with exome sequencing. So I work in industry. I have a very different job. So the hat that I get to wear doing this collaboration serves the purpose of keeping my fire lit about what matters in genetics. So I think that the way that I can do this is that Julie has a 100% research job. I have a 100% not research job and we can find the middle where I can find pieces of this to be a part of the team. So that was very, like from a logistical standpoint, that's important. Although one of the things you guys haven't talked about is why you needed a collaborator, which I think is a central issue to Lori's question. Yeah, absolutely. I think that it would be entirely too close to home for me to conduct the interviews because I interact with our participants in every other way. So I'm trying to divorce myself from that process intentionally. And then coding the transcripts was another area that we introduced. We're having research assistants and summer students do that as well. Also just because there's so much that I could impose upon participants' responses just because I interact with them in so many different ways.  I think that the project is super interesting. I'm curious if there is a mechanism. I feel like there's as much to be learned about the declineers as from people who choose to participate. And I'm curious if there's been any discussion of trying to ascertain some reasons for declining at all. And also then I guess a practical question that I'm just curious about is what's the blood volume here and how is it obtained, especially from the healthy newborns. I think that's so interesting. I know you're doing consent. I was so curious. That's right after they've given birth and how long is that process? Because your consent is pretty long, right? OK, remind me if I missed some of these questions. So declineers. So we plan to ask for basic demographics and a reason for declining. We haven't yet come up with, are we going to provide them with some structured reasons and then give them some option for free text? But we will try to gather those reasons. What was your second question, Julie? Blood volume. Oh, blood volume. I'm just so interested in that. Yeah, so we're going to, for the NICU babies, we're going to try to time it with a clinical stick. But there are, I'm forgetting exact volume, so unfortunately I won't be able to give you that. But I know there are regulations in how much blood can be drawn within a certain time period. And that could get, we may have to really think carefully about that because for the NICU babies over the course of their NICU stay, it could exceed that with the addition of our research draw. So there have been, this is a bit tangential, but there have been discussions about how closely should this model newborn screening and should we try to gather on the Guthrie card, you know, and then. But I think what we've ultimately just, I think we're at a decision at this point is that that's not really the intent or the goal of our study is to, it's not to model newborn screening, but it's to look at the use of this information. So we're probably, we're probably talking at capillary too, but I don't know exact volume. Yeah, I would think that's possible. Yeah, and I'm sorry Trisha, what was your other question? My other question was just about the consent, how you envision how much time when, I just think practically speaking, newborn postpartum period is, people barely remember they had newborn screen, you know, the long genome sequencing. Yeah, and that's part of why we did the pilot survey in that period, but again, that was so different than actually offering parents participation in the study. So our goal is to do consent in the hospital, before moms and babies are discharged, but we'll do it any time up until 30 days of life. It's easier, easier of course, if they're in the hospital and they're the captive audience, but we also don't want to put time pressure on parents when that's obviously not the ideal time for some to be making a decision like this. So, but we would ask them to come back for, at least for the blood draw, but we'd ask them to come back and that adds that that logistic difficulty and, 60 to 90 minutes? 60 to 90 minutes? If you consider the pre-enrollment counseling piece, which I really think is more just consent, it's just a thorough consent. So that's probably in itself like an hour and then the actual formal consent, signing the paperwork, blood draw and family history, I would say that would add another half hour. You're anticipating getting declineers for that? Or people who opt out halfway through. I mean, it's very onerous. I need to breathe, I need to breastfeed, I need to. Can you tell Trisha just had a baby? Yeah. I mean, the study as a whole, it is quite onerous for them to come back for the results, come back again a year later for the exam, yep. I had a question too for, I think it was Katie. For your side, do you, or anybody, do you know if anyone's ever looked at, I find it so interesting what people are more surprised about with their genetic test results and I'm not surprised, well, somewhat that they're more nervous about the things that are already in their family. Just thinking of people in my own counseling for direct consumer, people who have a history of Alzheimer's, that's the one that they freak out about, right? You could tell them they'd be at the same mutation, they would, whatever, it's not in my family, I don't care. Has anyone asked, are you guys asking if people are an opt out of things that are in their family, like presented that way, you know, you can opt out of Parkinson's results or you can opt out of heart disease? I don't know about anybody asking about it in that way. I think it's an interesting way to think about it, but I think you're exactly right that when you break it up into categories of like preventable or unpreventable, the examples that are gonna come to their mind and that they're pulling out for you do tend to be these things that either are in their families or that they have some sort of experience with in the community through friends or things like that. But I don't think anybody that I know of is asking about that as a specific sort of type of result or a way of categorizing, so it's a good thought. What about the one, you'll know about this and I don't, the one result where the woman's family history was so burning to her they made a special exception and looked for the mutation. So it's the opposite of what you're saying. It was actually turned out to be essential to her motivation to participating in ClinSeq to begin with. Yeah, so we have people all the time who actually are calling about this and really want this. I actually just, it's too bad Nina's not here. Nina's one of the counseling students and she just consented somebody on Friday and that was exactly what she wanted was will you take my family history and then adjust my risk profile for the things that are specifically in my family history based on what you see genetically. And I think it was so instructive for us because I didn't, I don't think about it that way. I think about a genome first approach but so many people look at this as a way of modifying existing risk. And so it really does make sense and a lot of people that is absolutely what they're after so it may be a really helpful way to talk about risk in the consent process and I think when we're returning results, yeah. Well, and Trisha probably the people who don't want to know about the thing in their family aren't gonna enroll in this or tell you about it, right? So which again gets back to the thing I had asked Katie about which is like to what extent should we even be thinking about this as predictive genetic testing for something that's in your family because it's totally different from that. So I had a question for you guys and for Sarah as well just thinking about the fact that the most impactful results are rare events and you have a great sample size but it's still a rare event particularly for the healthy cohort. How we go about getting that data and really understanding what that's like for people. Questions slash comments slash concerns slash challenge. Clint Seek I think is, I mean, yeah, that's never, it's our sample size is really too small but it's a really great consideration and we talk about this all the time that for many people this is really, it's not a big deal until it is, right? And so it's like one in a thousand people for whom it's gonna be a big deal but it's a lot of people you have to, it's just interesting I think, yeah, it's a big consideration. Partly out of concern that we would have boring results, we would have nothing to say to people that's probably the reason why we decided to include carrier status and to include a limited number of pharmacogenomic variants so these aren't necessary, they're not as impactful but at least it's something to talk about, something to study. One of the things that I was taking note of, it seems like a lot of this is cutting edge research based on rolling out new technologies but in our sample today, and I know there's lots of other examples of things we're doing that weren't discussed today, we didn't talk much about effectiveness of genetic counseling, a little bit with Agillian's engagement protocol but effectiveness of genetic counseling in meeting client needs and I wonder what thoughts you had as you were listening to these talks about opportunities to pursue related questions. I don't have an answer but I think it's such an important question and I think it's something that we should, it's so many of us now are getting engaged in these sorts of studies that are being funded because they have the question about the genetic testing itself and is there an opportunity for us to really push what's the role of genetic counseling in the study and are there embedded questions that we can include that either qualitatively allow us to look at the process, those are probably the easiest to put in, look at the process of what the counseling is like and what patients take from it but also are there things that we could do even further than that that can we embed a separate nested randomized trial within the randomized trial to look at different interventions I think the extent to which we can take advantage of these opportunities and do that would be great, it would help Agillian's quest for evidence-based practice and the practice guidelines, I think that's really where we need to be going and we're not gonna get those kinds of studies funded on their own right as easily as these other, the larger studies are getting funded. So I really like the part of, I hope I'm getting this right, I really like the part of Agillian's talk where she said that the ultimate outcome is better health outcomes for patients. So a lot of the things that get measured when we talk about genetic counseling, efficacy and evidence-based are proxies for the ultimate goal which is people not dying from cancer, people having better, and better health outcomes has a component of psychosocial health as well as not getting sick. But that seems to me like we get all caught up in these proxies for what the real goal is and we lose sight of what we're really trying to accomplish. So I mean I tend to now think more in terms about when I think about what I'm trying to accomplish in our reporting and things like that that actually I'm not so much focused on the proxies like people being understanding people, I mean to the extent that understanding your results leads to a better health outcome that's great. But actually if you really had to weigh things it's actually better that they not get cancer than that they understand autosomal dominant inheritance. And so I really very much like the idea of focusing on health outcomes. Katie won't brag so I'll talk about her from the other end of the table. She's spending all of her time now implementing an exquisitely complicated randomized control trial that gets at what we were talking about a few minutes ago which is taking advantage of return of carrier results to clinical participants where Katie's being compared to a web-based platform in terms of returning results, looking at similar outcomes. And each of those two cells is randomized to half of them received genetic counseling and half of them not. So it also looks at the additional question of potential added benefit or not of genetic counseling following the genetics education. So she's very tightly sticking to an education model for the first part that parallels the information that's in the web-based platform and then doing more counseling is a separate endeavor. It's very hard to do because you have to resist all your clinical instincts to do counseling at the same time you do education so it isn't necessarily pleasant. But I think it's a really cool opportunity to tease apart where we need services. And somebody when I presented the original design in our SBRB works in progress, somebody said, you could put your profession to shame and you could put him out of business by doing this study that that was a peculiar, he was being provocative. But the truth is I don't care. I mean, if we find out that people learn information about carrier status in a way that's effective and useful to them and they have a good idea what they wanna do with it, just as well is with Katie, Katie is a lot more expensive than a web-based platform. And it would be really nice to have one at home on your computer that you could have charge of and manage, why would we not want to preserve our time and effort to people who really need it? So I think there is some practical value in just, especially as things roll out into mainstream medicine starting to ask, it's a fairly boring practical research question, but I think it has some real implications for going forward and helping us from a research perspective carve out where are the patients that really need this? A lot of them aren't paying in preliminary data, aren't paying a lot of attention to things that were unexpected, they're not landing on them too much, they're not too worried about them, so there's not a lot of counseling needs there. There may not be a lot of counseling needs around carrier status, obviously, we haven't gotten any data to analyze yet. So where are the points at which genetic counselors need to be involved? And as this rolls out, it's pretty important for us to identify places where important client needs are being met. And I agree mostly with Eric, I still think that there are a couple of proxy outcomes for which there's evidence they're linked to behaviors that are pretty important and those psychological well-being outcomes I think are important to capture as part of well-being overall, good health, but again, everybody knows forever I didn't care if people understood all the details because that's not necessarily related to what they do with the information and whether or not they're better off for it in the long run. So I think we have to pay a lot of attention to the implications and practical value of the things that we're studying. Not everything we do needs to be about saving genetic counseling in the future and I think it primarily has to be hitched to what clients needs are and whether they're being met but I think a good portion of our effort should be focused in that direction to think a little bit more about as Lori introduced adding this on to other things we're doing where we can look at potential implications for the role of genetic counselors. So I have a question for anybody who's involved in industry and being somebody who's in industry so there's all this really fascinating research going on but is industry playing a role in any of this and do you see it and do you find there is a role for some of this because if you've got 23andMe giving all these exomes, are they doing anything if you've got, where do you add that in and not academia or does it only happen in academia? So I don't know if I can give you a very concrete answer but Neha and I are founding members of a group of genetic counselors who are interested in doing research in industry and our first steps were to tackle things like private IRBs and public private partnerships and just sort of process related things in order to get these studies set up because I think especially as the industry gets bigger and bigger the need for concerted efforts to tie in gets greater and I think genetic counselors present like a really nice space where you can bring people together to do research so long as it stays in the pre-competitive space which is a new term I've learned recently. I think it'd be interesting too because I work in basically industry although in genetic counseling but to have more collaborations with other research groups because I think there is a hesitancy to reach out to industry folks like us but we have a lot of data so I think if there's any interest if you have interested persons from the research or academia side there's a ton of information probably more information about a population with which academic centers don't have access to low income, rural, not usually interested in formal genetic counseling it'd be really great to compare this population so yeah. Yeah I think for me too my company is very actively involved in research and we're constantly coming up with new collaborations that we can do with some of our clients or genetic counselors working at various MFM offices prenatal offices where they're interested in doing something they don't have the funding we have the data they're using our testing so let's use that as a way to see okay what's patients experience of expanded care screening that's not really a question that anyone's really addressed so you know those are like some of the projects but I think very open and it's really great to work because you don't have to worry about money. I think that like bridging the gap in these worlds I think that that's something that I continually think about right academia and nobody's got time, nobody's got money industry we got too much money to do something else with so where you find the middle is where I think could be really fascinating. Is there anybody here who's recently been hired by Gene DX? That's amazing cause they've just hired about 75 genetic counselors in this area that would be a really incredible opportunity with all these genetic counselors that they now have recently hired many of whom I know are interested in research they're gonna be sitting on a lot of data they hire genetic counselors for a reason they're gonna start doing a lot of this genome sequencing that would be an incredible collaboration. I think we should break for lunch a few comments about lunch there is a lot of vegetarian options it's Mediterranean food and there is some chicken on one of the platters so you'll have to figure out the differences. I paid for it which I'm happy to do. I think that Chris put out a hat so if you wanna contribute a little bit don't contribute more than $10 but if you wanna contribute something that would be great you don't have to and just to remind people as they're planning their days I know some people have plans this evening but I am hosting a reception at the house afterwards I need about 20 minutes by myself before you get there but not much time cause it's just gonna be wine and some finger foods so you're welcome to get there soon so I hope you'll plan on coming even if you can only stay for a short time it would be great to have you and I think over lunch while I encourage you to sit with people and have a working lunch we can eat in here just sit wherever you want and talk about whatever you want and then we'll reconvene at 1.30 1.30 no 12.30 sorry.