It’s been a long time coming for the city’s Racial Equity Plan, but will change actually come? The perpetually delayed blueprint was supposed to dictate this year’s city budget talks towards improving diversity and combating systemic racism rooted in local government, but only came out earlier this month and long after this fiscal year’s appropriations were finalized.
An upcoming November Financial Plan Update will allow the city to visit the adopted budget mid-fiscal year and provide an opportunity to implement portions of the Racial Equity Plan. Mayor Zohran Mamdani expressed enthusiasm when asked about it by The Amsterdam News.
“We made it very clear that this is an all-of-city-government approach that has to include every single agency, and so that will be something that informs our budget as we get into it,” he said.
In short, the plan provides a clear guideline on how the city can put money where its mouth is when championing racial justice. It contains individual goals brought about from 45 local government agencies including the multi-billion dollar budgeted NYPD and Department of Correction (DOC) that disproportionately impact Black and Brown New Yorkers.
However, the NYC Commission on Racial Equity (CORE), an independent commission formed to evaluate the Racial Equity Plan, found that the published plan “fails to meet the basic legal requirements” mandated by the charter. The response, published Sept. 22, put heavy emphasis on the report needing to reflect “investments in the well-being of Black and Brown New Yorkers through city-wide and agency budgets.”
“The Racial Equity Plan cannot serve as a mere administrative document or symbolic gesture toward racial equity,” read the response. “It must guide city and agencywide budgets, policy, and practice as mandated by the Charter and informed by the needs of communities harmed by racism and social injustice. The Final Racial Equity Plan’s goals, strategies, indicators, and measures of progress must reflect the experiences of New Yorkers facing these racial and social disparities.
“The City must do more than state its intentions; it must clearly outline how it will act, invest, coordinate, measure progress, and remain accountable for achieving racially equitable outcomes in the lives of Black and Brown New Yorkers,” the response continued.
The Racial Equity Plan mentions how “racially biased criminal justice policies and unequal emergency responses have left New York City’s Black and Brown communities feeling unsafe” and will play a key role in reforming law enforcement and public safety agencies. It specifically points to city jails like those on Rikers Island that hold an overwhelmingly Black and Brown population and are managed by the DOC, which is subjected to federally-appointed control from a past use-of-force settlement.
In the short-term, the DOC will focus on reducing violence both on people-in-custody and staff. But long term, the department is tasked with developing a racial equity rubric with input from incarcerated individuals, along with operationalizing the borough-based jails set to hold Rikers Island’s population once it closes.
Famed civil rights lawyer Ron Kuby criticized the plan’s substance behind the jargon and described reading it as “hacking through subordinate clauses with a machete trying desperately to reach a period.” Yet despite the 400 plus pages, he felt nothing confidently indicated how the city would reduce the jail population and shut down Rikers Island by a legally-mandated deadline next year.
“Nothing in this thing addresses that,” Kuby said. “They do a very good job analyzing the historic problem with the criminal legal system and its disproportionate effect on people of color. They do an excellent job of setting goals. But there’s not much plan there.”
New standard for the NYPD
For NYPD, the plan boasts goals toward diversifying the force top-to-bottom and examining racial disparities during stops, frisks and searches. One long-term objective set out to “increase representation in all executive titles and ranks of the NYPD” to reflect broader demographics in the department and city by 2034, when Mamdani would term out if reelected. Another aimed to “fully integrate equity principles into every aspect of NYPD operations” through an equity impact assessment on all new department policies and developing an “Innovation and Recognition Program” to encourage officers to prioritize “equity-focused solutions.”
The Amsterdam News obtained a letter draft penned to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch by the NYC Guardians Association, the fraternal organization representing the city’s Black officers, delineating how the police department could meet the Racial Equity Plan’s deadlines. In the letter, Guardians President Lt. Patrick Gordon specifically addressed three goals set forth in the report involving lifting workplace barriers, implementing implicit bias training and increasing representation in specialized units.
In June, the Guardians surveyed 281 members who overwhelmingly felt that race correlated with discretionary promotions and factored into the overall employment experience. Gordon suggests gathering department heads and fraternal organizations like his own for a working group to tackle equal opportunity issues. He also recommended reviewing dashboard data on underrepresentation in specialized units. Gordon called on Tisch to review training curricula and, when pushed, bring in experts to tackle implicit bias, race-based trauma and hate crimes.
“Members should be able to demonstrate cultural sensitivity regardless of the communities that police in,” wrote Gordon. “This is vital for the Department to accomplish its mission and public safety goals.”
Marquez “Marq” Claxton, former NYPD detective and current director of the Black Law Enforcement Alliance, called the plan “replete with well meaning and honorable targets.” But he felt that many of the goals were previously set by other plans so actually implementing them will be the challenge.
“Both the indicators listed and the lived realities of the impacted populations support a bold, forward thinking initiative to provide equitable opportunities,” Claxton said in a text message response to an AmNews reporter. “The challenge is not in identifying the challenges but rather, how do you actually operationalize the plan? With law enforcement agencies, change only occurs by carrot or stick.”
