Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Opinion

Opinion

Rightsizing the Police Budget will Enable a Safer, Healthier and More Equitable City


2 right budget

NYPD (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)


On April 26, Mayor de Blasio presented his executive budget plan for the city’s next fiscal year, FY22, which begins July 1. In it, he included slight increases to the NYPD’s budget. This comes on the heels of the largest civil rights movement in a generation demanding reinvestments and the heartbreaking murders of Adam Toledo and Daunte Wright. If I were in the City Council now, I would fight for a right-sized police budget and deep investments into community care when the adopted budget is agreed upon in June. This is what the majority of New York City Democrats want.

I want to address my neighbors who, like myself, wish to prioritize community safety, but believe that policing is the only way to achieve safe communities. It’s time to have the hard conversations and courage to do what it takes to actually make our city safer, healthier, and more equitable. 

To start, let’s unpack just how disproportionate our police budget currently is. The NYPD’s budget is so bloated that it would be the 33rd largest military budget in the world. According to Communities United for Police Reform, for every $1 New York City spends on policing and incarcerating our neighbors, we only spend $0.01 on workforce investment, $0.12 on youth and community development, $0.25 on the Department of Health, and $0.19 on Housing Preservation and Development. If a budget is a statement of priorities, this speaks volumes: we are more interested in policing than we are in investing in healthy, safe communities and programming proven to actually prevent crime.

In the context of New York City’s budget, a “yes” to one thing is always a “no” to something else. Unlike the federal government, New York City must have a balanced budget by law. Every dollar we spend on the NYPD is a dollar we take away from another agency. 

With that in mind, here are three ways in which reinvesting city money can make our communities safer and healthier:  

1) In 2019, the city spent over $70 million on policing homeless people. This neither solves homelessness nor prevents crime, and reinforces the cycle of homelessness by criminalizing, alienating, or incarcerating those without a home. A far more productive use of that money would be to provide permanent supportive housing with wraparound services to actually help solve homelessness in New York City.

2) We spend over $451 million on police in our school system; meanwhile 45% of schools have had no social workers. Police presence fuels the school-to-prison pipeline, and when a student becomes entangled in the justice system, they are up to four times more likely to drop out. Just last week, I met a constituent whose teen daughter had attempted suicide the month before, and had yet to hear from the school on how she would be supported. Make no mistake; the lack of social workers negatively impacts all of our kids, in every single neighborhood. The mayor announced more investment in social workers for schools, but we can and must go farther.

3) The NYPD spent $96 million in 2019 on drug-related arrests. Arresting someone for drug usage perpetuates harm while doing nothing to solve addiction or keep us safe. Instead of policing users, we should be investing in addiction treatment services, safe injection sites, and overdose prevention. Substance abuse disorder is a health issue, not a criminal or moral one. 

There is also a racial justice component to these examples. Black and Latino New Yorkers made up 83.8% of those arrested for drug usage in 2019 despite similar usage rates across races. Black and Latino students made up over 90% of those arrested in the most recent school year, while often coming from the most under-funded schools. In the New York City Department of Homeless Services shelters, 89% of heads of households are Black or Latino. Police violence is a public health epidemic and is a leading cause of death for young Black men in America. So, when we talk about how to invest in community safety, racial justice needs to be of central concern.

Some argue that despite historic pre-pandemic lows, violent crime went up last year, and may use increased gun violence statistics as evidence that we need to keep the police budget intact.  

We need to look at the very obvious contexts for the increase in some categories of crime. We are in dire socio-economic and financial straits, with widespread unemployment amidst a year of near-lockdown. Even Republican-led cities that increased their police budgets have seen crime increase at virtually identical rates. Unemployment and economic instability are proven drivers of crime. The answer isn’t more police—it’s to address the root causes of that instability by ushering in deep investments in vulnerable communities. 

Nationwide, there is little evidence that shows increased police budgets result in less crime, while there is ample evidence that shows better societal conditions, healthier communities, and widespread employment does reduce crime. 

Healthy communities are safe communities. It’s time we prioritize our schools, health care, housing, social services, and the needs of our city’s workers while building a future where solutions are rooted in community care and justice.

***
Aleda Gagarin is a mother, non-profit leader, community activist, and City Council candidate running in the 29th District in Queens to represent Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Rego Park and Richmond Hill. On Twitter @AledaGagarin.

***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

‘Open Restaurants’ Shouldn’t Close Them Down


food center frank ies dot

Outdoor dining (photo: @NYC_DOT)


Surviving as a restaurant in New York City was never easy. But more than a year of indoor dining restrictions and the economic ruin of a global pandemic brought many restaurants that were able to hold on to the brink of bankruptcy. That is why we cheered when the city announced the permanent extension of the Open Restaurants program back in September, preserving an estimated 90,000 jobs by letting more restaurants serve customers outdoors. 

If properly implemented, Open Restaurants should help lessen the pandemic’s economic impact on business owners and restaurant workers, including women, people of color, immigrants, and New Yorkers of all stripes who work in the restaurant industry. Unfortunately, the program has proved costly for the restaurant owners it was meant to help. It’s time for the city to fix it.

Open Restaurants has been plagued by challenges from the start. Restaurants had to use their remaining cash to build outdoor structures for their customers. Then came a cascade of costly, chaotic rules and regulations that changed month to month. The rollout of the safety barrier policy – intended to safeguard patrons from the danger of passing cars – left owners frustrated after the city failed to provide the free barriers it promised, only to then change its mind regarding what types of barriers were sufficient. Many restaurants had to pay out of pocket to construct, and then re-construct, their own barriers at a time when they could barely afford to keep their staffs employed. 

Six months after the program was made permanent, problems persist. Restaurant owners report that inspectors aggressively and inconsistently fine and issue cease and desist orders to “out of compliance” restaurants with hardly any time to remedy the violation.

Rather than regulating restaurants into ruin and their workers into unemployment, our city should bolster the Open Restaurants program so that it actually works with restaurants, rather than against them. 

First, the city should provide restaurants with the clear guidance and resources they need to protect patrons. The city should actively engage restaurant owners to understand the hurdles they faced during the initial rollout of the Open Restaurants program; their direct feedback will better inform a regulatory framework that supports restaurants and keeps patrons safe.

Second, the city should not enforce cease and desist orders against restaurants that make a good faith effort to comply with regulations. A cease and desist order can kill a business by forcing it to shut down, at least temporarily putting staff out of work. As long as restaurant owners are taking active steps to comply with the regulations, they should feel secure in the certainty that they will be able to stay open. The New York State Liquor Authority should also adopt a similarly transparent, fair, and consistent enforcement approach to liquor licensing. 

Finally, going beyond the Open Restaurants program, the city must codify its commitment to restaurants and small businesses alike. The Mayor just announced a $159 million investment in small business recovery and job training; we should increase this funding so that resources are available for small businesses in all of our communities and beyond this coming fiscal year. More so, at a time when thousands are still looking for work, we should invest additional funding in Apprentice NYC, a program that helps New Yorkers learn skills in industries including food service. Let’s also make sure our small business owners are aware of these programs by committing to direct outreach and informational campaigns.    

As the city works to fully reopen and support small businesses, it must take a comprehensive and thoughtful approach to address the Open Restaurants program’s flaws. Before the pandemic, the city’s 23,000 restaurants and bars employed 1 out every 12 private-sector workers in New York. The Open Restaurants program is our chance to save this vital industry. Let’s make it stronger, so our restaurants can safely declare themselves open for business.

***
Mark Levine is currently the City Council member for Manhattan’s District 7 and Chair of the City Council Health Committee. He is running to serve as Manhattan’s next Borough President. Shaun Abreu is a tenants’ rights attorney who represents low-income families from Northern Manhattan in housing court, and a candidate for City Council in Manhattan’s District 7. On Twitter @MarkLevineNYC & @ShaunAbreu.

***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Manhattan DA’s Own Data Proves Racist Prosecution Fuels Mass Incarceration in New York


1 mda data

Manhattan DA Cy Vance (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


As I write this many are breathing a sigh of relief for the guilty verdict returned in the trial of Derek Chauvin. However, we must not forget that prosecution is an intrinsic part of the racist law enforcement regime that resulted in the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, Ma’Khia Bryant, and hundreds of others killed by police officers in the last year. 

In June, Manhattanites, myself included, will vote in the primary for the top cop in Manhattan—the District Attorney—and it’s long past time we examined how this office perpetuates violence through mass criminalization and incarceration right here at home. 

New York City invests millions of dollars into prosecution, yet district attorney offices are purposefully opaque about their decision-making and the scope of harm they inflict on communities of color. Through my work at the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund and our court watching program, Court Watch NYC, I have become intimately familiar with the trauma, abuse, and torture carried out by district attorney offices.

In Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s courtroom, I’ve seen families torn apart by pretrial detention, people shackled and held to ransom for bail, and parents waiting in fear, hoping their children can come home. Yet, this only scratches the surface of the harm that prosecutors cause Black and brown communities. 

Last month, District Attorney Vance released data on Manhattan prosecutions dating back to 2013. Vance’s data dump provides evidence of racism inherent to a system over which the Manhattan DA holds considerable power. An analysis of data from Vance’s own dashboard shows that in 2020 his office was 43% more likely to request bail and 25% less likely to decline prosecution if the person accused was Black or Latino. Black and Latino people are also more likely to be jailed pretrial in Manhattan and incarcerated if convicted. This, along with data from the New York City Department of Correction that show one-third of the current daily population in New York City jails come from the borough of Manhattan, further demonstrates that the Manhattan DA’s office is a driving force of mass incarceration in New York City, funneling mostly Black and brown people through a system that destabilizes communities, separates families, and upends—or takes—lives. 

Despite Manhattan experiencing a 50% reduction in case intake between 2013 and 2019—largely due to the organizing efforts of directly impacted New Yorkers to limit Vance’s discretion to lock people up—the office’s budget and staffing have actually grown. The Manhattan DA’s budget now stands at a whopping $147 million, not including over $700 million the office holds in forfeiture funds, which it uses to target poor and working class communities of color. 

While the data dashboard shows the harmful impact of the district attorney’s office on Black and brown communities and the need to significantly reduce the office’s size, scope, and resources, it is a far cry from what Vance claims is a “groundbreaking move toward transparency.” As with any packaged data, its authors curate what they choose to show and what information they keep to themselves. Without unfiltered case-level data, Vance's dashboard is only the tip of the iceberg. What's below the waterline?

Recognizing that prosecutors can never deliver the justice Black and brown communities need, at the very least, every district attorney in New York City should be required to produce anonymized case-level data. Only then would the public begin to glean the full scope of prosecutors’ impact on communities of color. Each candidate for Manhattan District Attorney should commit to continuing what Vance has started here, go further by including the underlying anonymized case-level data, and ensure that all of their office policies and practices are aimed at shrinking the size of a violent carceral system, including the office itself. 

In the meantime, DA Vance should use the remainder of his tenure as Manhattan District Attorney to address the violence his office has caused individuals, families, and communities for over a decade and reduce prosecutions moving forward.  

***
Zoë Adel is the criminal legal advocacy manager at the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund.

***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.



Print Friendly and PDF

Editor's Choice


Gotham Gazette: New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
Gotham Gazette: 
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
Gotham Gazette: 
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Gotham Gazette: 
City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years