On June 8, Westchester County District Attorney Miriam E. Rocah announced a
comprehensive gun safety plan following a sweeping series of state and local legislation
strengthening New York’s gun safety laws in the aftermath of the Uvalde and Buffalo
shootings.
“As a mother of two school-aged children here in Westchester, I feel the same fear so many
parents experience each day when they send their kids off to school. Recent events around the
country have made it clear that we cannot let our guard down anywhere, including here in
Westchester County, to keep our children and families, our teachers and first responders, our
neighbors and communities safe. So today I am putting forth a five-point plan to highlight how
my office is doing—and will do—everything within our power to ensure New York’s strong gun
safety laws are used as effectively as possible,” DA Rocah said.
“This epidemic has become so pervasive that, for the first time in our nation’s history, gun
violence is now the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in this country. We
simply cannot accept this.”
DA Rocah’s Gun Safety Plan:
- Getting Guns off Our Streets: There are more guns in circulation in our country than ever
before. We are working to get illegal guns off our streets through:
• Coordinated operations with our law enforcement partners at the local, county, state
and federal levels. The largest operation to date resulted in the seizure of more than 100 guns,
including “ghost guns,” body armor and high-capacity drum magazines, silencers, ballistic
vests, counterfeit police shields and significant quantities of ammunition.
• Gun buybacks like the one we had in New Rochelle last year in partnership with the
New York State Attorney General and New Rochelle Police Department. We pledge to use
office forfeiture funds to continue efforts in the community toward more gun buybacks. We
are ready to expand our work with municipal partners immediately.
• Tracing origins of seized guns used in crimes across our communities, and launch
investigations and prosecutions whenever possible.
• Intelligence and data sharing between federal, state and local law enforcement
partners and analysts from our Crime Strategies Center who are embedded with High
Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA)’s Gun Violence Strategy Partnership.
2- Prosecuting Gun Crimes: We will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute crimes
involving guns and gun violence, including violent gang cases and firearms trafficking.
• Launched the Gun & Gang Initiative in August 2021 to prevent violent crime utilizing a
precision policing and prosecution model focusing on violent offenders through short- and
long-term violent crime investigations, in partnership with the FBI’s Westchester Safe Streets
Task Force, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Westchester
County Department of Public Safety, Mount Vernon Police Department, New Rochelle
Police Department and Yonkers Police Department.
• Continue our investigations into the proliferation of untraceable “ghost guns” and
utilize traditional and non-traditional investigative techniques to prevent prohibited persons
from possessing guns.
• Prosecute those who make threats of violence knowing how these threats terrorize and
traumatize our communities.
3- Promoting Safe Firearm Storage and Red Flag Law Education: During the last 17 months,
our office has proactively worked with partners across Westchester to increase community
awareness about gun safety.
• Launched the Safe Storage Program, in partnership with Moms Demand Action and
Westchester school districts, to help reduce the risk of school shootings and gun suicides
among young people. The program provides valuable resources on gun safety to Westchester
school districts, which includes sending every student home with information on the
importance of keeping guns safely secured and out of the hands of children and teens. As part
of the program, the countywide Be SMART virtual training focuses on increasing awareness
of safe firearm storage practices and highlighting ways families can help reduce the number
of child gun deaths.
• Held numerous trainings for law enforcement departments and school districts, and
partnered with federal law enforcement, experts and advocacy groups to increase awareness
of New York’s Red Flag Law, which allows authorities to prevent individuals who show
signs of being a threat to themselves or others from possessing or purchasing guns through
Extreme Risk Protection Orders (also known as ERPOs). Our trainings have already
resulted in an increase in the number of ERPOs. This valuable law has now been
strengthened and we will expand our efforts to ensure greater understanding and use of the
Red Flag Law with health care workers, who are now covered under the law as petitioners
and may apply for an ERPO, as well as youth sports organizations.
• For the first time in the history of the Office, we are now tracking the number of
ERPOs sought and obtained.
• In our continuing education efforts, we will hold a community forum on gun safety at
the end of June. We are also speaking to PTAs across the county on school safety starting
next week with the Westchester/East Putnam PTA Spring Conference.
4- Early Intervention and Mental Health: Together with the Westchester County Department
of Community Mental Health and other community partners, we will focus on diversion and
treatment for first-time, non-violent misdemeanor offenders, expanding our successful Fresh
Start initiative countywide this month. We are also working with our partners in the court
system to launch a misdemeanor mental health court in Westchester County later this year.
Data shows that treatment and early intervention prevent first-time offenders from turning into
violent felons down the road.
5- Fighting Extremism: We will continue our valued partnerships with county organizations
that work to combat extremism. We will continue our trainings for law enforcement to ensure
they have the information they need to understand extremism when they see it. Our Crime
Strategies Center will work with our law enforcement partners to monitor extremism on social
media where warranted. We have also assigned one of our investigators to be embedded with the
FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force for the first time in nearly a decade.
