Criminal justice reform groups across the city spent this past week on court-watch duty for misdemeanor arraignments in hopes of exerting pressure on Mayor Zohran Mamdani to scale back lower-level police enforcement, which disproportionately affects Black New Yorkers, according to statistics.
Courtwatching efforts have long served as an accountability measure toward judges and prosecutors by deploying volunteer monitors to deter unfair legal practices through public presence and track metrics regarding bail and delays. This week’s action also targets Mamdani because the NYPD is the first point of contact that most New Yorkers encounter when navigating the criminal legal justice system.
“So many New Yorkers want issues in their communities addressed,” said VOCAL-NY organizer Nick Encalada-Malinowski. “We don’t want people to have to sleep on the trains; they should be housed. We don’t want family members to be in conflict. But if you spend a couple hours in criminal court you can’t help but understand that putting the police, jails, and the court system onto these issues is not an effective government intervention into actually addressing these issues. In many cases, it makes things worse.”
Participants dedicated the court-watch action to Black August, which honors Black political prisoners and freedom struggles in the African diaspora. They pointed to Mamdani’s campaign promise for a then-Department of Community Safety, which vowed to take a “public health approach” to public safety. Best known for reforming mental health response, the proposal also looked at deploying civilian responders, rather than police, to address disorderly conduct on the streets and in the subways, particularly in regard to homelessness.
Last year, Mamdani blamed a “desire for police to fulfill each and every responsibility” for a frayed social safety net and hoped his Department of Community Safety would win back the public’s trust. Ultimately, the proposal was launched earlier this year as the Office of Community Safety, rather than as a department. Police reform advocates around the city publicly or privately backed Mamdani’s campaign as a result, typically with genuine enthusiasm.
However, Gothamist reported surges in criminal summonses issued under the new administration earlier this year, particularly for fare evasion. When NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch was retained, so were her quality-of-life enforcement initiatives launched under former Mayor Eric Adams, which cracked down on these lower offenses, all while violent and serious crime numbers plummeted in the city. Frustrations boiled over this year among police reform advocates, particularly after a woman named Samantha Randazzo, in custody for minor charges, gave birth on a Brooklyn courtroom bench she was shackled to in May.
Activist Robert Gangi, who heads a similar court-monitoring initiative year-round through his nonprofit PROP, released a report in April concluding that “the first 100 days of Mamdani’s mayoral term demonstrate how NYPD arrest practices remain as marked by a stark racial bias as the numbers we observed during Adams’s recent term. In fact, they may even be worse.”
However, police reform proponents also see Mamdani as more amenable than Adams, as evidenced by a recently successful push to axe an additional police headcount increase. Many groups involved with this week’s action also participated in the efforts against the NYPD hirings. They hope courtwatching will show the real human impact, as well as provide a real-time demographic snapshot of who gets funneled into courts for minor offenses, rather than relying on city data, which is released much later. When asked about it during a press conference, Mamdani said he looked forward to the release of the findings.
“They’re going to observe these kinds of proceedings, that’s an important part of our criminal legal system,” said Mamdani. “And I’ve made very clear that I don’t believe New Yorkers should have to choose between safety and justice. We have to be able to deliver both of these things. And, I was sharing earlier about some of the achievements that our administration is proud of when it comes to the fewest murders on record and comes to the fewest shooting incidents on record. And also, we know that every single day is an opportunity to do better. So I look forward to the findings and we’ll review those.”
Among the organizations was the Justice Committee, which advocates for families affected by police violence. The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) and VOCAL-NY, which focus heavily on preventing overdose deaths, also participated because low-level enforcement is linked to increases in deadly opioid use. The country’s oldest public defender law firm, the Legal Aid Society, which often represents the same defendants facing these minor offenses, also participated.
Toni Smith, DPA’s New York State director, recalled a small number of defendants going up to the judge during her shift at the Manhattan courts. They were exclusively Black New Yorkers who faced minor offenses like petty larceny.
“Court-watching really highlights [that] every single one of these arrests has a human impact,” said Smith. “From having to go through the trauma of being arrested, waiting [to come] before a judge … even short periods of detention can be really harmful and sometimes deadly, and that is definitely true for people who are in active substance use who don’t always receive adequate medical care when they are detained and if they go into withdrawal or experience other health complications.”
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who long advocated for an agency like the Office of Community Safety, also joined the morning courtwatch. He called what he witnessed a “disconnect between what we want to see happening and what’s happening with low-level arrests.”
“My staff saw what appeared to be an older Black gentleman who’s experiencing chronic homelessness, and from their vantage point, [he] seemed fairly incoherent,” said Williams. “He was given conditional release as long as he doesn’t have any police contact for six months. He wasn’t connected to any kind of support system or services. Seemed that he struggled to understand some of the instructions that would be given to him after, and I can almost bet that he is going to reoffend in the next six months. I don’t know [if] the system’s working to be a deterrent and folks are ending up here who actually need some kind of care and support.”
On Monday afternoon in Manhattan, Freedom Agenda advocates took on shifts, including campaigns coordinator Ryan Acquaotta. The organization stems from the Campaign to Close Rikers and remains generally complimentary of the Mamdani administration’s plans to improve city jail conditions and install several leading criminal justice reform leaders into official city government positions, but its members believe these efforts start on the front end by reducing low-level enforcement and general public interaction with police.
That afternoon in the Manhattan courtroom went by rather quietly, with Acquaotta jotting down details as a barely audible judge read out the charges. Each courtwatcher carried sheets to keep track of defendants, along with their race or ethnicity, gender, and charges. They also recorded whether the person in front of the judge experienced mental health or housing concerns.
The findings will be published and announced on August 13 outside the Manhattan Criminal Court. Two progressive council members, Sandy Nurse and Lincoln Restler, and Democratic socialist state assemblymember Emily Gallagher are scheduled to unveil the data collected from the courtwatch. All three electeds, along with Williams, originally endorsed Mamdani last year in the Democratic primary and remain key political allies of the left-wing mayor.
Update: The advocates ultimately viewed more than 360 arraignments and recorded around 93% of people charged appeared to be nonwhite in largely suspected results. They also reported more than 50 instances of mental health conditions, substance use or homelessness. Most arraignments stemmed from misdemeanor charges, including low level offenses like petty larceny and drug possession.
