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Where Do Mayoral Candidates Stand On The Future Of Policing?
By
Gwynne Hogan
Published Mar 19, 2021
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Scott Heins / Gothamist
By
Gwynne Hogan
Published Mar 19, 2021
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This is part of our One Issue Explainer series, where we break down where mayoral candidates stand on issues concerning New Yorkers. What do you want to hear about? Email us at [email protected] (subject line: One Issue Explainer)
In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, scores of New Yorkers took to the streets in a summer of protest last year, demanding changes to their own police department. The NYPD — undergirded by a ballooning budget — has had a decades-long contentious relationship with Black and brown communities (which suffer a dramatically higher arrest rate for things like marijuana possession), with instances of police brutality that have been met with impunity and a lack of transparency.
The city has taken half-steps towards addressing these festering issues, launching a new “discipline matrix” and publishing the disciplinary records of some officers this year. The state mandated local police departments set forth a plan for reform; and since then the city council has put forth it’s answer; a package of legislation that supports stripping the police commissioner of the final say over disciplinary decisions of officers, transfer traffic stops and collision investigations to the Department of Transportation, and end qualified immunity for police officers, which automatically shields them from any personal liability for misconduct.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has opposed some of the council’s key proposals, and put forward its own vision of reform, which has been widely criticized by reform advocates as lip-service, and too little too late in his last year in office, when he had cruised to electoral victory in 2013 promising “real reform.”
Amid all the conversation of reform, last year in New York City, 468 people were murdered across the five boroughs, the highest number of killings since 2011. More than 1,750 people were shot, twice as many people as in 2019, but clearance rates, where someone was arrested, were down. NYPD leadership and police unions have repeatedly blamed criminal justice reforms like bail reform, while police reform advocates argue public safety and reform aren’t opposed to one another. They’re pushing for a new vision of public safety that starts with heavy investments into communities struggling with a surge in violent crime.
New York City’s next mayor will have to balance all these interests, articulate a path forward, and have the capacity to enact that vision, amid staunch opposition and political pressure from all sides. Many of the candidates are aligned on some of these issues. Most, for example, say they support scaling up existing programs that create mental health first responders, so an armed officer isn’t always the first person to respond. And many say they would claw back excess spending in the NYPD’s budget to reinvest into communities for a host of different ideas.
As always, the devil’s in the details. Here’s some of where the candidates stand on these issues.
Eric Adams
Adams is the only former police officer in the race. “I’m an ex po po,” as he put it at a recent forum, though his tenure was marked by efforts to change the department from within.
He plans to divert $500 million dollars from the NYPD’s budget and put it towards crime prevention programs like the Crisis Management System that sends credible messengers to de-escalate conflicts as they arise.
He says he would recruit more Black and brown police officers, publish a list of NYPD officers the department was monitoring for bad behavior and make it easier for officers to anonymously report bad behavior of their colleagues. He would push for other measures towards more community driven policing, like letting community boards and precinct councils select who lead the local precincts.
Shaun Donovan
Donovan plans to redirect $500 million in funds from law enforcement and corrections budgets to put towards community-focused public safety initiatives, and pledges to devote $3 billion in funds towards these initiatives by the end of his first-term.
He would remove police officers from schools and use those resources to fund what he calls “Positivity, Prevention, and Relationship Response Coordinators” — people trained in child development and de-escalation tactics. Donovan supports the creation of mental health response hotline to divert 911 calls away from NYPD officers and invest in more mobile response teams.
Kathryn Garcia
Garcia is among several candidates who said they would push for a change in state law to require NYPD officers live in the five boroughs.
She would embed more mental health professionals with NYPD officers to respond to different types of 911 calls and increase funding for cure violence groups.
A Garcia administration would increase funding for community policing and put a greater emphasis on implicit bias training, conflict mediation and de-escalation.
Ray McGuire
McGuire says he supports the city council bill that would put an end to qualified immunity, which shields police officers from personal liability for misconduct.
He wants to expand community policing and hire more officers who reflect the diversity of the communities they serve. He says he’ll accomplish this by reallocating an unspecified amount of the NYPD’s funding to put towards mental health professionals and community based services.
He’s pushing to expand emergency mental health emergency response teams to respond to certain emergencies instead of NYPD officers and estimates mobile units operating in every precinct will be up and running by 2023, for the cost of $150 annually.
Dianne Morales
Morales is the only candidate in the race using the phraseology “defund the police." She promises to reallocate $3 billion from the NYPD’s budget to send to communities impacted by violent crime.
She’d create a separate “Community First Responders Department” to respond to mental health, wellness and other kinds of 911 calls.
She would remove police from schools, social services, traffic enforcement, outreach to homeless people and to situations involving people with substance use disorder.
Scott Stringer
Stringer supports removing ultimate discipline authority from the police commissioner and granting that to the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB). He calls for $28 million dollars more of targeted investment into mentorship and other supports for youth who risk falling victim to gun violence, or being charged with gun crimes, to address the spike in violent crime. He points to a proposal he released last summer planning to decrease NYPD’s budget by $1.1 billion over four years.
He also believes the city’s 911 call system should be overhauled to create other kinds of emergency response teams beyond NYPD officers; like calls for homelessness, a mental health crisis, substance use disorder, wellness checks, domestic disputes and suicide calls.
He supports the council’s bill to remove traffic stops and investigations from the NYPD’s jurisdiction to the Department of Transportation’s purview.
While Stringer has said wants to “continue efforts to remove the NYPD from city schools,” his plan stops short of calling for their full removal, adding school safety officers should get restorative justice and the Department of Education should invest more in mental health support.
In a recent report he published as New York City comptroller he called for disbanding the controversial strategic response group, the anti-terror unit that’s been used to police protests, among other proposals to reform the department.
Maya Wiley
Wiley proposes creating an $18 million “participatory justice fund” to send to communities hit hardest by gun violence, and to allowing those communities to decide how to allocate the funds.
She wants to expand youth employment opportunities, expand on the city’s hospital based violence interruption programs that work directly with victims of shootings, add more guidance counselors and social workers in schools, and expand access to cognitive behavioral therapy. She wants to create “safe corridors” where community groups will help de-escalate conflicts arising in after-school hours among teens, to prevent them from resulting in arrests.
She plans to fund these initiatives by diverting resources from the NYPD and Corrections Department budgets.
Andrew Yang
Yang wants to appoint a civilian police commissioner who didn’t rise through the ranks of the NYPD, push for a residency requirement for NYPD officers, increase the ranks of detectives to improve clearance rates for violent crime and increase funding to violence interrupter groups.
He said he would “supplement” disciplinary power of the police commissioner so they wouldn’t always have final say over disciplinary measures, though he has stopped short of what the city council is trying to do, which would remove that authority altogether.
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One Issue Explainer
election 2021
policing
Gwynne Hogan
Gwynne Hogan 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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