Mayor Bill de Blasio has caved to calls to pull funding from the NYPD.
Hizzoner announced on Sunday that the city would reallocate an unspecified chunk of the department’s budget toward city youth groups and social services — days after dismissing demands to defund the police force, which has seen nearly 300 injured members amid recent unrest.
“Policing matters for sure, but the investments in our youth are foundational,” the mayor told reporters in a City Hall press briefing. “We will be moving funding from the NYPD to youth initiatives and social services.”
No particulars were announced — including how much money would be shifted, what cuts would have to made at the NYPD and which groups would benefit — with de Blasio saying the details would be hammered out in the coming weeks’ budget talks.
The fiscal year ends June 30.
De Blasio insisted that any cuts made by the NYPD would not be at the expense of public safety.
“I want people to understand that we are committed to shifting resources to ensure that the focus is on our young people,” he said.
“And I also will affirm while doing that, we will only do it in a way that we are certain continues to ensure that this city will be safe.”
The apparent compromise comes after activists, along with some City Council members and educators, have called on lawmakers to “defund” the NYPD as part of effecting a larger systemic change following the fatal arrest of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
As recently as Friday, de Blasio dismissed the idea of raiding the $6 billion budget of the nation’s largest police department.
“I do not believe it’s a good idea to reduce the budget of the agency that’s here to keep us safe,” he said at a Friday briefing.
Council Speaker Corey Johnson cheered de Blasio’s change of course on Sunday.
“I am happy that the mayor had been listening to the council’s calls to make substantial cuts to the NYPD and reinvest that money in communities of color and our young New Yorkers,” Johnson (D-Manhattan) said in a statement.
“The devil is in the details, but we are fighting hard for a budget that reflects our values and our priorities. As we have said, a less than 1 percent cut to the NYPD and a 32 percent cut to DYCD [the Department of Youth and Community Development] is not representative of our values.”
But in Albany, Gov. Cuomo warned against forcing police departments to tighten their purse strings, citing looting that has spun off from Floyd protests.
“You have New York City that is still reeling from the COVID virus, and now you have this night of looting that I’m telling you shook people in the city to the core,” Cuomo said in a briefing, speaking generally and not in response to de Blasio’s remarks.
“You don’t need police? You don’t need police?
“That’s what happens when you don’t have effective policing.”
Although he slammed the NYPD as “not effective” in stopping the looting last week, Cuomo later clarified to stress that he disapproved of de Blasio’s leadership and the way the police deployed resources.
“It was frightening,” Cuomo said of the looting. “[With] no police, you get looting. That’s what you get. Nobody wants that.”
De Blasio did seem willing to make one addition to the NYPD’s budget, calling the idea of funding more lawyers to expedite departmental trials for cops accused of wrongdoing “a very good use of taxpayer dollars.”
He repeated calls for the Albany to change the state’s 50-A law that shields officers’ disciplinary histories, saying it “broken and stands in the way of improving trust between police and community.”
He also announced that the NYPD would no longer handle street-vendor enforcement, with the role to be transferred to an unspecified civilian agency.