During the nationwide protests against state repression in the United States, the demonstrators are also demanding less police spending. That will soon be the case in New York. The city council of the metropolis decides to cut the NYPD’s budget drastically.
The City Council of New York decided in a supplementary budget to reduce the police budget by one billion dollars, around 890 million euros. There should be no deletion of positions. The cut from around six to around five billion dollars is mainly due to changes in administration and work organization. In the future, around 5,300 police officers in schools will fall under the responsibility of the education department, and one year of training is to be suspended. Police officers should be encouraged to work less paid overtime.
At the meeting that ended early Wednesday morning there were around a dozen dissenting votes in the City Council. They complained that the budget cuts at the NYPD police department were going in the wrong direction because they were not aimed at changes to tasks, equipment or the replacement of police officers by social workers in the metropolis.
Previously, New York’s Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio had announced an agreement with the city council on the supplementary budget. Accordingly, before the vote, city council spokesman Corey Johnson said he was largely satisfied with the future allocation of the budget: “I am proud of the changes we have made,” he said. At the same time, the Democrat declared: “I wish we had done more to curtail the NYPD.”
Partial success for US-wide protest movement
After several deaths from police violence in the USA, there are nationwide discussions about budget cuts and the reorganization of police work. In New York, too, tens of thousands have been demonstrating for reforms for weeks, one of their mottos being: “Defund the Police”.
Overall, the city is planning to spend around nine billion dollars less due to the Corona crisis. For the fiscal year 2021, expenditures of 88.1 billion dollars (78.4 billion euros) are planned. This roughly corresponds to the expenditure of the state of Bavaria. Originally, New York had a budget of $ 95.3 billion.
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