January 6, 2020Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well good afternoon, recruits.Recruits: Good afternoon, sir.Mayor: Alright, you sound good. Everybody, I want to tell you this is a really wonderful day – a special day in your lives and a great day for New York City as well. By my count, 530 of you – is that right, Dermot? 530? 530 new guardians for this city on the way to serve us all and that is extraordinary. I want to thank everyone here on the dais, all the leadership represented here who you will be watching in the months and years ahead. Everyone up here is devoted to making this city safer, making this department greater, building a closer bond between our police and our communities. And we are all going to be depending on you.So, as you start on this journey, it""s a day you should feel real satisfaction that you""ve made it this far. I think everyone here knows there are intense challenges ahead in these coming months as you prepare to prove that you are ready to join the finest police force in the world. But I want to specifically talk to you about the mission ahead, and the fact that this city needs you, this city needs the very best to protect it, to protect all our people, all our neighborhoods. And we""re at a point where we""ve learned a lot of things about how to make this city safer. In fact, for the last quarter-century, New York City has gotten safer and safer. I can certainly say over these last six years, working with my colleagues here, we""ve proven that strategies like precision policing and neighborhood policing work, and we are undoubtedly the safest big city in America.But we have to sustain that progress and then we have to go farther. That is where all of you come in. You are joining a winning team – there""s no doubt about it. You""re joining a team that for a quarter-century has proven it can do things people said were impossible. And I want to emphasize that. For a long, long time there were many voices that thought the challenges this city faced could not be overcome. There were many people who thought we would be mired in crime and violence, but what the NYPD proved was it didn""t have to be that way.The NYPD innovated, got better all the time, brought in talent that could help turn things around, built a stronger bond with the community. The NYPD proved time and time again we could get to places that were never imagined. And I want everyone to know, not only are we going to sustain that progress, we""re going to build upon that progress and we are never going back to the years when this city wasn""t safe, to the years when people could not live a decent life here. You are the next wave, and we need you to be the very, very best. You""re going to get the best training, the best equipment, the best technology. But the thing I want to say to you is, you""re going to be expected to excel. You""re going to be expected to make this city even safer. And you""re going to be expected to build relationships with the people you serve because that""s what we""ve learned from neighborhood policing.You don""t have to do it alone and you don""t just have to do it with your brothers and sisters in blue. You can have the whole community on your side. It""s important to build those trusting relationships with community members. It""s important to start to know people on a first name basis just as they need to know you as a human being and a public servant. When you have that kind of bond, you will find community members not only have your back but give you the information you need, the support you need, the thanks you deserve. That is what will allow your already great skills and the great skills and the capacity of this department to go that much farther, and to build a city that is even safer.So, extraordinary potential for this city ahead and it""s all going to come down to you and your colleagues that we know are the very best and can help us to become even greater. That""s what I wanted you to hear. I want to express my thanks to you. I want to express my thanks to your families, everyone who has supported you every step along the way. We need you – we need you to be the very best you can be and I thank you for the choice you have made. Now, with that, I have a great honor as you start this journey to join with you by administering the swearing in.Unknown: A-ten-hut!Mayor: Alright, here we go.Unknown: Ready! Move![Mayor de Blasio issues the Oath of Office]Mayor: Congratulations to all of you. The very best of luck, and I will see you at graduation.Unknown: [Inaudible]Sergeant Kevin Heavey, NYPD: Thank you, Mayor de Blasio. It""s now my privilege to introduce the Police Commissioner of the City of New York, the Honorable Dermot Shea.[Applause]Police Commissioner Dermot Shea: Good afternoon, everyone.Recruits: Good afternoon, sir.Commissioner Shea: This is my first swearing-in ceremony. As I""m sitting here next to Terry and listening to the Mayor speak, that occurred to me, and I""m hearing the Oath of Office, I""ll tell you I got chills listening to you all take that oath. I hope you know what that means. I hope you know that you now represent 36,000 men and women of the greatest police department in the world, bar none. And there is a hell of a lot of sacrifice that many of your brothers and sisters, some have laid down their lives, think about that for a second. I couldn""t be happier for you, I really couldn""t, enjoy every day of it. It""s going to be hard to enjoy at times. When you are getting up early and it""s still dark out and your trudging in here, I think the bags a little lighter, now you have iPads instead of 50 pound bags of equipment, but enjoy it, really. Enjoy every minute of it, we will see you in six months.So welcome to the New York City Police Academy and for the 530 recruits here today, again, welcome to the New York City Police Department. It""s not an exaggeration to say that this is a moment that will change your life forever. The next six months will challenge you in ways that you cannot even anticipate. This is not a regular job and one obvious indication of that is that you just stood up with your right hands and took an oath on your first day. As a member of this department, starting right now, you are held to a higher standard than the rest of the public that you serve. Let that sink in. And you will be held accountable, there are immediate expectations made on your commitment, on your ability, and the desire to uphold that oath. And those expectations will be on you every day for the rest of your careers. It""s a huge responsibility protecting millions of people and it""s not easy, but you won""t be alone, because starting right now your family got a little bit bigger as I said. Get some extra seats for the Thanksgiving table because 36,000 people, family. They will be there to help you and support you and each and every one of them, including all of you here, started out just like you. Maybe in a different building. It wasn""t quite so fancy, a different seat but just like you, with a lot of fear at times, a lot of anticipation. Can I do it? You can do it.When we look to answers we turn on to people who have been there before. They faced the same questions that you did. The veteran cops who guided us along the way, they are after all, the department""s greatest resource. So make sure you take every opportunity to listen to them, to your instructors, people like Chief Shortell on my right, and let their experience show you the way forward. But first, your learning begins today. The next six months, again, will be difficult and demanding. Don""t expect to be perfect, we know you""re going to make mistakes. Make them and learn from them. That""s the message. Those mistakes will make you better and if you approach each day with an open mind and the determination to improve, July will be here before you know it, and you will be a changed person, because in July, even though you took the oath today, you will have earned the right to be an NYPD cop, the envy of the law enforcement community worldwide.That""s the choice you""ve made and the commitment you have pledged to the people of this great city. As for the Police Department, it made a commitment to you as well. We promise to give you the best training, state of the art equipment, the latest tools and technology, and the support you need to do your jobs as effectively and efficiently as possible. We promised to prepare you for what will be one of the greatest challenges and the most rewarding of your life. Keeping every person in every New York City neighborhood – think about that – safe and free from fear. You""re sitting in those seats because we believe, we know, that you can do this job. I look forward to seeing you at graduation, seeing how far you""ve come and how much you""ve learned, but in the meantime, again listen to your instructors, listen to the support from your fellow recruits, and get ready for the greatest job on Earth.So let me leave you with a little story, I hope I don""t offend anyone, I have a feeling if I offend anyone it might be this gentleman to my right because it""s about Boston. Sitting home this weekend, I don""t know if you have football fans in the room, but there was a couple good games on, so I caught a couple of the games – here""s the part that might offend you – no game was better than when the Patriots lost. It""s my favorite day of the year, when the Yankees and the Patriots lose and get eliminated. And then I""m sitting last night, and I""m catching up on some emails, and two caught my eye last night, and I thought about you today. Two emails from people that I have no idea who they are, but they – they""re amateur detectives and they can figure out how to get an email to the Police Commissioner of the City of New York, and it worked. First was from a woman, a mom, mom who originally reports her son missing, story""s ending isn""t good. A missing report becomes eventually a young man in his 20""s who was found deceased, took his own life. The email was from the mom, to me, talking about her experience along the way from the police officers, to the detectives, to other agencies, not just the Police Department, and how it could have been better. Think about that mom – or dad, or brother or sister – dealing with the worst possible moment of their lives and how you get to impact that time. Couldn""t bring that son back, but you can make that experience a little bit better, and you""re never going to know when you have that opportunity. That""s the greatest gift we are handing you today. It""s like no job on Earth, you get to change people""s lives. I bet you, if you could go back in time and speak to those people, that talk to that woman along the way because it was a process of probably weeks before she ultimately got the bad news, they would probably do things different.Second email, ten minutes later, another woman, I have no idea who she is, talking to me about another traumatic experience that she went through. Home, with kids, family – picture your family in that scenario – and in the blink of an eye, the house is burned down. Took time out of her day to send me an email about the inspector, about the police officers, about the Community Affairs officer that literally changed her life. Was there well after the fire was out and the TV cameras were off. Stopping back to a shelter and bringing the kids presents for Christmas when they had nothing else. Two different calls, no cops, no robbers, nothing that""s going to show up on the news, but two different emails to me about two experiences that are once in a lifetime experiences for those people. God willing, it will never happen to them again. Which one of those emails do you want to be? Think about that. On behalf of all of us, welcome. Welcome to the greatest job in the world, good luck, always stay safe.[Applause]