A day before the city’s 2021 budget deadline, Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed that his administration and the City Council are preparing to cut $1 billion from the New York Police Department’s budget.
After initially opposing cuts to the NYPD in this year’s proposed $87 billion budget, the mayor in early June vowed to divert agency funds to youth and social services after 10 days of protests against police brutality in the city. But, Monday’s pledge was the first time the mayor has specified just how much his administration plans to cut from the city police department.
De Blasio initially proposed a fiscal year 2021 budget of $95.3 billion but had to shrink proposed city spending in order to close a $9 billion deficit caused by the economic fallout from the novel coronavirus pandemic. Along with cutting municipal spending by $2 billion, the de Blasio administration is also preparing to lay off 22,000 municipal workers in the fall to save the city an additional $1 billion.
De Blasio has blamed both Washington D.C. and Albany, in part, for the city’s current financial crisis. During his daily coronavirus press briefings, de Blasio repeatedly called for more federal aid which he recently said, “would never come.” In May, the mayor pitched increasing the city’s borrowing capacity to help temporarily fill the deficit but was rejected by state lawmakers.
Over the weekend, the de Blasio administration presented a plan to the City Council that represented “a billion dollars in savings for the NYPD.” De Blasio’s proposal resembles a plan set forth by the City Council earlier this month and includes transferring NYPD safety agents to the Department of Education, cutting a July NYPD academy class of 1,100, and doing away with some homeless outreach efforts, Politico reported.
“To say the least, this has been the toughest budget that we’ve had to do as an administration here at City Hall,” de Blasio told reporters on Monday. “We are in a whole different situation in New York City that we have ever faced in our history — a healthcare crisis, a disparity crisis, a budget crisis, all wrapped into one.”
De Blasio told reporters that his plan with the City Council would ensure “patrol strength” that would allow for school safety to do its jobs and that further details on changes to the distribution of school safety agents would be released soon.
Last week, hundreds of protesters vowed to camp outside of City Hall until the city’s June 30 budget deadline to pressure the mayor into slashing the NYPD budget by $1 billion, removing NYPD security agents from schools, and diverting funds from the police department to social services.
Some organizations are still not satisfied with the mayor’s vow to divert funds from the NYPD.
In a statement, activist group VOCAL-NY called the commitment a “betrayal of movement” and suggested that the city review a policy report from Communities United for Police Reform detailing the steps the mayor could take to make the city safer by investing in communities of color. Some of the steps outlined in the report include shrinking the NYPD budget, increasing NYPD transparency, and blocking any increases to the NYPD expense budget for the fiscal year 2021.
“New York City must eliminate the NYPD’s role in homeless services, schools, youth programs, overdose response, mental health response, and other social services and redirect those savings to housing, healthcare and social services that will be crucial to equitable COVID-19 recovery for Black, Latinx and other communities of color,” the group said in a statement.
“The deal as described does nothing close, preserving police resources and power — with not a single layoff among NYPD’s uniformed cops — and continues the mayor’s initial budget proposal to starve the communities left devastated by the coronavirus crisis, the same communities targeted by historical and current police abuse.”
This story first appeared on AMNY.com
