The city of New York adopted on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday an annual budget reducing the funds allocated to its police services, illustration of the impact of anti-racist demonstrations even if the measure has been criticized from all sides.
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The budget of the first American metropolis for the fiscal year 2021, which opens on July 1, cuts police spending by more than a billion dollars, compared to an operational budget of the New York police – the most important of United States with some 36,000 agents – some 6 billion, according to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
According to him, these cuts meet the demands of reform of the anti-racist demonstrations carried by the #BlackLivesMatter movement which followed the death of George Floyd, a black man suffocated by a white police officer in Minneapolis on May 25.
In New York as elsewhere, requests to transfer funds allocated to the municipal police for the benefit of underprivileged minorities were a flagship demand of the demonstrators.
Mr. de Blasio said he had given up on hiring 1,100 police officers who were to start their training in July. And ensures that its budget responds to demands for more social justice as to the “deep desire” for the security of 8.5 million New Yorkers.
But the measures were seen as insufficient, if not purely cosmetic, by the left wing of the Democratic Party, and have been criticized by Republicans who see a recent increase in shootings in New York as proof that the police must be supported.
Donald Trump accused the mayor in a tweet on Wednesday of “neutralizing and despising” a police force that “he hates”.
The American president also attacked the mayor’s decision to soon place a sign with the emblem of “Black Lives Matter” in front of the Trump tower, on 5th Avenue, where the billionaire lived until his election.
After the mayor declared on MSNBC that he wanted the president to “hear (…) three words for which he has never shown any respect”, Mr. Trump felt that the police should ” perhaps “not allow” this symbol of hatred to be affixed on the most prestigious street in New York “.
The 2021 New York budget comes against a backdrop of budget cuts imposed by the pandemic, with the economic crisis and the fiscal shortfall it has generated.
It reached $ 88.1 billion, seven billion less than a preliminary version adopted in February, a month before the pandemic brought the American economic capital to a halt.
The mayor has been explaining for several weeks that if the federal government does not provide substantial assistance to the city or if the State of New York does not allow it to resort to the loan, some 22,000 municipal positions will have to be eliminated on October 1, affecting all basic services.
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