Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul is a Guest on FOX 5’s ‘Good Day New York’

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul was a guest on FOX 5’s “Good Day New York.”

AUDIO: The Governor’s remarks are available in audio form here.

A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below:

Dan Bowens, FOX 5: Sunday's mass shooting in Midtown has some lawmakers calling for action.

Rosanna Scotto, FOX 5: New York Governor Kathy Hochul wants to advance gun control legislation. She's joining us this morning. Nice to have you here, Governor.

Governor Hochul: Good morning.

Rosanna Scotto, FOX 5: You were just at the 47th Precinct where that officer worked, Officer Islam. What was it like for you?

Governor Hochul: It was very somber. I was greeted by the Mayor and the Commissioner of Police, Jessica Tisch, I want to say they're both doing an exceptional job at this moment of grieving for the city. And the Mayor's personal experience of having been a police officer and literally standing in the shoes where those young recruits were and those young officers were, it was very powerful.

But they're tough, they know they're supposed to be New York City Police, NYPD, but they're still human beings. You could see in their eyes the pain. And to think that it could have been any one of them but this is their friend they lost. They know there's a grieving wife and parents and —

Rosanna Scotto, FOX 5: And a baby on the way.

Governor Hochul: You know what, that just broke my heart. I spoke to the young widow yesterday and in broken English, I just conveyed, I said, “Our hearts are breaking for you. We love you. Whatever we can do.” And she says, “Just pray for us.” She said, “Just pray for us.”

So I went to the vigil last night and I told everyone, “You're doing the right thing. The widow asks for your prayers of support and they feel so hollow at a time like this.”

Rosanna Scotto, FOX 5: Will the Police Department give her the necessary benefits after all is said and done?

Governor Hochul: I will say they always take care of members of the family. You're with them for life. And I really commend the NYPD for how they take care of families because there's been too many.

People need to respect the fact that these people go through rigorous training. They know how to protect us, we have to protect them as well and stand up and support them every chance we get.

Dan Bowens, FOX 5: Governor, last night you spoke at the vigil, something that stood out to me you said, “Grief is the price you pay for love.” What did you mean by that?

Governor Hochul: The reason we're hurting so much today, and the families and the colleagues are in these workplaces and in the precincts, is when you love someone, the loss of them is so much greater. It's not just someone you saw on a street, it is someone that you had a relationship with. So it's even compounded the pain and we need to acknowledge that, and it's going to take a lot of time to heal.

I thought about New York State's great slogan, “I Love New York,” the “I Heart New York,” right? We all know that. And that heart is broken right now. But I know it's going to come back together and heal because we've been knocked down and been through a lot together. And our community needs to support each other, rise up to this occasion, and also take some actions to ensure that those lives are not lost in vain.

Dan Bowens, FOX 5: My understanding is not only did you reach out to the widow of this fallen officer, but also the widow, the husband of the BlackRock executive who passed away, did you have a chance to speak with the husband?

Governor Hochul: Yes. And we’ll keep that confidential, but there's just — I’m a mom, I'm a wife. I said, “I cannot imagine waking up the next day to someone that I kissed the night before, the day before, and they're not there, the bed is empty.” So all of us need to relate to this as human beings and just lift each other up.

You know what he said to me? He goes, “Go home and hug your husband tighter tonight.” That's a reminder of the fragility of life and the randomness of this violence which is permeating society and not — in New York, I have to say this, we have the toughest gun laws in America. We have one of the lowest rates of homicide by guns. Of all the big states, we're the lowest. Of every state, we're like number two after Massachusetts. Our laws are working.

But what happens is our sanctity, our safety is violated when someone can so easily come across the state lines and drive a vehicle here with intent to murder and have it loaded up with weapons of mass destruction, that's what happened here.

So if there was a nationwide ban on this, as there once was in our country, we had a 10-year ban back in 1994 to 2004, and it was lifted because people didn’t have the courage to say, “You know what, we can stand up to the NRA and gun lobbyists because our people's lives matter more than that,” and that's what I'm calling for again, just another reckoning.

How many more lives have to be lost by these weapons of destruction that in my hometown of Buffalo, just a few years ago, 10 innocent people shopping in a grocery store were slaughtered by a white supremacist who went there to destroy their lives because of the color of their skin?

Rosanna Scotto, FOX 5: Is it the guns, or is it mental health? Let's talk about the mental health problem in our country.

Governor Hochul: It is real, but I'm not going to accept that as an excuse because people without mental health problems also take weapons and murder people.

Rosanna Scotto, FOX 5: I know, but don't you think you have to be a little bit off to do something like that?

Governor Hochul: One would think so, yes. But are we going to give them a pass? Are we going to give everybody a pass and say they had mental health problems, therefore they're excused? I'm not excusing anybody. You should not be able to walk into a store anywhere in America and buy a weapon that was designed to kill enemies on a battlefield. I was in Afghanistan. I saw these weapons. I know how they're being used. They're not supposed to be used in an office building in Manhattan.

Dan Bowens, FOX 5: Have you had a chance to reach out to Roger Goodell, the NFL at all?

Governor Hochul: I spoke to Roger in the aftermath, yes. Everyone's traumatized. Everyone is just traumatized by this. This isn't supposed to happen. Not so brazen to walk into a building in broad daylight carrying this weapon with intent to destroy lives.

Dan Bowens, FOX 5: One thing, if I could just follow up very quickly, but mass shootings in the United States are something that we've seen not necessarily in skyscrapers, in Midtown Manhattan. Is this a reality now? Are you asking any of the corporate partners’ office buildings to readdress their safety concerns?

Governor Hochul: I guarantee they're all doing this. Everyone's going to look at their protocols. But in the building, 345 Park Avenue, they had active shooter training for the employees. That's why you saw the barricades that may have saved lives, we don't know. They knew what they were doing. There was an alert system. People understood what was going on. People were notified.

And also, for them to hire an off-duty NYPD officer, that's the best you're going to get. They know how to handle this. But what happens when someone walks in and kills that individual immediately? The system is not going to work the way it was intended to because the people that you hired to protect the people in the building are gone. That's the reality.

If it wasn't for that weapon, it would not have happened. Or even not being an assault weapon, if it was just a handgun, you can't spray a handgun. An assault weapon, you can have a high-capacity magazine that can do 30 rounds. That's 30 people's lives that are destroyed in seconds. That's what has to stop.

Rosanna Scotto, FOX 5: Governor, there's so much to talk about politics being injected into all this right now about, obviously how important the NYPD is to keeping New Yorkers safe. I don't know if this is a question for today or another time you come back because there's so much we want to talk about, cell phones and kids in school. But I know today we're honoring the men and women that we lost in Midtown.

Governor Hochul: I told them, I said, “Despite what you hear out there. We love you. We honor you for being willing to make that sacrifice that we just saw firsthand unfold just a couple days ago. You're suffering, but I say we admire you immensely.”

Everyone has an opportunity to say, “I want to be a police officer,” go through the training, be assigned a precinct, walk the beat, save people's lives. And so few people do because fear is a natural human emotion. And to be so selfless — I said, “All of you must have been raised by really good parents that made you realize that this is more than just ourselves.”

We're here put on earth to make other people's lives better, and in their case, they're making them safer. We cannot have a city survive without NYPD doing their jobs, and we celebrate them, honor them, but also today we mourn with them

Dan Bowens, FOX 5: So much to talk about. We appreciate it very much. Governor Kathy Hochul.