“Mayor de Blasio’s message to New Yorkers today was clear: you will have fewer cops on your streets. Shootings more than doubled again last week,” said Police Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch. “Even right now, the NYPD doesn’t have enough staffing to shift cops to one neighborhood without making another neighborhood less safe. We will say it again: the mayor and the City Council have surrendered the city to lawlessness. Things won’t improve until New Yorkers hold them responsible.”
The PBA president was referring to the new city budget. But does he actually have reasons to be angry at City Hall?
Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Council Speaker Corey Johnson presented the city’s new COVID-inspired fiscal budget. Cuts to agencies and layoffs of city workers were the theme. However, the mayor claimed to have taken $1 billion out of the police’s budget and diverted it to other city services. It was a response to the nationwide “defund the police” movement birthed by anti-police brutality protests.
But was his response true to the demands or was it all a sham? Some activists and elected officials are metaphorically dying on the hill of the latter.
New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said the $1 billion cut to the NYPD is an illusion that just moves officers to other agencies and doesn’t actually reinvest in communities or offer a non-law enforcement approach to social, medical and educational issues. She said the alleged cuts will satisfy no one and the mayor needs to pull cops off of protestors and end “Broken Windows” policing.
“We need more trained social workers, conflict mitigators, and outreach workers,” stated Lieberman. “But above all, we must eliminate excessive harmful contact with police, and the most effective way to do that is to significantly cut the number of officers on the force. This budget fails to do that. Politicians cannot proclaim that Black Lives Matter and condemn the NYPD’s systemic violence without action.
“If the budget does not significantly reduce the number of officers and reinvest savings into communities, council members must vote no,” stated Lieberman.
Under the new budget, the city will allegedly cut $1 billion from the police department’s $6 billion budget and claims to shift the money to other agencies and social services. One example the city has given is handing over the reins to the Department of Education to run the school safety program, which represents a $400 million shift in money from the department. However, the DOE’s already financially responsible for the program to the tune of $300 million. That money goes directly to the police department.
While, the budget halts the incoming class of officers this month, it does nothing to stop the training of new officers in October. Despite the city claiming that he has no power to do it, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said he planned on preventing the execution of the budget, as it stands, under New York City Charter CH. 58, Section 1518. Williams said the lack of a hiring freeze for police in the budget was one of the main reasons why.
“It sends a message to New Yorkers that in a time of economic and public health devastation, the city cannot adequately fund senior services, city hospitals, or youth jobs, cannot afford to hire doctors, nurses, teachers, guidance counselors, social workers––but unquestionably needs to add over 1,000 police officers,” stated Williams. “It perpetuates the idea that the NYPD is sacrosanct and the solution is always more police, and that we must accept this. This budget reiterates that message in a failure to commit on paper to a just transition for school safety. It is one that I cannot support and will not sign off on.”
The budget also includes taking the traffic enforcement agents from the jurisdiction of the NYPD to other city agencies and includes a limit on overtime. The city will also designate $500 million in capital funds for broadband to NYCHA developments and construction of community centers.
Brooklyn-based New York City Council Member Inez Barron noted that capital construction projects take around three or five years to complete.
“In 2015, I was the only councilmember to vote against the budget because it called for an increase of 1,200 police officers, which I felt was unnecessary and potentially harmful for our communities,” said Barron in a statement sent to the AmNews. “For this budget vote, I am glad that other like-minded colleagues saw the inadequacies of the budget proposals as regards the NYPD and realized that we need to ensure that we get to the root causes of police misconduct.
“It transcends ‘training’ or ‘re-training,’ Barron continued. “It requires a model of community-based solutions, major infusion of jobs, generous health access and culturally-sensitive education. We must remember that NYPD came into existence in 1845 to act as ‘slave-catchers’ not peace officers. This is why people across the county are calling for the dismantling of police departments and the creation of community-controlled policing.”
Attempts to contact City Hall were unsuccessful, but the mayor did discuss another element involving defunding the police during a media briefing on Tuesday, July 7.
“Another form of redistribution will be to demand more of companies that have really, really profited without doing what they should do for our communities,” said de Blasio. “So, we’re going to fight for a new state law to force internet companies to actually pay the City of New York for the use of our streets. They’re profiting, but they’re not paying their fair share. We need them to pay.”
The mayor, however, didn’t state how they’d make these companies pay, how they’d fight against the law and how the money would be spent to fight said law.
The collectively raised eyebrow towards de Blasio could be seen as far as Washington, D.C. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) said that if what the detractors saying are true, it’s another example of city government bowing down to law enforcement.
“Defunding police means defunding police. It does not mean budget tricks or funny math,” stated Ocasio-Cortez. “It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so that the exact same police remain in schools. It does not mean counting overtime cuts as cuts, even as NYPD ignores every attempt by City Council to curb overtime spending and overspends on overtime anyways. It does not mean hiring more police officers while cutting more than $800M from NYC schools. If these reports are accurate, then these proposed ‘cuts’ to NYPD’s budget are a disingenuous illusion. This is not a victory. The fight to defund policing continues.”