In 2021, police arrested Black New Yorkers 611 times for theft of services, a misdemeanor charge largely represented by fare evasion. Arrest numbers soared to 2,993 last year.
Police Reform Organizing Project (PROP) founder Robert Gangi believes such raw data, obtained from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), demonstrate trends in escalating “broken windows policing” practices.
“[Broken windows policing is] where there’s a concentration on arresting and ticketing people who engage in what is loosely referred to as quality of life crimes,” said Gangi. “And in some cases, they’re not technically crimes—for example, if you’re arrested for disorderly conduct, that’s not considered a crime. That’s considered a violation. The theory is if you target these low-level offenses, you’ll have a significant effect in reducing more serious crimes like manslaughter or rape or homicide.”
Second-degree murder arrest rates of Black New Yorkers remained steadily at 2% from 2021 to 2023, with a small increase each year reflecting a general rise in criminal charges. The one-time mayoral candidate Gangi found that roughly 88.5% of misdemeanor arrests involve non-white New Yorkers. Within the two-year span, misdemeanor arrests of Black New Yorkers jumped from 32,436 to 45,776.
To be clear, arrests of white New Yorkers also grew between 2021 and 2023, but more than half of felony arrests and roughly 44% of misdemeanor arrests in New York City involved a Black person last year, the most of any racial category. Gangi said these numbers echo similar findings previously made by PROP while monitoring arraignment parts.
A DCJS spokesperson told the AmNews that the report stems from agency data of the 20 most frequent arrest charges in New York City between 2021 and 2023 from January to December. The findings were solely determined by PROP, but the statistics were formatted per request by the state agency.
The NYPD responded with an email statement maintaining that the department enforces the law impartially and said officers are not directed to conduct specific stop numbers.
“When responding to all manners of requests for assistance, performing stops of any kind, or enforcing the law, NYPD officers carry out their work without consideration of race or ethnicity, and the NYPD will continue to address conditions in a fair and equitable manner, and in direct response to community concerns,” said the police spokesperson. “This is the public safety that New Yorkers expect and deserve.”
The uptick in arrests coincides with the appointment of the city’s first Black woman police commissioner and first Latino police commissioner, although Gangi said history shows that a more diverse police force cannot change existing practices.
“Whether you’re white, Black, brown; whether you’re a woman or a man; whether you’re gay or straight, you have to get with the program,” he said, “and the program in the current NYPD is to target low-level offenses in primarily Black and brown communities.”
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.