You jump to a conclusion reflexively. I said and feel nothing detrimental about the NYPD. I have the highest respect for them and local law enforcement officers throughout the country.
You used the term “law enforcement” in you post, not me, champ.
The decision to trash police,
What entity made this decision and how specifically was it implemented?
They did some modest trimming and moved some expenses over to other departments, so no, it wasn't remotely close to a $1B, but more like $382M per the article which details the math. You are entitled to your opinions, but not facts, if you have any please feel free to post them and cite your sources champ -
The mayor and the City Council did some fuzzy math to arrive at $1B in cuts.
www.cityandstateny.com
After weeks of demands by police reform activists, the New York City government cut the New York City Police Department’s budget by an unprecedented amount
early Wednesday morning.
But in approving the city’s fiscal year 2021 budget, did Mayor Bill de Blasio shift more than $1 billion away from the police as he claimed? Or was it really a more modest amount, bolstered by budget trickery? A deeper look at the numbers suggests that the mayor’s $1 billion total relies on overly optimistic assumptions and a flexible understanding of what counts as NYPD spending. But the criminal justice reform advocates
decrying the adopted budget probably aren’t taking enough credit for influencing a budget that, even under the strictest reading, reduces NYPD spending by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Analyzing the city budget is always difficult – adjustments are made mid-year and costs are shifted between agencies. It can make even the most budget-literate analysts go cross-eyed. And there’s a surprising amount of subjectivity inherent in discussing the budget, something the mayor can use to his benefit when he’s trying to explain how he arrived at $1 billion in police budget cuts. Here are some of the most pressing questions about what happened to the NYPD’s budget.
HOW MUCH WAS THE BUDGET CUT?
Last year’s
fiscal year 2020 budget allocated $5.61 billion to the NYPD’s expense budget. And when de Blasio presented his executive budget in April, he proposed keeping spending at about the same level – $5.64 billion. But in the past couple months, the mayor and the City Council agreed to serious cuts to the NYPD. In the
fiscal year 2021 budget the mayor signed Wednesday morning, the NYPD has been allocated $5.22 billion. That’s a 6.8% reduction from the year before, or $382 million less.
HOW DID THEY CUT THAT MUCH?
By doing a mix of things. The city hopes to save $55 million this year by cutting one of the four annual classes of new recruits. That’s 1,163 fewer officers that will need to be paid. The city will save another $5 million by putting a hiring freeze on “non-safety positions,” $12 million by canceling or reducing some outside contracts and another $5 million on delaying the purchase of some new vehicles. But the biggest savings – $355.2 million, according to the mayor’s office – is reducing the amount the department plans to spend on overtime payments to officers.
THAT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.
Yes, the NYPD is notorious for
exceeding its overtime budget. Even though the NYPD’s budget was $5.6 billion in fiscal year 2019, the department ended up spending $5.98 billion by the end of the year –
largely thanks to overtime. It was the same situation in fiscal year 2020, which just ended on June 30. The NYPD’s budget was $5.61 billion and it is projected to actually spend a record $6.08 billion.
WILL THAT JUST HAPPEN AGAIN THIS YEAR?
Maybe. Reporters questioned de Blasio about it at his budget press conference Tuesday, and he promised that the NYPD’s management is better now than it’s ever been. Newly appointed NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea “is a very smart data-driven modern manager,” de Blasio said. “He is going to find ways to make things happen. I’m just convinced.”
GOT IT. BUT WAIT, YOU SAID THE BUDGET WAS ONLY CUT BY $382 MILLION?
Yes, but there were also a few major cost shifts that the mayor is counting toward that $1 billion total. Certain programs like school safety agents – uniformed officers who don’t carry guns and patrol the city’s public schools – will be moved under the Department of Education. That alone will shift $307 million from the NYPD … eventually. The change did not appear to be reflected in the budget signed Wednesday, and the mayor’s office has said the transition will be phased in over time. That’s also true of the $42 million saved by moving the expense for school crossing guards out of the NYPD’s budget. The city will also move some employees who work in homeless outreach out of the NYPD, saving the department about $4.5 million.
SO $382 MILLION IN CUTS AND $354 MILLION IN COST SHIFTS … THAT’S NOT EVEN $750 MILLION. HOW DID THE MAYOR GET TO $1 BILLION?
The city spends more on policing than just what’s included in the NYPD’s expense budget. An
analysis from the Citizens Budget Commission found that the city is actually spending about $10.9 billion on the NYPD. About half of that isn’t included in the NYPD’s budget, but rather it’s centrally allocated spending on costs like pensions and health insurance for officers. The mayor’s office is also counting cuts to these areas to get to the $1 billion total.
HOW MUCH IS GETTING CUT THERE?
About $163 million, according to the mayor’s office. That’s the money saved by not hiring one class of new officers, but it also counts all of the pension costs and fringe benefits for school safety agents and crossing guards. The city will still be spending that money, but it’s no longer attributable to the NYPD.
ARE THERE ANY OTHER BUDGET TRICKS?
Definitely. The mayor is also hoping to increase the NYPD’s revenue next year by $42 million
by getting traffic enforcement agents to write more tickets. It’s not clear why the mayor would count that as part of a $1 billion budget cut, since it doesn’t actually decrease spending.
SOUNDS LIKE THE MAYOR WAS GETTING A BIT DESPERATE TO HIT THE MAGICAL $1 BILLION NUMBER.
It does seem that way. In fact, the number is such a stretch that New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson refused to say the city had cut that much. He and other council leaders had agreed during negotiations
to set $1 billion in cuts as the goal, but in his Tuesday press conference, Johnson said that he and the council had fallen short. And police reform activists who had pushed for the cuts seemed to be in universal agreement on that point.
“We won’t fall for Mayor de Blasio and the City Council’s funny math or lies to try to trick New Yorkers into thinking they made $1 billion in direct cuts to the NYPD’s almost $6 billion FY21 expense budget,” read a statement from Anthonine Pierre, spokesperson for Communities United for Police Reform, a group that had called for the cuts.
SO WHY AIM FOR $1 BILLION AT ALL?
The demand for $1 billion in cuts to the NYPD came from advocacy groups, which seemed to dominate the discourse. And in the midst of ongoing protests against police brutality and systemic racism, it makes sense that Democratic politicians like de Blasio and Johnson would want to align themselves with the mass movement. But the mayor, the council speaker – and admittedly, the media – may have gotten too caught up in the numbers. The $1 billion number was always somewhat arbitrary, and more of a means to an end. Advocates’ real goals were broader, and included changing the way that officers interact with the public. They were bound to be disappointed by anything less than radical change.
and drive upwards of 25% of them off the force
When did this happen? LInk?
It appears that the 25%, you referenced, was some BS estimate in a Breitbart article regarding NYPD personnel who would refuse to get vaccinated for COVID and then subsequently retire. If not refute it with third party attestation.
The number ended up being .15%, per the NY Post- I’m sure a NYC expert like you realizes it is owned by Rupert Murdoch, also owns Fox News.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said 34 cops and 40 civilian members of the force — which account for fewer than .15 percent of NYPD employees — did not comply with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s man…
nypost.com
is a deliberate plan to excuse and promote crime by diseased political leadership.
The new mayor, Eric Adams, is a retired NYPD Police Captain
Similarly, the decision of prosecutors to release violent criminals to prey on decent citizens. You, who I know is one of those decent citizens, should be most appalled.
Another RW talking point without any data. Any actual data on this epidemic or third-party accreditation? Or just more musings from NewsMulch? It happens in every jurisdiction; to act like it is only a NYC issue is inane - just another conspiracy theory to keep you watching!
Bail reform was enacted and primarily affects misdemeanors and non-violent felonies -
There is no clear connection between recent crime increases and the bail reform law enacted in 2019, and the data does not currently support further revisions to the legislation.
www.brennancenter.org
There is no clear connection between recent crime increases and the bail reform law enacted in 2019, and the data does not currently support further revisions to the legislation.
Three years ago, New York State adopted a law ending the assessment of
cash bail in most cases involving misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. The law aimed to reduce the risk that someone would be jailed because they could not afford to pay for release and reduce the unnecessary use of incarceration, which can have a
profoundly disruptive effect on peoples’ lives.
Many police leaders and some politicians have been against these bail reforms from the start. Now, amid a new legislative session, the law has come under renewed scrutiny as critics seek
to blame it for recent increases in violent crime, which rose nationwide in 2020 and 2021 as the pandemic gripped the nation and ravaged the economy. Most recently, Gov. Kathy Hochul
proposed changes to the law, after initially calling for a patient and
data-driven approach to evaluating its effects.
Here, we review what we know so far about bail reform and its impact on public safety. Critically, we find no evidence to believe that bail reform drove recent increases in violence.
Bail eligibility depends on several factors.
New York’s bail reform legislation went into effect at the start of 2020 and, together with
revisions passed just a few months later, changed the likelihood of monetary bail being assessed pending the outcome of a criminal case. Broadly speaking, the law separates cases into two categories, based on the alleged crime involved.
According to the new law, judges have the option to set bail in almost any case involving a violent felony. In these “bail eligible” cases, a defendant must pay an assessed bail or face detention. In virtually all other cases, which include most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, judges may release people on their own recognizance or impose
some other set of conditions to ensure their return to court. Such conditions include restrictions on travel or supervision by a pretrial supervision agency.
When deciding whether to release a person or set bail, the law requires judges to focus solely on the conditions that will ensure that the person returns to court. That means, unlike most other states, New York judges cannot consider their subjective view of a person’s “dangerousness” when deciding what release conditions to set. New York’s approach, which dates back to the 1970s, reflects an attempt to
preserve the presumption of innocence and reduce racial biases against defendants. State legislators
carefully considered revisiting this rule in 2020 but ultimately decided against it.
Notably, judges also retain the ability to set bail in some cases considered high-risk. Judges may set bail for defendants who have been released and are rearrested for another offense, provided both charges are felonies or Class A misdemeanors and involve harm to a person or property. For example, a judge may set bail for a person who was charged with punching someone in a bar fight, released, and then arrested for injuring someone in another fight. (Notably, Hochul’s proposal would go further, allowing judges to set bail almost
any time someone is rearrested after initially being released, even for a low-level misdemeanor.) Other circumstances can make a case bail eligible, too, such as when someone is charged with a felony offense while on probation.
There is no evidence linking bail reform to the 2020–21 crime increase.
Many have argued that bail reform is responsible for rising crime in New York State, both in and out of New York City. But crime rose all across the country in 2020, making it unwise to look for explanations that are confined to New York.
Additionally, in the nearly two years since implementation, no direct evidence has emerged linking bail reform to rising crime.
It is true that New York City saw a sudden increase in crime from 2019 to 2020, with an especially stark increase in murders, which
rose from the 319 in 2019 to more than 450 in 2020. Shooting incidents in the city
roughly doubled during the same period. Statewide, the murder rate also rose from 2.9 to
4.2 killings per 100,000 people. According to
one analysis, “the recent rise of violence has been concentrated in areas characterized by poverty and racial segregation.”
But the best available information suggests that bail reform is not the primary driver of these increases in crime.
One recent analysis by the
Times Union of Albany suggested that relatively few people released under the new law went on to be rearrested for serious offenses. The
Times Union reviewed state data on pretrial releases between July 2020 and June 2021, identifying nearly 100,000 cases where someone was released pretrial in a decision “related to the state’s changed bail laws.” Just 2 percent of those 100,000 cases led to a rearrest for a violent felony; of these, 429 cases led to a rearrest for a violent felony involving a firearm. Roughly one-fifth of all cases resulted in a rearrest for “any offense,” regardless of severity, such as a misdemeanor or nonviolent felony.
These findings are preliminary, and future researchers will certainly build on them. But as a first attempt to study the issue, the
Times Union’s analysis suggests that as many as 80,000 people may have avoided jail incarceration due to cash bail because of the 2019–20 reforms and went on to pose no documented threat to public safety. (
An opinion column in the New York Post cited the same data to argue that
43 percent of pretrial releases resulted in rearrest, but arrived at that conclusion by focusing on a small subset of just 4,062 cases.) The state’s data does not provide a point of comparison — i.e., are these rearrest rates higher or lower since bail reform’s enactment? But a
dashboard maintained by the nonprofit New York City Criminal Justice Agency focusing on the percentage of people awaiting trial in the community and rearrested in a given month also appears to show little change in rearrest trends since 2019. A
new report by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander cites CJA’s data to conclude that “the share of people awaiting trial in the community who are rearrested remained nearly identical before and after implementation of bail reforms.”
That means any attempt to link bail reform to rising crime should be evaluated skeptically. Indeed, some early arguments about the effects of bail reform have been directly disproven. In 2020, the New York City Police Department claimed that bail reform and recent jail releases had led to an increase in shootings. But according to a
New York Post analysis, the NYPD’s
own statistics proved otherwise. Between January and late June 2020, according to NYPD data reviewed by the
Post, “just one person released under the statewide bail reform laws” had been charged with a shooting.
Crime rose in jurisdictions both with and without bail reform.
Increases in violence over the last few years are undeniably tragic developments, but they must be considered in context. New York State’s murder rate remains below the national average. City and state crime increases were also, unfortunately, far from unique. Between 2019 and 2020 the
national murder rate rose by roughly
30 percent, and assaults jumped by around 10 percent. These increases were felt in communities of all sizes, political alignments, and geographies. Notably, new research by a team of economists also shows that progressive local law enforcement policies appear to have had
no impact on the crime increase.
Further, there are signs the murder spike may have leveled off last year. Murders in New York City increased by roughly
4 percent between 2020 and 2021 — still rising, but much more slowly. (Officials have not yet shared data on statewide crime trends in 2021.)
Crime is complex, and policymakers should be wary of simplistic answers.
It may be years before we have a complete understanding of what caused crime to rise in New York over the last two years, but researchers have begun to point to some potential national factors.
Gun violence appears to have
significantly contributed to the increase in murders, for one. Guns were
sold,
carried, and
recovered at crime scenes at much higher rates than previous years. The pandemic also caused a sudden, sharp, and
highly unequal recession — thrusting many people and communities into deep uncertainty. Social distancing and disruptive lockdowns
severely hindered the reach of institutions that help preserve neighborhood safety.
Of course, researchers and policymakers can and should continue to study the effects of bail reform on public safety, as more data and methods of analysis emerge. Many factors can influence a pretrial release decision,
making it hard to fully understand the impact of bail reform with just two years’ worth of data. Other implementation issues, like limited funding available to pretrial supervision agencies, further complicate the relationship between reform and crime.
Critically though, so far there is no evidence that bail reform has driven the increase in crime. That makes the case for further revisions to the bail statute significantly weaker and indicates that policymakers should instead look for other ways to address crime. Indeed, other policy interventions that support communities, rather than relying on incarceration, have the potential to build enduring public safety in the city and state.
For example, better funding for pretrial services, even beyond what Hochul
proposed in her
executive budget, could ensure that people awaiting trial in their communities receive help they may need. Further, expanded mental health treatment services could identify and help people in crisis, as could addiction and substance abuse treatment. Other interventions, like after-school programming and summer youth employment, may provide safe places for young people and reduce opportunities for conflict. Programs to expand affordable housing could reduce strain on the city’s overburdened shelters for unhoused people, and improve quality of life, health, and safety at a stroke. Funding and support for community violence interrupters, a
promising strategy that the Biden administration has
embraced at the federal level, could also lead to safer neighborhoods. These approaches grab fewer headlines than bail reform, but legislators should focus on investments, like these, that are proven to address crime.
m.intrepidmuseum.org
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