Mayor Eric Adams’ top public safety officials came under fire during a City Council hearing Wednesday on the administration’s public safety plan.
Some councilmembers described the initiative as a way to revive “excessive policing” of the Black and Latino communities.
A key component of Adams’ crime-fighting plan is the reintroduction of a modified version of the NYPD’s neighborhood patrols.
In their testimony, New York Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell and Philip Banks, deputy mayor for public safety in Adams, argued that the new units are very different from those that were disbanded in 2020 amid national overhaul on police. police brutality following the death of George Floyd.
“These are not the crime units of yesteryear,” Sewell said. New units undergo more rigorous training, are subject to stricter supervision, and are required to wear identifiable police clothing.”
The virtual oversight hearing, conducted by the Council’s Committee on Public Safety, highlighted the deep political divisions that exist between the Adams administration and more progressive Democrats on the City Council.
Progressive-leaning Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron expressed fear that the units are a repeat of disbanded teams, which were involved in a disproportionate number of incidents of police violence, including the death of Eric Garner in 2014.
“This plan: 75% is policing, 25% is palaver for youth mental health and entrepreneurship,” Barron said.
The councilman referred to the plan as a “fundamental reason for over-policing” without sufficient focus on investing in social services for communities affected by crime.
But New York Police Department Chief Kenneth Corey responded, noting that the units have seized 20 illegal weapons and made more than 80 arrests since they hit the streets about two weeks ago.
“That’s a good start,” Queens Councilman Bob Holden, a moderate Democrat, told Corey.
While levels are well below crime waves of previous decades, shootings are up more than 17% so far this year compared to the same point in 2021, according to NYPD data.
Another aspect of Adams’ plan under scrutiny is to focus more resources on fighting quality-of-life crimes such as fare evasion and public drinking, a tactic often referred to as “windows” policing. broken”.
Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, the Legal Aid Society released a report that found that 91% of NYPD quality-of-life arrests in 2021 targeted non-white New Yorkers, a data point Molly Griffard, an attorney with the group, he said it “raises serious concerns” about whether the NYPD can carry out Adams’ mission “lawfully.”
Brooklyn Councilmember Chi Ossé questioned Corey during the hearing about a recent incident caught on camera in which a 19-year-old black woman from her district was arrested by officers for jumping a turnstile at a subway stop in Bed- Stuy.
Ossé told reporters last week that body camera footage from the officers involved shows police “physically assaulting” 19-year-old Lorianna Sampayo, even after she backed through the turnstile at the Nostrand Avenue station. , where police said she was caught walking out the emergency exit door without paying.
Sampayo was eventually charged with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest after she punched one of the officers in the face, bit another and kicked a third in the groin, according to police. Police said Sampayo also had an outstanding warrant for hitting, kicking and biting a Port Authority police officer in 2021.
The video of the Bed-Stuy arrest has sparked debate amid a resurgence of “broken window surveillance” by the New York Police Department and a crackdown on the city’s subway system, both of which took up a large part of the City Council hearing on the mayor’s plan to end the violence.
“I saw the footage,” Ossé told NYPD brass at the City Council hearing on Wednesday. “The violence starts when she goes over the turnstile and the police keep putting their hands on her. When she does what they ask, they keep putting their hands on her.”
However, Corey disputed Osse’s expressions, saying the teen kicked, punched and bit officers before her messy arrest.
Although Adams officials spent most of the hour-long hearing defending the mayor’s crime-fighting agenda, Banks also acknowledged that the plan could be flawed in places and require attention.
“There may be some errors in this plan that we must adapt and we must modify. So we’re not going to sit still with anything here,” said Banks, a former NYPD chief whose appointment to the city council has sparked controversy since he resigned from the department in 2014 while under federal investigation.
When asked about Banks’ comments afterward, Adams praised the deputy mayor as a “clever law enforcement person.”
“If he says there are some things we need to look at … I’ll follow up and find out from him,” the mayor told reporters.
Another aspect of the Adams officials’ testimony that bothered some Council members at the hearing was the perceived lack of transparency.
Queens Councilmember Tiffany Caban, a former public defender, pressed Sewell to share studies the NYPD reviewed on the negative health impact of focusing too much on quality-of-life crimes.
“The lack of will for transparency is very, very worrying,” Caban said when the commissioner said that she would “discuss” those studies, but without giving more details.
The city claims new training and a thorough selection process will help correct past “mistakes” by the neighborhood patrols, which were disbanded under former Mayor Bill de Blasio amid years of accusations of aggressive tactics, outright brutality and racist surveillance against the black and brown communities.
The NYPD has said that between 15 and 20 percent of applicants seeking to join the five-person crime squads were disqualified from doing so after a “deep dive” into their records.
“What happens to officers who don’t join [a los equipos]? Do they fail that test and stay in the streets and continue to bang my constituents’ heads against walls while threatening them?” Councilman Ossé asked last week.
NYPD officials told Ossé the Use of Force Board would review body camera footage and officers would be retrained or disciplined if there is “a problem with the way they interact with members of the police force.” of the community”.
“Don’t judge us by an individual cop,” Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks told Ossé. “I tell them that once we identify those particular officers … prompt and appropriate action will be taken.”
“He is not an individual police officer,” Ossé replied. “This is a historical, systemic pattern of how he’s been running this agency for decades… It’s happening year after year, year after year,” he countered.
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