The mayor at a policing press conference (Mayor's Office)
People joke that New Yorkers think our city is the center of the universe, but judging by the recent media coverage, you’d think the rest of the country fell off the map. As we respond to the heartbreaking surge in shootings, many are quick to link the trend to civil rights protections like bail reform or the repeal of the controversial police secrecy statute 50-a. But the truth is that this isn’t a New York City problem, it’s a national crisis, with homicides up in nearly every city.
Of course, New Yorkers are right to worry more about crimes in our own communities, but as we grasp for explanations, we have to remember that more than local issues are to blame. New York’s homicide rate was up nearly 40% last year, but it was up 33% for all major cities.
Yet none of this has stopped NYPD leaders, police unions, and others from weaponizing the crime spike in a cynical effort to push back on recent historic civil rights protections. Every time a high-profile crime occurs, they blame “the do-nothing pols,” without ever really showing how politicians have supposedly undermined safety. And if New York’s leaders were somehow culpable for our city’s crime surge, just how did they manage to do the same nationwide? The argument makes no sense.
Instead, police boosters keep doubling down on this big lie: that we have to choose between safety and equity. That we have to allow them to act with impunity or somehow society will fall apart. But the truth is that we’ve seen this playbook before, far too many times, and we know where it leads.
If police use this moment to roll back civil rights, New Yorkers will suffer. One of the laws that the police unions hate most was the repeal of section 50-a. This long-standing statute was reinterpreted by the de Blasio administration to block public access to police disciplinary files. The unions fought the move to repeal 50-a tooth and nail, including going to court to block it, and they lost.
Now, as a result, the public has access to years of abuse allegations against officers, detailing the ways New Yorkers’ rights were violated and bodies brutalized. Is this making New York less safe? Not unless you’re an abusive cop.
Next, they complain about the years-long campaign to reform bail abuse in New York. Prior to last year’s reforms, New Yorkers were routinely held for months, even years, simply because they couldn’t afford to pay bail. Under our bail laws, poverty was a death sentence for New Yorkers like Kalief Browder and Layleen Polanco. But New York quickly rolled back some of the bail laws last year, and thousands of New Yorkers are still being held on bail, even now, in the middle of a pandemic.
It would be bad enough if it were only the NYPD and police unions spreading this fiction, but many leading candidates for mayor have joined them. In the aftermath of a tragic shooting in Times Square, which wounded a small child, Eric Adams and Andrew Yang railed against police reforms and promised the return of deadly and abusive plainclothes police units. Neither candidate could explain how such officers would have prevented this horrific attack, and both almost exclusively avoided the tragic history of what plainclothes police have done in the past.
Plainclothes units were disbanded after last summer’s protests against police violence, but it was only the most recent time. The same squad had been disbanded two decades prior (and later reassembled) after officers shot Amadou Diallo 41 times.
While it’s clear that plainclothes officers are more prone to complaints of violence and excessive force, it’s not clear how they help supposedly lower crime. In the past, officers spent most of their time on discredited tactics like stop and frisk, subjecting Black and Latino New Yorkers to constant harassment.
We’re all desperate to return to the pre-pandemic city we love, but telling the public policing fairy tales won’t get us there. The sad, somber truth is that as long as we face massive unemployment and insecurity, desolate streets, and closed-down classrooms, no police policy will help. We just can’t arrest our way out of a pandemic.
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Albert Fox Cahn is the founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) and a fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and the Engelberg Center for Innovation Law & Policy at New York University School of Law. On Twitter @FoxCahn.
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Nurses help (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
Dear Mayor de Blasio and other city budget decision-makers,
The federal government recently provided funds for our school system to recover from the pandemic as part of the American Rescue Plan’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER). In addition, New York State has fully funded the Foundation Aid formula for the first time since 2007. A public health crisis brought our city to a grinding halt in early 2020, and the decade-old school nurse crisis has reached a zenith of daily shortages, anger over working conditions, and pay inequity. New York City has enough money to care for the health of our students in schools. School nurses must be included in the next city budget, for fiscal year 2022, due by July 1.
The health and welfare of children in schools has not been a priority for this administration. There is a crisis in our schools due to a severe shortage of Permanent Full Time Nurses. With over 400 vacancies citywide, our children are at risk.
These are the facts that you and other decision-makers have chosen to ignore. First, it is difficult to attract nurses at a lower salary that is uncompetitive with the industry’s prevailing wage for nurses. School nurses are essential, yet the average pay for a Department of Health/Mental Health (DOHMH) Public Health School Nurse is approximately $62,000 per year. Registered Nurses in New York City are paid on average $84,000. Retention for school nurses is therefore poor: approximately 50% leave the job in 3-6 months.
Further, Department of Education (DOE) nurses are paid more (and work fewer hours) but there is a three-year wait list to get one of those coveted spots. This pay disparity between DOE and DOHMH School Nurses negatively impacts the work environment. We demand equal pay for equal work. In addition, DOHMH nurses perform the same professional job and role in the school for a lower salary and fewer benefits. DOHMH nurses are also first responders for city emergencies.
During the Pandemic, Travel Nurses were hired from around the country and paid higher rates, put up in hotels, and paid a daily meal stipend – amounting to about double the rate that our local nurses get but for doing less work. As you know, these traveling nurses are leaving New York City at the end of this school year, which is the main reason we stand to have 400 vacancies with no plan to solve the problem before the 2021-2022 school year.
In addition, School Nurses are engaged in direct and preventative care with an emphasis on family involvement. In New York City Schools, there are greater than 200,000 children with asthma, greater than 2,000 diabetic children, greater than 40,000 children with severe allergies requiring EPI pens, and countless others with both physical and emotional disabilities. Without proper care, children suffer. This spring alone, we lost a child to asthma in Harlem who should have had access to his school nurse. Multiple children died by suicide in New York City, and we nurses know that the health of our students must be prioritized as our schools fully reopen.
You have chosen to outsource nurses to save money, but contract nurses do not have access to online health records (ASHR) or develop relationships within their school communities. Taxpayers don’t even benefit from the savings, because of unintended consequences such as lawsuits, like the one involving families with diabetic children and the American Diabetes Association.
Perhaps what’s most dangerous is the fact that dozens of schools go unstaffed each school day, leading to scheduling changes. School nurses are frequently expected to leave their schools unattended and travel to other schools to administer medications and treatments. If a school nurse cannot get there, the Principal often calls 911 if a child needs care. And if no nurse can be staffed for the day, the Principal contacts the parent of a child with a medical need before school to keep the student at home for the day.
Finally, conditions in medical rooms need improvement. Many medical rooms do not have air conditioning and proper ventilation. This can have a number of negative outcomes, including compromising children with asthma when they are being treated by the nurse.
People take notice when there are emergencies and fatalities, but by then it’s too late. We need to take action now, we have the funds from the state and federal governments, and we must prioritize the health of the children in our schools. The only right choice is to hire permanent, full-time nurses for our schools.
Respectfully,
School Nurses
P.S. We will be rallying to make this call of our elected leaders on the steps of 52 Chambers Street on Wednesday, May 26, at 5 p.m. if you care to join us.
This open letter is signed by retired DOHMH Nurse Supervisor Mary Lawson, two other retired nurses and nurse supervisors, and 25 working nurses from DOE and DOHMH and all five boroughs. Most signers have preferred to remain anonymous due to their employment situations and fear of adverse career impacts from coming forward.
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Ruben Diaz Jr. (photo via Bronx Borough President's office)
Term limits mean a slew of hotly-contested races every eight years in New York City. This year, not only is the mayor’s race in this category, but the race to succeed outgoing Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. is too, yet it is one that is unfortunately attracting little attention.
The Bronx borough president race has five candidates on the ballot: Fernando Cabrera, Nathalia Fernandez, Vanessa Gibson, Sammy Ravelo, and Luis Sepulveda. Four of these five candidates are currently in elected office, come to the race with some name recognition in their respective districts, and are funded adequately with public matching money.
Historically, the Bronx Borough President position has been significant for Latinos. As the only Latino-majority borough in the City of New York, the Bronx has elected four Latinos to represent its borough in the last 50 years. The first Latino elected to the position was the iconic Herman Badillo, who won the position in 1965. Badillo’s victory was a pivotal moment in New York City Latino political history, and came at a time at which the Latino population in the borough (mostly Puerto Rican) was growing. This growth eventually led to an increase in Latino political representation; one that, at least in the Bronx, was paved by the likes of Badillo.
Badillo went on to run for mayor a number of times, but fell short of making history by being the first Latino to occupy Gracie Mansion.
Twenty years later, Fernando Ferrer became the second Latino to occupy the seat of Bronx borough president. During his 14 years of service, the “Bronx is burning” image of the borough began to dissipate. New development and new businesses replaced abandoned buildings, and with them came more jobs. Ferrer then tried to take his vision citywide, running for mayor in 2001 and 2005. He won the Democratic primary in 2005 but lost to Michael Bloomberg in the general election. Since then, Latinos have not had another prominent and recognized Latino candidate for mayor.
Adolfo Carrion succeeded Ferrer and like him made a bid for Gracie Mansion, but fell well short. In a special election to replace Carrion, who had accepted a position in the Obama White House, Ruben Diaz, Jr. won and has been the borough president since. Diaz, Jr. was at one point a candidate for the mayoralty and was considered in the top tier until he dropped out of the race.
All four of the Latino borough presidents in the Bronx, by virtue of the (largely symbolic) influence of their borough-wide posts, positioned themselves for the mayoralty and have been, until Dianne Morales' current candidacy, the only credible and viable Latino candidates for the mayoralty.
Having several viable Latino candidates on the ballot, all from different sections of the Bronx, may splinter the Latino vote, paving the way for a possible victory by Vanessa Gibson and the first non-Latino Bronx borough president in 35 years. The current voter rolls give us an indication that this may be a distinct possibility. Among the entire Democratic electorate, Latinos make up the largest share among all ethnic categories in the Bronx, with 285,586 voters. Black voters are second with 191,944.
My theory has some quantifiable backing in the poll commissioned by StudentsFirstNY and undertaken by the reputable Benenson Strategy Group. The poll shows Gibson with a lead and the Latino candidates receiving between 9% and 12% of the vote-share among those polled.
Of the four Latinos in this year’s borough president race, City Council Member Fernando Cabrera has raised the most money and has received more public matching money than any other candidate. While he comes into the race with significant legislative experience, his conservative social values have been a cause of concern for many in the borough.
Nathalia Fernandez is the only Latina in the race and placed second in the aforementioned April poll. She has the least amount of money left in her coffers, so she may run into some difficulty getting her message across to a borough-wide electorate. Sepulveda and Ravelo round out the rest of the field.
Though this is an expansive, borough-wide race, media exposure and voter attention will largely be focused on the mayoral race. These next few weeks are therefore a critical time for the candidates to get their names and message before the Bronx electorate.
Will Latinos splinter their votes? If so, will the Bronx, the only Latino-majority borough in the city, elect its first non-Latino borough president in 35 years? We’ll know soon.
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Eli Valentin is an adjunct lecturer at Union Theological Seminary, a frequent guest political analyst at Univision NY and author of the forthcoming, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Political Life. On Twitter @EliValentinNY.
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