Responsibility and accountability. Some agencies in New York City have had to work with less, but still uphold their end of the financial bargain. A lack of funds leads to a lack of resources. A lack of resources led to a lack of services to the people. And, sometimes, lack of services to the people led to encounters with law enforcement who take a significant sum of taxpayer money.
According to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and police reform activists, those days are over.
On Sunday, June 7, de Blasio pledged for the first time to cut funding from the New York City Police Department. He said the city would shift the funding from the NYPD to youth and social services, many of whom are disproportionately targeted by police.
“The City will find significant savings to the NYPD budget,” said the mayor. “This funding will go towards youth development and social services for communities of color. The amount will be finalized with the City Council during the budget process.”
The move to shift funds away from the police department comes on the heels of massive protests against police brutality after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd’s death sparked a nationwide movement against police brutality bringing people outside to protest during the COVID-19 epidemic. The calls for defunding the police have increased in cities around America.
De Blasio’s not only focused on defunding the police, he’s also focused on changing the nature of policing itself. The mayor said he would like a better relationship between the police and the community.
“…[W]e will hire community ambassadors, people from the community, civilians, deeply steeped in their communities with the ability to bring the concerns of the community to the highest levels of the NYPD…” said the mayor. “…[T]o bring back answers including on the status of disciplinary cases and changes in policing that need to be done to allow better policing, fairer policing, to make sure there’s a truer deep connection between police and the community.
Some places are going as far as taking apart law enforcement entirely. Earlier this week, all nine members of the Minneapolis City Council announced that they would attempt to defund and dismantle their city’s police department. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told protesters last Saturday that he was against the elimination of the police department and was met with boos.
In Los Angeles, a push by police reform activists, after learning of a proposal to raise the police department’s budget to $1.86 billion, led local Mayor Eric Garcetti to cut close to $150 million from the proposal.
This week, Democrats in Congress unveiled the Justice in Policing Act of 2020 that would ban “no-knock” warrants, ban all chokeholds by the police, make it easier to seek legal damages when police violate a person’s civil rights, limit the transfer of military equipment to the police and set up a national database for tracking police misconduct.
But the police have pushed back.
Locally, Police Benevolent Association Pres. Pat Lynch ripped into de Blasio and other elected officials for creating an “anti-law enforcement” environment. During a news conference backed by members of law enforcement wearing personal protective equipment (with one Black officer standing directly behind Lynch and surrounded by a sea of white law enforcement workers), Lynch said the police are being demonized by the public and that the concept of law enforcement itself is under attack. He also denounced the killing of Floyd.
”The hatred towards law enforcement is misguided,” said Lynch during a news conference on Tuesday, June 9. “I have 36 years as a police officer and I could tell you unequivocally not one woman or man that has a shield on their chest or a patch on their shoulder will support the murder of an innocent person. I haven’t seen a time where one law enforcement [officer] would support [it].”
Some would say that New York police officers were inadvertently supporting the murder of an innocent person several years ago.
On July 17, 2014, police killed Staten Island resident Eric Garner via a banned chokehold. Garner was accosted by officers for selling untaxed cigarettes. Ramsey Orta, who recorded the video of Garner’s death which was later aired on news television stations around the world, alleges that he has been targeted by police for the past several years following the incident.
The police arrested Orta three times between 2014 and 2016. Several weeks after Garner’s death, and a day after medics ruled the death a homicide, Orta was arrested for criminal possession of a handgun cops said he tried to give to a teenager. Less than a year later, he was arrested again for allegedly possessing and selling drugs. Months after that encounter, cops arrested him again for allegedly selling the drug MDMA to an undercover cop. Lab tests concluded that the MDMA was fake. It led to reduced charges.
But Orta had to take a plea deal for those charges and was given four years in prison in 2016. Orta was released from prison this week. Police reform activists believe the cops targeted Orta for recording the Eric Garner choking incident.
Meanwhile, the PBA’s Lynch declared that elected officials want to neuter the police and stop helping residents who have felt safer because of their presence.
“They’re asking us to pull back,” said Lynch. “They’re asking us to walk away from you. They’re asking us to abandon our communities. They’re asking me to walk away from where I live. They’re asking us to walk away from neighborhoods that we brought back.”
Lynch has a friend in New York GOP Chair Nick Langworthy. The chairman said that taking funds away from the police in a city that’s the biggest target for terrorists is a mistake and that the police is more of a melting pot than people give it credit for.
”The NYPD is the most diverse police force in the world with officers representing every ethnicity and background. Incoming officers’ starting salary is barely above minimum wage,” said Langworthy. “The department comprises more than 20 critical bureaus ranging from counterterrorism, to intelligence, to transit, housing, training and more. They even dedicate their resources to bureaus dealing with ‘Collaborative Policing’ and ‘Equity and Inclusion.’”
Langworthy also accused Democrats of possibly ushering in the bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s when crime dominated the city. It’s a fear tactic once used by Joe Lhota when he ran, as a Republican, for mayor against de Blasio in 2013.
“What we are witnessing is the Democrat Party’s total embrace of lawlessness,” Langworthy continued. “Whether it’s their new bail law that is letting dangerous career criminals go free, closing jails or now defunding the police, they have put the criminals in charge. If they get their way, it will lead to anarchy prevailing in New York and will cause even more people to flee our state.”
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea also weighed in on the defund the police movement. He supports funding cuts, but not in the way that reform activists would. He said police are part of the solution to the problem, not a part of it.
“To help the kids of our city, I’m 1,000% behind shifting some funding from the police to youth programs,” said Shea on Twitter. “It’s incumbent upon all of us to dig down and do what’s needed.”
But shifting funds away from the police isn’t the only thing on the mayor’s radar. De Blasio said he would move law enforcement away from street vending enforcement and towards “real drivers of crime” instead of “administrative infractions.”
De Blasio said that we need to take money from the police department and give it to youth services and social services because we have desperate needs that must be addressed and because our young people must be uplifted, “That is not an affront; that is an affirmation of the young people and the communities that need help.”
New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo isn’t a fan of those who say abolish the police entirely saying, “Nobody wants that.” Pointing to several events around the city during the protests, Cuomo cited some police actions as a result of lack of knowledge or proper training.
“‘We don’t need police.’ Look at the looting that happened in New York City. Look at that looting,” said Cuomo during a media briefing. “It was frightening. It was criminals who were exploiting the situation, who were opportunistic, who were just stealing. You have New York City that is still reeling from the COVID virus, and now you have this night of looting, that I’m telling you shook people in the city to the core. You don’t need police? You don’t need police? That’s what happens when you don’t have effective policing.”
Pres. Donald Trump threw his opinion into the ring as well. Trump denounced the movement on Twitter. “Sleepy Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats want to ‘DEFUND THE POLICE,’” said Trump. I want great and well paid LAW ENFORCEMENT. I want LAW & ORDER!”
However, Trump is wrong about Joe Biden. The Democratic presidential candidate said he wasn’t in favor of defunding the police either. During a CBS News interview in Houston, where he was meeting with George Floyd’s family, the former vice president said, “No, I don’t support defunding the police. I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness. And, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community and everybody in the community.”
New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ office couldn’t comment due to a current investigation involving the NYPD.
Communities United for Police Reform (CPR), the mothers of Ramarley Graham and Mohammad Bah, sister of Delrawn Small and elected officials emphasized the urgent need for major cuts to the “bloated $6 billion” NYPD budget. At a press conference this week, Communities United for Police Reform called for at least $1 billion in cuts to the NYPD FY21 budget that begins July 1, 2020––and called for those funds to be “redirected to public infrastructure, social safety net, services and core needs for communities most impacted by police brutality and the COVID-19 pandemic, especially Black, Latinx and other communities of color in New York City.”
“This is a pivotal movement: the City Council has the chance to shift the value of our City’s government away from policing and criminalization and towards fulfilling the needs of our communities during the recovery period. We are calling on them to stand with the families by cutting the NYPD budget by at least one billion dollars,” said Constance Malcom, mother of Ramarley Graham.
“For decades governments have invested in and expanded the scope of policing, and neglected the institutions needed to help our communities become whole: housing, health care, social services and public education have been starved for resources,” said Jawanza Williams, director of organizing, VOCAL-NY. “The only way forward is to acknowledge that the institution of policing cannot create and maintain safety for Black, Brown and poor communities. We must defund the police and invest in community needs like housing, healthcare, education, and social services, so that all people are guaranteed access to the full scope of their human rights.
“At a time when the COVID-19 crisis has put deep financial strain on the city, when aggressive, unjust over-policing has put a deep mental, emotional strain on the city, when a curfew and massive police presence have put physical constraint on the city, the mayor has put forth a budget of austerity for most, autonomy for the NYPD. I’d ask the mayor to ‘Imagine’ if we cut the NYPD budget and used the savings to build up communities. The answer to every problem in communities of more color, it seems, is to send police. That needs to end, now,” said Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.
“This is all very real to me, not only because the NYPD murdered by brother and my tax dollars are still going to pay Wayne Isaacs’ salary, but also because I have a 9-year-old son,” said Victoria Davis, sister of Delrawn Small. “Right now, money that could be used to support him to grow and thrive––for example, for community-based summer programs for children––is going to the NYPD so they can criminalize him and other Black children.”