Council Speaker Corey Johnson, at podium (photos: William Alatriste)
Just after he was elected Speaker of the City Council on January 3, Corey Johnson had some initial business to take care of: naming a temporary rules committee, including a chairperson. And in this first official decision in his new role, Johnson made a relatively small but important move that is emblematic of the broad shift in the City Council and larger city political dynamics at play in Johnson’s election.
Toward the end of an emotional and intense initial meeting of the new City Council class, at which Johnson, a Democrat, won 48 of 49 votes to lead the 51-seat legislative body for the next four years, the new speaker nominated an interim rules committee, including himself, as is customary, to be led by Queens Council Member Rory Lancman.
Johnson had just been elected speaker with the support of the Bronx County Democratic Party and the Queens County Democratic Party, which is led by Congressional Rep. Joe Crowley, whom he thanked profusely from the floor of the Council chambers as Crowley looked down from the balcony. The situation was unlike that of Johnson’s predecessor, Melissa Mark-Viverito, who became speaker in 2014 after winning the support of a unified Council Progressive Caucus, powerful labor unions, Mayor Bill de Blasio, and members of the Brooklyn Democratic County Party. Four years ago, Mark-Viverito named Brooklyn Council Member and Progressive Caucus co-founder Brad Lander as rules chair.
The shift from Mark-Viverito to Johnson can also be seen in the change from Lander to Lancman, a former member of the state Assembly and stalwart player in the Queens County Party. While all four Democrats share political dispositions and most policy positions, the changing of the guard is evident, and other top committee posts appear likely to go to representatives of the county parties and individual members who backed Johnson’s ascension. It appears this will include the Bronx’s Rafael Salamanca as chair of the land use committee and a Queens Council member, possibly Danny Dromm, as chair of the finance committee, according to sources familiar with the process. Last time around Brooklyn's David Greenfield was named land use chair and Progressive Caucus member Julissa Ferreras-Copeland of Queens became chair of finance.
Johnson, himself a member of the Progressive Caucus, has been meeting with his 50 Council member constituents and hearing from other stakeholders like the county party leaders, and is expected to outline committee chair and member nominations within the next ten days.
The rules committee will then take up those nominations, approving the chairs and committee members of all of the Council’s 40-plus committees and subcommittees, including the permanent rules committee, before the full Council gives it approval. It is unclear if Lancman will remain rules chair, or whether he requested the position even on a temporary basis. A request to speak with the Council member was declined by a spokesperson.
After approving committee assignments, the rules committee will then be responsible for considering and passing any changes to the Council’s internal rules -- there is a long proposed rules reform agenda that 33 members, including Johnson and Lancman (pictured), signed on to last month -- and vetting and approving nominees to about a dozen city boards and commissions, like the Board of Corrections and the City Planning Commission.
"The Speaker has already met with almost all of his colleagues and is in active conversations with Council Members, stakeholders, city leaders and advocates to ensure the committee chairs best reflect the priorities of this Council and the diversity of our City," said City Council spokesperson Robin Levine, in an emailed statement. Levine did not directly respond to the question of how Lancman was selected as the initial rules chair. During the prior term Lancman, an attorney and regular critic of Mayor de Blasio, chaired the newly created Committee on Courts and Legal Services.
Four years ago, Lander and Mark-Viverito ushered through landmark rules reforms that significantly altered how the Council functions, including how discretionary funding is allocated to individual members, bringing equity and transparency to a system that had been used by prior speakers to reward and punish.
As he ran for speaker and since being elected, Johnson has championed additional reforms, including to the Council’s bill-drafting protocols. He wants to see changes so that members can no longer put indefinite holds on certain legislation and so that there is more information and awareness around who is working on what bills.
The rules reform package that has the backing of 33 members includes changes to the bill-drafting process but also a beefing up of the Council’s Oversight and Investigation Committee, “with dedicated investigative staff and a willingness to use the Council’s subpoena power when necessary.” It also includes increasing the Council’s budget and staff and staff salaries; and beefing up the land use division specifically, something Johnson has talked about a good deal during his bid for speaker and since being elected.
At one speaker candidate forum Johnson said that he thinks there is room for possibly eliminating some Council committees while also possibly creating new ones -- he said, for example, that the Fire and Criminal Justice Committee should be broken into two. He did not give any examples of committees that should be eliminated. The Council did delete one committee last term, the Committee on Community Development, when its chair resigned from the Council, but most Council members, including Lander, said at the time that there were no plans to look at eliminating any others.
Along with Lancman as chair and Johnson, the other members of the initial rules committee are Council Members Adrienne Adams, Margaret Chin, Robert Cornegy, Jr., Rafael Espinal, Karen Koslowitz, Steven Matteo, Ritchie Torres, and Mark Treyger.
The package of reforms says toward the end that "A hearing should be held in the Rules Committee on these reforms – as well as any others proposed by good government groups or members of the public – in the first quarter of 2018. The reforms should then be converted into a Rules Resolution, and adopted by the Council by March 2018, but no later than June 2018."
[Related: City Council Speaker Candidates Address Power, Reform and Transparency]
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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
@tweetBenMax @GothamGazette
Mayor de Blasio in the snow (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
The state Legislature is back in session, beginning the months-long process of deliberating on its $160-billion budget and legislation for the coming fiscal year that starts April 1. For New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, a second-term Democrat, it poses the annual opportunity to lobby for the city’s priorities, including small and large policy changes and additional funding for city agencies.
De Blasio had mixed successes in the state capitol, where he has few allies, during his first term, and this year may present the most challenging fiscal situation since the mayor came to office given the new federal tax code, reductions in federal funding, and the $4.4 billion state budget gap that Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature must close.
Cuomo gave his State of the State address last week, where he released his 2018 policy agenda with de Blasio present in the audience. There was plenty for the mayor to chew on, both in the speech and the accompanying policy book that lays out a vast agenda, only some of which will actually be prioritized by the governor. Cuomo’s speech focused on women’s rights and anti-sexual harassment policies, criminal justice reforms, and the federal tax overhaul, which he has vowed to fight, first with a lawsuit. The governor also mentioned specific projects he intended to fund in the city, a continued focus on big infrastructure projects that largely involve the five boroughs, and the prospects of supporting needed subway upgrades through a yet-released congestion pricing scheme.
[Read: New York City Takeaways from Governor Cuomo's 2018 State of the State]
As part of the annual budget ritual, de Blasio will head to Albany later this month to testify hat-in-hand before a joint legislative hearing of Senate and Assembly leaders. This is expected to come after Cuomo outlines his executive budget plan on January 16 and before de Blasio releases his own preliminary budget for the city’s next fiscal year, which begins July 1.
Both after attending Cuomo’s speech and in other venues, the mayor has spoken of the broad strokes of his Albany agenda. Among other things, he wants to see more funding for education, affordable housing, and mass transit. He hopes the Legislature will approve an expansion of speed cameras around public schools, new electoral and voting laws to expand ballot access and participation, and a repeal of a civil rights law that the city argues protects police officers’ disciplinary records from public disclosure.
The dynamics of the mayor’s negotiations with state government officials may prove slightly different this year, though it is unclear how things will play out. Cuomo must close the budget deficit while also reacting to the new federal tax code that is set to significantly increase the overall tax burden on many New Yorkers given the reduction in taxpayers’ ability to deduct their state and local taxes from their federal liability. The governor may seek to offload expenses to the city as he has done on multiple occasions. The mayor has few friends in the Republican-led state Senate, though he has allies in the Democrat and New York City-dominated Assembly.
De Blasio may have little to lose by standing up to a governor facing reelection this year and seeking to secure his left flank, or to a Senate GOP with a razor-thin majority that is under threat. The Trump administration also poses a common foe for the city and state, Democrats and Republicans, to do battle with, which could mean increased cooperation in certain areas.
When asked by a reporter at a January 5 news conference if his ability to negotiate with the governor had changed considering the political landscape of 2018, de Blasio mused that he felt “very liberated” but would continue to follow his first-term script. “Look, I think the simple way to think about this is not to look for too many tea leaves,” he said. “Always have said I’m ready to work with the governor when he proposes things that are good for New York City, and if he does something that is going to hurt the people of New York City, I’ll take him on. And that’s how I’m going to look at each and every issue. That is going to be unchanging.”
At time when the city has billions of dollars squirrelled away, and the state faces its shortfall, the governor’s representatives have repeatedly reference city reserves as ripe for picking. At a December 29 news conference, Gotham Gazette asked the mayor if he was taking preemptive actions to avoid the governor seeking to move costs to the city, as he most controversially did two years ago with CUNY and Medicaid in a move that was mostly beat back.
“You know, I’m hoping for a good faith situation where there’s a lot of communication and coordination,” de Blasio said. He warned that the biggest threat to the city was no longer an expected economic downturn but the federal tax plan, and that he would protect the city’s reserves. “And the notion that we have strong surpluses is not an open season call for New York State to raid New York City’s resources,” he said. “We need them because if anything goes wrong, if we sustain federal cuts we will also sustain state cuts...So, they can talk about it all they want, it’s not going to change my approach.”
Education Aid
The mayor is continuing his push for the state to fully abide by the state Supreme Court’s Campaign for Fiscal Equity ruling requiring equitable state funding for public schools. Last year, the mayor estimated that the state was underfunding the city to the tune of about $1.6 billion.
More practically, a significant priority for the mayor is his proposed expansion of early childhood education to all three-year-olds in the city, building on his signature first-term accomplishment of implementing universal pre-kindergarten for four-year-olds. (The UPK program was put into effect largely with state funding, after the mayor’s calls to fund it through a tax on the wealthy were opposed by the governor and Senate GOP.)
The “3-K for All” program is set to expand to eight districts by 2021 and will cost the city roughly $177 million that year. The city already has another $200 million invested annually in the Early Learn program for three-year-olds from low-income families and a full-scale expansion of 3-K to all 32 school districts in the city would cost an additional $700 million sourced from federal and state coffers, according to city estimates.
“We want to continue the progress we’ve made in our public schools,” de Blasio said, at a news conference after the governor’s address. “We have our highest graduation rate ever. We’ve had continual progress on test-score improvement. We want to go farther. We need to see state education aid continue to expand. We particularly are interested in using that aid to address some key strategic initiatives, such as creating the 3-K program on a universal basis.”
Affordable Housing and Homelessness
The mayor’s affordable housing plan target, which he recently increased from 200,000 to 300,000 affordable rental units, relies on a multi-faceted approach to preserving existing units while creating more housing across the city. It also involves investing in public housing developments and supportive housing for formerly homeless, disabled, and mentally ill individuals.
De Blasio has continued to express frustration with the slow pace of funds being disbursed by the state despite numerous pledges made by the governor and the Legislature. He noted, for instance, funding promised toward the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) in the state budget from two years ago. “We’re still waiting to see some of that funding reach the people who live in public housing,” he said.
Freddi Goldstein, a spokesperson for the mayor on budgetary matters, did not have exact figures for the amount of aid the city is requesting on numerous fronts. On NYCHA funding, she emailed saying the mayor wants “to see the previously authorized moneys [sic] actually flow, rather than continue to be inexplicably held up. Though of course we’d also welcome more funding!”
De Blasio also noted that the city is already taking measures to create 15,000 units of supportive housing while the state has been lax in following up on its own promise to fund another 20,000 units. “We need to see that plan take off and start to have an impact on the ground in New York City so it can help us address homelessness,” he said. In total, the state allocated $2.5 billion in last year’s budget for affordable and supportive housing. It’s unclear, however, how much of that has been utilized and in the city.
During his State of the State, Cuomo indicated that the state will look to withhold funding from localities deemed to not be doing enough to get homeless people off the streets. It was not clear if he believes New York City fits that category. When asked about it, de Blasio dismissed the idea, saying that the city has the most robust street-outreach program it's ever had.
Public Safety
De Blasio and his allies failed to convince the Legislature last year to approve more speed cameras around public schools, a priority in his Vision Zero plan to eliminate traffic fatalities in the city. Vision Zero was continuously successful over the mayor’s first term and the administration announced on Monday that there were a total of 214 traffic fatalities in 2017, an all-time low.
The mayor has advocated for expanding the speed camera program from 140 school zones where it is currently active to 750 school zones citywide, citing a report that found, among other results, that crashes with injuries declined by 15 percent at camera locations between 2014 and 2016, and pedestrian injuries fell by 23 percent in the same time. Like on many fronts, the city needs Albany approval to act.
“We need to continue that progress,” the mayor said at the January 3 new conference, noting that the city was safer in 2017 than ever before. “One of the things that would help us the most, again, is those speed cameras around schools to help us protect kids and community members.”
Design-Build
In his budget testimony in Albany last year, de Blasio emphasized that giving New York City approval to use design-build -- which allows agencies to solicit combined design-and-construction bids for capital projects -- would save $450 million from $7.3 billion estimated for a specific list of projects. A bill passed by the state Assembly authorized design-build for eight projects, to save an estimated $158 million, according to Goldstein, the mayoral spokesperson.
The mayor reiterated on January 3 that design-build was essential for the city, particularly with the threat of federal budget cuts to city agencies and for infrastructure projects. “I think it becomes more important than ever,” he said. “This year, given that we will see tight fiscal conditions, design-build is a common sense way to help us save the taxpayers money, and get more done more quickly. So, we’ll be making that a top item on the agenda.”
The state has used design-build for several years on certain major projects and saved billions of dollars, according to Gov. Cuomo, who regularly touts the process as effective and inefficient. Cuomo has said he supports expanding it to city use, but it has not moved through the Senate.
Police Transparency
De Blasio has faced strong criticism from police reform advocates over his administration’s shielding of the disciplinary records of police officers, particularly in the case of Officer Daniel Pantaleo, whose use of a department-prohibited chokehold led to the death of Staten Island resident Eric Garner in 2014. Under de Blasio, the NYPD changed its policy of disclosing “personnel orders” containing summaries of disciplinary actions against an officer, insisting that they had mistakenly done so in violation of Section 50-a of the New York State Civil Rights Code.
The mayor has instead put the onus on the Legislature to repeal the law. At a January 5 news conference releasing the latest crime statistics, de Blasio told Gotham Gazette it would be a priority for him this year. “I think this is the year. I’d love to see 50-a resolved once and for all,” he said, conceding that it might only happen if the state Senate, currently controlled by Republicans, flips to Democrat control. “But I think this is a powerful year to go and try and see if we can have a breakthrough. And there’s a lot of people in the state who think it’s the right thing to do to have that greater transparency. So we’ll be working for it.”
Voting reform
Governor Cuomo’s 2018 priorities include a “Democracy Agenda” of voting reform, political advertisement transparency, and election security initiatives. (He is also proposing a similar slate of campaign finance and government ethics reforms that he offered last year.) Though de Blasio had himself promised a major push on voting reform last year, his effort amounted to little more than a conference call with reporters. The mayor said he had to re-prioritize given the challenges of getting renewal of mayoral control of city schools approved.
This year, the mayor has promised to follow through, saying he was “heartened” to hear the governor address things like early voting in his speech. “We’re going to focus on it intensely, and we’re going to be organizing people all over New York City to put pressure on their legislators, on the Governor to get this done, and, obviously, working with allies all over the state,” de Blasio said.
Transit Funding
The year begins with de Blasio and Cuomo arguing over whether the city will contrivute half the $800-plus million subway rescue plan put forward several months ago by MTA Chair Joe Lhota. De Blasio has insisted that the state use the nearly identifical amount it has raided from the MTA over the last few years. Cuomo and Lhota have told de Blasio to simply put up the money.
Meanwhile, one of the mayor’s priorities that seems least likely to succeed is a so-called millionaires tax to fund the MTA and subsidized MetroCards for low-income New Yorkers. The governor and Senate GOP, already averse to new taxes, have indicated that the proposal would be dead on arrival. But the mayor has only doubled down, reinvigorated in his effort by his reelection and the recently approved federal tax plan. “[G]iven that the Trump tax plan was a giveaway to the wealthy and corporations, I think it makes even more sense to have a millionaire’s tax,” he said on his weekly “Ask The Mayor” segment on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show on January 5. Critics point out, though, that the wealthy in New York are not necessarily projected to make out very well under the new tax plan, unlike higher earners in other, low-tax states.
De Blasio has also repeatedly rejected congestion pricing as an alternative to raise revenue for the MTA while also reducing traffic congestion in Manhattan. Despite evidence to the contrary, he has insisted that it would be a “regressive tax” that harms outer borough commuters and that he has yet to see a proposal he could support. “The first concern I have is that I don’t think it is the best way to address the MTA crisis,” de Blasio told Lehrer. “I think a millionaire’s tax is a better way and it’s a live, actual proposal. You can see it. You can touch it.” Though Cuomo has floated the idea, he did not propose any details in his State of the State address last week, saying that a panel he formed will present options in the coming weeks.
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
James O'Neill, Bill Bratton, Bill de Blasio (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York Police Department have much cause for celebration. Last year was undoubtedly the safest year on record in decades, setting new benchmarks for crime reduction across most major categories, according to the latest crime data released by the NYPD on Friday.
The total number of major felony crimes fell below 100,000 for the first time ever, no small feat for a city now home to more than 8.5 million residents. The city also set a record for fewest murders in the modern data-tracking era, and fewest since the early 1950s, when the city had far fewer residents, and fewest shooting incidents.
The mayor and police commissioner, James O’Neill, are proudly touting the success of the department’s practices, especially reforms of the last few years, with numerous initiatives that they say have shown immense success. The neighborhood policing program is rebuilding trust with communities, targeted policing of gangs in trouble spots across the city is nipping crime in the bud, and preventative programs are reducing gun violence, they say. Officers are being re-trained in new policing tactics, especially de-escalation, while also being equipped with improved technology and safety gear. Complaints about police officers are also at new lows, while the number of arrests has plummeted, and a body camera program is being rolled out.
Meanwhile, the mayor and police officials still believe that broken windows policing, with its acute attention to keeping social order and enforcing low-level crimes in an effort to prevent larger ones, and its use, however evolved, is still seen as essential.
Though it may be easy, and tempting, to draw the simple conclusion that crime is at historic lows because of the work of the NYPD and this mayor’s administration, experts say that would be a mistake. Crime has been falling for decades across the nation and even the entire world, and New York City, the “safest big city in America,” is not unique.
“None of this happened by accident,” said Commissioner O’Neill, at a news conference on Friday with other top NYPD brass, Mayor de Blasio, the newly elected City Council Speaker Corey Johnson. “I’d call it incredible were it not for the very credible reasons why it’s all happening,” O’Neill said as de Blasio nodded in agreement.
Neighborhood policing, now in 56 of 77 precincts and in nine Housing Bureau areas, is a “game changer,” O’Neill insisted, creating a greater sense of shared responsibility towards public safety between police and communities. Coordination with state and federal law enforcement in “precision policing” is helping build stronger cases against the “real drivers of crime,” he said, and community partners are playing a strong role. “As far as violence being reduced in society, that’s a little bit above my pay grade,” he conceded, when asked about broader trends. “But I know what’s happening in the NYPD, I know what’s happening in the city, and I know it’s happening with the way we are working with communities around the city and it’s all playing a big part in reducing crime.”
“This is a new day in New York City, a different reality, and it’s working,” said de Blasio subsequently, also crediting the Cure Violence program, which is led by local leaders, including former gang members, and seeks to prevent and diffuse conflicts at the community level, preempting crime before it is carried out. De Blasio insisted that stop-and-frisk policing had been “holding us back” and that it’s reduction had made the city safer.
“I think when you see this kind of intensive, fast reduction, I think it does come back to neighborhood policing, precision policing, stronger ties to the community, community allies making a big impact, and different strategies right down to the example of taking something as difficult and painful as domestic violence and treating it as a moment for intensified engagement,” the mayor said. “Not just answer the call and that’s it, but constantly coming back. That’s a very hands-on, proactive approach that is newer to the NYPD. I think that makes a big impact.”
Two areas of serious crime that the city has not seen significant reductions in of late are domestic violence and rape reports, which NYPD officials attribute to more reporting, not more actual incidences, the willingness of victims to come forward, a changing culture, and victims’ belief that they will be heard and helped by the police department. Domestic violence reports were down about 6 percent in 2017 compared to 2016; the number of rape reports were nearly the same.
There were 290 murders in 2017, down from 335 in 2013, the year before de Blasio took office (the prior record low was 333 in 2014). In that same time, the number of “index” crimes -- seven major felony offenses -- fell to 96,517 from 111,335. It’s part of a larger trend that has continued for decades, said Alex Vitale, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College. “The drop can’t possibly correlate with any policy changes in New York City. It began in the Dinkins administration,” Vitale said. “Our best minds have tried to figure out what’s causing this long-term international phenomenon and we just don’t understand.”
The overall body of research on crime reduction is inconclusive and often rife with partisan interpretations, which is why Vitale cautioned against broadly crediting the NYPD for the drop in crime, which runs the risk that, when issues arise, the city will simply throw more officers at the problem. “When all you have is hammers, everything looks like a nail,” he said, of the assumption that policing is the only solution to public safety. Rather, the city should be guided by considerations of “justice, racial politics and democracy,” said Vitale, who is a liberal.
“What I would say to the mayor is that he needs to continue to aggressively pursue ways of improving quality of life that don’t rely on the criminal justice system,” Vitale said. He did acknowledge the steps the city has taken -- reducing stop-and-frisk policing, targeted enforcement and anti-violence prevention programs -- but, at the same time, he said the city must also better address issues such as gentrification, homelessness, and lack of access to healthcare for low-income New Yorkers.
Among the major steps the city has taken was the addition of 1,300 more officers to the force in 2015, at the behest of the City Council under former Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Corey Johnson’s predecessor. In recent days, Johnson has also floated the idea of adding more police officers to bolster community policing and give officers more time on the beat than responding to radio calls. It’s what Vitale warns against. “We start with the premise that because it’s a community problem, we need the police to figure it out,” he said. “But where’s their expertise?”
Vitale has long advocated for more city investment in social services to deal with community issues, rather than the overuse of policing, which he believes should be focused on the most serious crimes.
The neighborhood policing program that the administration swears by has slowly evolved from other paradigms of broken windows policing. This philosophy and practice have the mayor’s support and broken windows is the mantra of former police commissioner Bill Bratton, who continues to defend the practice as the key driver of crime reduction even as police reform advocates criticize its adverse impact on communities of color.
“Beginning in 1990, the New York City police department returned to a mission that was focused on not only dealing with serious crime, but also began to focus on disorder, which had not been addressed at all in the '70s and '80s,” Bratton said in a recent interview with National Public Radio, on the causes for dropping crime, “and disorder is described as broken windows, quality of life, minor offenses. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.”
As Bratton explains it, broken windows policing has taken different forms in different eras, responding to conditions at the time. For example, intense law enforcement in the subway system in the 1990s, a decade that saw Bratton's first stint as NYPD commissioner and the implementation of strict, proactive policing by Mayor Rudy Giuliani's police department. The more recent iteration was in the overuse of stop-and-frisk policing, which increased significantly under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly as they sought to take guns off the streets, triggering massive protests and a federal lawsuit.
But there’s no clear evidence that broken window policing has caused the drop in crime. The relatively new Office of Inspector General of the NYPD concluded in 2016 that there was “no empirical evidence demonstrating a clear and direct link between an increase in summons and misdemeanor arrest activity and a related drop in felony crime.” The administration and NYPD top brass, including de Blasio and Bratton themselves, pushed back against the report, claiming it was “deeply flawed,” but largely using corollary and experiential takeaways to justify their claims. Meanwhile, crime numbers continue to trend down even as the NYPD has arrested tens of thousands fewer people. Bratton and others would argue that the city has only tweaked the formula, not abandoned broken windows in any discernible way.
A November 2017 report on proactive policing initiatives by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine also found that broken windows has little impact on crime while stop-and-frisk has mixed results. Hot spots policing and problem-oriented tactics lead to short-term reductions, the report found, while focused deterrence has both short- and long-term impacts on crime control.
De Blasio’s NYPD has combined most, if not all, of those measures. Ames Grawert, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, cited the report to illustrate how tough it is to draw concrete conclusions about the city’s crime numbers. “I think [de Blasio’s] right to credit community policing, but that’s a very broad term...any initiative that’s targeted at repairing trust between police and communities fits under that umbrella,” Grawert said, “so it kicks down the road the question of which types are community policing and which aren’t. But I think those are broadly successful anti-crime measures.”
Yet, crime was trending down over decades before de Blasio implemented his neighborhood policing program, which is still in its infancy. Grawert had a simple prescription for the NYPD. “Keep following the data to figure out where police resources are needed and how to apply them, and keep engaging the community to keep and increase their trust in the police,” he said.
The city’s approach goes beyond just responding to crime, seeking to prevent it in the first place. This work has taken different forms over decades. Now, New York City is the largest Cure Violence site in the country, with 18 communities where “violence interrupters,” as they are called, operate to work with high-risk individuals and diffuse conflict. It’s a health-based approach, said Charles Ransford, director of science and policy at Cure Violence, looking at crime as a “problem of contagion.” “When you recognize that, you take those most exposed to violence...and work with them,” he said. “Police can only do so much. Policing matters but it’s something that should be a last resort.”
Ransford said New York City is doing far more than other cities to prevent violence at the front end, and studies bear out the effectiveness of the approach. The John Jay College of Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation Center found that between 2014 and 2016, there was a 50 percent decrease in gun injuries in East New York, Brooklyn and a 37 percent reduction in the South Bronx, two communities where Cure Violence has been implemented. “We have to make sure that we look at the whole picture,” Ransford said. “This was a very deliberate decision and effort by Mayor de Blasio and the City Council together to take a chance on Cure Violence and fund it to such a level. They deserve a lot of credit for that.”
The administration and the Council together put $22.5 million towards the Cure Violence program in fiscal year 2017 through the newly created Mayor’s Office to Prevent Gun Violence, up from $12.7 million in fiscal year 2015.
City Council Member Jumaane Williams of Brooklyn said it was one of the things that New York City was doing differently in reducing crime, and credited the mayor for his support. “I think there are a variety of factors and I think there’s not one answer to this...I think there’s a better understanding that public safety is not just for the police and they can’t be the only people responsible for all of the issues that lead to some of these crimes,” he said. In particular, he praised “how we’re dealing with gun violence and the community approach that we’ve found to work, and actually putting money behind it, real money, that has always been missing...there was a real belief and real resources put behind it.”
Noting that numerous metrics were trending downwards -- murders, shootings, instances of officers firing their weapons, arrests, complaints against officers -- Williams said, “We need to continue in that direction. We need to make sure that we’re continuing not to see summonses and arrests as the only way to deal with issues in communities.”
Williams did have some criticism for the administration and the police department, arguing that with regards to accountability and transparency, the city has stood still and even fallen behind. He noted, in particular, statute 50-a of the state civil rights code that protects officers’ disciplinary records from public disclosure. The mayor has called for a repeal of the statute and he reiterated, when asked by Gotham Gazette on Friday, that it’s one of his legislative priorities in Albany this year.
There are larger forces at work as well. Shifting demographics and gentrification have changed the face of neighborhoods across the city. The economy is riding a wave of unprecedented prosperity and unemployment is at an all-time low. “The number one thing that cuts violent crime arrests in half is a job,” said Williams, noting that the city has expanded the Summer Youth Employment Program in the past three years from roughly 25,000-30,000 slots to 70,000 slots. “I think [President] Donald Trump and [Attorney General] Jeff Sessions should look at what’s happening in New York City and pay attention to what’s happening here as opposed to pushing cockamamie ideas that take us backwards,” he added.
That crime has decreased as the administration moves towards full implementation of neighborhood policing is correlation without causation, as there is no measurable data on the program. De Blasio himself admits that his proof lies in anecdotal evidence. At a December 29 news conference, when asked how he quantified success, he said, “Because I’ve talked to so many neighborhood policing officers and community leaders who have given me numerous examples of information they’ve gotten that has helped them to fight crime and have made clear this was information they often didn’t get in the past.” He acknowledged that his administration would have to release objective analyses of the program “to help people understand just how big an impact there has been.”
Police reform advocate Mark Winston Griffith, executive director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, believes it’s a dubious claim. “Crime was going down before quote-unquote neighborhood policing,” he said. “I don’t see how [de Blasio] starts drawing this direct line between that and the reduction of crime. I don’t believe it passes the smell test.”
Advocates like Griffith were vindicated when the city curtailed the unconstitutional and unchecked use of stop-and-frisk policing, proliferated under Bloomberg and Kelly, and crime continued to fall. De Blasio has also claimed validation, as he ran for mayor on a pledge to scale back stop-and-frisk and repair police-community relationships.
To Griffith and others, the continued drops in crime has been proof that aggressive policing does not work and that more police officers on the street is not the solution. “The police can no longer use this narrative of our neighborhoods being unruly and undisciplined and prone to violence as an excuse to use abusive policing,” Griffith said. “I think this is now the moment to see how we can have both worlds. We can have low crime and we can have an accountable police force that is not abusive, not discriminatory and is not aggressive.”
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette