Tell the City Council: Our Families & Neighbors Are Essential — the NYPD Budget Is Not! We Demand #BudgetJustice! Click here to call now.
New York City is in crisis. The brutal death toll of the pandemic and the economic fallout facing the city have profound implications for our future. But Mayor de Blasio has proposed a budget that calls for huge cuts in New York’s social and human services while leaving the NYPD virtually untouched. Exactly when they are needed most — during a once-in-a-century humanitarian disaster — the mayor is planning to take away resources from our most vulnerable, hardest-hit communities in order to fund the police.
Even as crime rates plummet, New York City is spending more on policing than on health, homeless services, youth development, and workforce development combined. That’s wrong and unacceptable. Over-investment in policing and underinvestment in public health, housing, and communities is why our elders have been so devastated by COVID-19, and Black and Latinx New Yorkers have been dying at twice the rate of everyone else.
Where is the NYPD’s $6 billion dollar budget going?
- In 2018, New York City paid out $230 million of our tax dollars to settle lawsuits against the NYPD, mostly for police misconduct.
- We are planning to spend $332 million to keep cops in our schools, armed and ready to fuel the school-to-prison pipeline even though our schools are closed and facing over $800 million in cuts.
- The mayor wants to hire 2300 new police officers to enforce social distancing, despite the fact that 90% of those arrested for violating social distancing have been Black or Latinx, we have seen multiple videos of police using brutal violence in making arrests, and the Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, and Queens DAs are refusing to prosecute social distancing arrests.
- The NYPD just spent half a million dollars on brand new drones to surveil New Yorkers — that would have bought almost 264,000 N95 masks for nurses, doctors, and EMTs who are re-using their disposable masks over and over again.
