New York, NY - Wednesday, 78 organizations sent a letter calling on Speaker Adrienne Adams and the City Council to end the Mayor’s approach of unilaterally shrinking critical services while expanding the role of the NYPD and preserving NYPD budget bloat.
The Mayor’s approach to budgeting in FY23 and FY24 is hurting New Yorkers, especially Black, Latinx, LGBTQI folks, immigrants, youth, and other impacted New Yorkers that are struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter, organized by Communities United for Police Reform and being released ahead of the Mayor’s upcoming State of the City address, includes signatories doing work in multiple sectors across the city and nationally. The letter includes demands that the city change its course of action and decrease the already over-bloated NYPD budget instead of cutting funding to critical housing, mental health, education and legal services as well as access to public benefits, public libraries, police-oversight, and other critical public infrastructure New Yorkers rely on.
The letter states: We are alarmed that as the city faces economic headwinds, the Mayor is making significant cuts to critical services and safety net programs New Yorkers need, while simultaneously funding NYPD overspending and enabling NYPD impunity by decreasing funding for police oversight and accountability. We need the Speaker and City Council to ensure that the FY24 Budget restores and protects critical services and programs that our communities rely on and that are essential for the full recovery of our city.
....... "The fact that the CCRB’s budget is less than 1% of the NYPD’s means that the agency already struggles to advance investigations of NYPD misconduct and abuse in the timely and thorough fashion that New Yorkers need and deserve. Additional cuts to the CCRB’s budget will significantly exacerbate this problem, unjustly extending the suffering of New Yorkers who’ve lost loved ones to the police and survivors of police violence. Along with Mayor Adams’ lack of action to fire the officers who killed Kawaski Trawick, Delrawn Small, Allan Feliz, Eric Garner, Ronald Anthony Smith and Antonio Williams, and his Police Commissioner overturning over 70 discipline recommendations by the CCRB and NYPD judges, Adams’ push to further diminish resources to the CCRB is part of his administration’s pattern of deprioritizing New Yorkers and police accountability in favor of shielding abusive officers and expanding police power," stated Loyda Colon (they/them, Executive Director, Justice Committee.
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