By Emily Drooby
Mayor Bill de Blasio is planning on cutting the NYPD’s budget in response to demands from protesters for change.
During a press conference on June 7, he said, “People did not protest for the sake of protest. They protest to achieve change, and now we must deliver that change,”
The mayor said he would move money from the NYPD and use it for social and youth services.
“We are committed to shifting resources to ensure that the focus is on our young people,” he said.
Calls to defund or even abolish the police have become top demands among protesters throughout the country, including in New York City.
“When more funding is put into policing than it is education, than housing, social services, it’s an issue, it shows that there is an imbalance and a bias in the priorities,” explained Anthony Beckford, the President of Black Lives Matter Brooklyn.
Paul DiGiacomo, the president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, Inc, warned that
slashing the police budget will have consequences.
“The bottom line is this,” he said,”if you cut the funding from the New York City Police Department, the only people who will suffer is the people of the city.”
The detective is also calling out politicians he accuses of not supporting the police.
“It’s not fair to the members of the NYPD and my detectives who are out there putting their lives on the lines I have said it many times,” DiGiacomo further explained. “If you assault one of my detectives, we will go after you with civil litigation. That is a promise. We are done being abused.”
Former police officer and current professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Peter Moskos, added that any funding cuts will almost definitely mean less police.
“If you start talking about major cuts you’re talking about laying off police officers, you can easily cut an organization where 80% plus of the funding goes to labor costs,” he explained. “So at least, we should be honest about what is being proposed.”
Some are talking about stripping a billion dollars out the NYPD’s six-billion-dollar budget. While de Blasio has yet to release a number, he insists it won’t be a billion.
In Albany this week, the Democrat-led legislature is being expected to pass a slew of bills that address police practices. One hot-button measure would end secrecy surrounding the discipline records of police. It’s known as “50-A,” and abolishing it is something else that protesters have repeatedly demanded.