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NYC District Attorneys Won't Prosecute Social Distancing Arrests Ordered By De Blasio
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published May 11, 2020
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Courtesy of witness Daquan Owens
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published May 11, 2020
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New York City's prosecutors are the latest group to reject the NYPD's racially biased enforcement of social distancing laws.
As of this week, district attorneys in every borough but Staten Island have pledged not to prosecute those arrested for social distancing offenses, and in some cases, other violations stemming from recent emergency measures.
They join an unlikely coalition of advocates, including both police unions and police reformers, who've protested what they say is Mayor Bill de Blasio's punitive approach to a public health crisis.
The policies were announced by Manhattan DA Cy Vance, Bronx DA Darcel Clark, and Queens DA Melinda Katz following the release of city data on Friday showing dramatic racial disparities in the NYPD's enforcement of the orders.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez had previously said that his office would decline to prosecute social distancing offenses and most low-level arrests that arise from those stops. Of the 40 people arrested in the borough for violating social distancing rules, 35 were black and four were Hispanic, according to the office.
Partial data released by the police department on Friday showed that the NYPD had issued 374 summonses for “acts likely to spread disease and to violate emergency measures." More than 300 of the summonses were handed out to people of color. (Previous NYPD data suggested there were over 450 social distancing summonses issued, and the department did not respond to a request for clarification.)
The NYPD data does not include arrests related to social distancing, which have in some cases sent vulnerable New Yorkers to crowded cells for more than 24 hours without any personal protective equipment.
A spokesperson for Bronx DA Clark said their office was aware of 10 "live arrests" and 12 desk appearance tickets stemming from social distancing stops; not a single suspect in either category was white. And out of half a dozen arrests in Manhattan related to social distancing, all of the alleged offenders were young black men.
"Nobody wants a health crisis to fuel a criminal justice crisis," a spokesperson for DA Katz said in a statement.
Michael McMahon, the prosecutor for Staten Island, which has not seen a single arrest or summons for social distancing violations, did not return a request for comment.
More than 2,000 "social distance ambassadors" will soon be deputized to help ensure New Yorkers stay six feet apart, de Blasio said on Sunday. But the mayor has insisted that the NYPD should not lose the "opportunity to enforce when needed."
"We want to make sure it’s there when it’s needed, because enforcement is part of life," de Blasio told reporters. "I think it’s quite clear that the NYPD has been very restrained in the approach."
The city's major policing groups, meanwhile, say that the racial disparities are the predictable result of muddled guidance on how they should enforce the unprecedented distancing rules. Leaders of the NYPD's largest union, the Police Benevolent Association, have called on the mayor to "get cops out of the social distancing enforcement business altogether.”
In response to prosecutors' announcement that they would drop charges for many public health offenses, Sergeants Benevolent President Ed Mullins accused the mayor of pushing a "self-defeating policy."
"My membership demands to know the rationale behind being ordered to make arrests — and risking injury to themselves and citizens — when those arrests not result in criminal prosecution," Mullins wrote in a letter to Police Commissioner Dermot Shea on Friday.
Likewise, criminal justice advocates said that tasking the NYPD to enforce social distancing orders meant "eroding the trust of certain neighborhoods," where tensions between police and the community were already strained by years of discriminatory stop-and-frisk policing.
"Whenever you’re increasing these encounters between police and public, especially in neighborhoods that have been over-policed in past, you're setting up low level arrests and encounters that can unnecessarily escalate," Jennvine Wong, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society, told Gothamist.
She added that while the number of arrests has gone down since the start of the pandemic, the proportion of those arraigned for low-level crimes appears to be largely unchanged. Unless the NYPD is forced to reduce enforcement of minor crimes, Wong noted, the prosecutors' announcements may be largely symbolic.
"We should be asking ourselves whether we want a heavy-handed approach or a harm reduction approach," she added.
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COVID-19
coronavirus
mayor de blasio
Jake Offenhartz
Jake Offenhartz is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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