Dear friends,
There are a lot of reminders this week that we need to invest in communities and defund the police. I know those three little words — defund the police — shut a lot of people down, but please stay with me.
If you prefer to start with vision and move to details, take a look at this zine that my springling sent me.
Practicing Abolition, Creating Community comes from Project NIA, with text by Benji Hart and illustrations by Emma Li.
Mayor Adams called for a three percent cut in all city agencies last week; the only exemptions he named initially were the Health Department, jail system, public hospital system, and the Medical Examiner. But then, he said, ‘oh wait.’ And suggested that the NYPD’s multi-billion budget would not be on the chopping block.
Meanwhile, the answer to every question seems to be “more police.” Perhaps you are familiar with Maslow's hammer — the bias that makes everything look like a nail. [I am not exempt; I see every event as a teachable moment.]
On January 6, many days before Michelle Go was pushed to her death in the Times Square subway station, Governor Hochul, with Mayor Adams beside her, promised a plan for outreach services to people experiencing homelessness. The only part of the promised plan that has materialized is more police — about a thousand more officers — in the subways.
Six officers were at the Times Square station during the time when Go was killed — including two on the same platform she was pushed from — but they were not able to stop the tragedy from unfolding.
I would not expect that they could. I am on the lookout for a worthy proposal we should support to provide services to people with serious mental illness.
I was heartened to learn about a new initiative, announced this week on Coney Island Avenue, to improve pedestrian safety. The mayor appeared with his new Transportation and Police Commissioners.
DOT will make design improvements to make 1,000 intersections safer with improved traffic signals, raised crosswalks, and other expanded pedestrian space and visibility measures. Empowered by a new traffic rule protecting pedestrians that takes effect today, the NYPD will immediately begin expanded enforcement against drivers who fail to recognize the primacy of pedestrians in crosswalks.
The bold above is mine.
Historically, traffic enforcement by the NYPD has been riddled with bias and violence. Design solutions, including automated enforcement using red-light and speed cameras, are far more effective, less costly, and less biased, and certainly less violent.
Ultimately, however, the city should be able to control its own streets. For years, New York City’s Department of Transportation (DOT) has had tremendous success implementing pilot enforcement programs, proving that they should not be micromanaged on street safety. The city council and the next mayor must push for legislation that would give them blanket authority to enforce moving and parking violations on its own streets through camera enforcement. The Council should also enact a law, modeled on one in Massachusetts, to ensure that law enforcement needs a warrant to access any data collected from DOT cameras. This will prevent traffic cameras from becoming a nefarious surveillance tool.
A newly published audit shows that while the NYPD had been reporting progress on handing off clerical duties to civilian employees — an important cost-cutting measure — the data does not hold up. In fact, there are conflicting datasets.
Uniformed cops have handled paperwork for decades, despite multiple legal rulings ordering the Police Department to replace those officers with non-uniformed staff known as police administrative aides.
Ralph Palladino, recently retired second vice president of District Council 37’s Local 1549, which represents civilian administrative aides, and other supporters of so-called civilianization say replacing the cops, whose relatively high salaries are ostensibly in line with the dangers they face, with clerical workers would save the city an estimated $30 million a year and free up more officers for street patrols.
And while $30 million is a small fraction of the NYPD budget, it would more than double the budget of the folks who are trying to protect the public from the police.
At present, the CCRB employs a staff of 260 with a budget of $24.5 million, an increase from the previous year as a result of the agency’s expansion to include the new unit investigating incidents of racial bias in policing — but a fraction of the more than $10 billion, 35,000-strong police force the CCRB is charged with overseeing.
I’ve barely touched the tip of this iceberg today, but it seemed like a good day to revisit my original mission of fighting white supremacy and ending over-policing.
For the big picture, read Practicing Abolition, Creating Community.
Have a good weekend!
with love,
L