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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 19th, 2023
CONTACT:
Deputy Director Josmar Trujillo (646) 732-7734; josmartrujillo@gmail.com
Director Robert Gangi (917) 327-7648; rpagangi@gmail.com
PROP Statement re NYPD Preliminary Budget Hearing
NEW YORK, NY – Tomorrow, the City Council will hold a preliminary budget hearing for the NYPD and other agencies. PROP released the following testimony, which has been submitted to the Council ahead of the hearing:
"The Police Reform Organizing Project (PROP) is an advocacy organization founded in 2011 that conducts research and analysis, public education, policy advocacy, and coalition building aimed at exposing and ending abusive police tactics that routinely inflict harm on our city’s low-income communities, people of color and LGBTQIA New Yorkers. Since 2014, PROP's Court Monitoring Project has documented thousands of arraignments in our criminal courts and has released 13 reports documenting the stark racial disparities found in the NYPD's arrest practices.
In 2015, PROP and other grassroots organizations from across the city rallied to oppose the addition of over 1,000 police officers to the headcount of the NYPD. The additional police officers led to a growing annual budget for the NYPD that ballooned under the administration of Bill de Blasio. We and others took the position that the City should instead invest funds in social services that could address poverty and other root causes of violence.
Members of the City Council ignored us at the time.
From 2014 to 2020, the NYPD annual operating budget (which does not include fringe benefits and other costs), grew by over one billion dollars – from 4.67 billion to 5.78 billion dollars. Three years ago, following historic city-wide and national protests over the police killing of George Floyd, the City announced a reduction of one billion dollars from the NYPD budget, a highly misleading figure since the so-called reduction was due mostly to a shifting of funding responsibilities for certain units, one canceled cadet class and a one-time cut in overtime spending that didn’t actually materialize.
Like other cities across the country, the City did not actually “defund” the NYPD – in fact the agency saw an increase to its budget in subsequent years.
PROP testifies today to bring renewed urgency to the need to reduce the police budget and to instead invest more city funds into programs and social services, such as mental health services and anti-violence programs that will more effectively strengthen our communities and reduce crime. Since 2020, the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting shutdowns and economic shifts have disproportionately affected our City’s most vulnerable populations.
There have been few moments in the city's history like now that beg for sweeping and extensive support for our low-income communities – which, as PROP and others have noted, are targeted and victimized by NYPD practices.
The City has a finite amount of resources. Every dollar spent on policing is a dollar that is not allocated to urgently needed services and programs, such as housing for our unhoused neighbors, youth services and more. In 2015, we and others called for city funding of free Metrocards for the city's low-income residents. We now urge the Council to acknowledge that the city's "Fair Fares'' program, which only provides reduced-cost Metrocards and has not been utilized by enough people, is too limited – it must be completely subsidized.
To put our priorities in perspective, city funding for the Fair Fares program sits at about $75 million per year while spending for NYPD overtime for FY2022 came to $762 million – $155 million more than was actually budgeted. Last year the City proudly announced an increase in funding for the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), bringing the total allocated to $236 million. Meanwhile, advocacy groups discovered that the NYPD has spent at least $3 billion on "secret" spending over the last 12 years on outside contracts for surveillance equipment – $2.5 billion more than had been previously disclosed.
PROP is fully aware of the political pressures to appear "tough on crime" especially when some politicians like Mayor Adams, some members of the media and the NYPD itself strive to create a public panic about any increase in crime. However, as some of you are already aware, contrary to the semi-hysteria instigated by such voices, we are nowhere near the "bad old days'' of violence of the 80's and 90's. To put it in perspective, there were 2,262 murders in 1990 and there were 433 in 2022. And contrary to the claims of sensationalist attacks at mild criminal justice reforms, like New York State's bail reforms, it has been the destabilization of the city's social networks that better explain some of the increases in violence that New York and other cities have seen in the last few years.
As no doubt many other advocates will attest to today, policing does not solve the underlying issues related to violence and crime. In fact, PROP points to studies that have noted the longstanding relationship between violence and inequality. Meanwhile, the world's most generously funded police department, the NYPD, not only was unable to stop the predictable increases in crime wrought by the pandemic, it has historically inflicted needless punishment and suffering on the neighborhoods it purports to safeguard.
Today, PROP is calling for cutting the budget bloat and overspending at the police department. We echo calls to disband the NYPD’s infamous specialized units, like the Strategic Response Group (SRG) as well as the VICE and Peddler Squads, all notorious for violating the rights and well-being of NYers who are part of marginalized groups. Cutting these units, which by extension means reducing personnel, will amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in savings. PROP also points to the need for reducing the overall NYPD headcount, which now sits at about 35,000, including at the patrol level.
For years, PROP's Court Monitoring Project has documented the results of the NYPD's Broken Windows approach to aggressively policing New Yorkers of color for low-level offenses – which makes up most of the policing we see in our city. Our most recent data, compiled through monitoring the city courts from January through March 10th of this year, show continued racial disparities in NYPD arrest practices. Of 431 cases observed, 398, or 92.3%, involved New Yorkers of color who were arrested for mostly non-violent misdemeanors and infractions such as disorderly conduct, petty theft and driving with a suspended license.
Beginning in 2014, the City saw fewer and fewer misdemeanor arrests and crime continued to decline up until the 2020 pandemic. Under the administration of Michael Bloomberg, the NYPD headcount dropped from a high of over 41,000 officers in 2002 to about 35,000 in 2013. During that span crime across all major categories decreased, including murders, which dropped from 587 to 333. Here is the proof ignored by the NYPD and the politicians and media representatives referenced earlier that neither aggressive policing of low-level offenses, also known as Broken Windows policing, nor an excessive number of police officers are needed to reduce crime.
New York City must embark on a new public safety approach, one that is rooted in community-based solutions to violence that also promote racial and social equity and justice. This approach must dismantle the myth of Broken Windows policing – no research has ever demonstrated its effectiveness. And we as a City should be pleased to surrender the dubious title of being home to the largest municipal police force in the history of the world. And we as a City can follow this path only if the City Council has the wisdom and courage to ignore the engineered hype that seeks to drive policy and to institute a course that studies show works and that we know is right."
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