FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 5, 2021
Contact: Ashley C. Sawyer | 718-857-1393 ext. 124 | media@ggenyc.org
Mayor Bill de Blasio today released his “New York City Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative” draft plan, proposing to funnel an indeterminate heap of public funds to expand policing further into the everyday lives of young people.
GGE condemns these costly police “reinvention” attempts that seek to normalize and increase the presence of police everywhere young people are.
Among the proposed misuse of public money outlined in this draft plan is growing the number of NYPD “Youth Leadership Councils” by 58%, “enhancing” and expanding the “Law Enforcement Explorers” program by 36%, and inexplicably tangling together the work of the Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) and the NYPD – through projects like the NYPD rehabilitating basketball courts and running new youth sports programs.
Once again, we see the Mayor attempting to put the young people of New York in harm’s way for the sake of bolstering public relations for the NYPD.
After a year of protests and calls to defund the police, the Mayor, ignoring the will of the people, is potentially expanding the NYPD’s presence, scope, funding, and hiring under the pretense of new police programming. The Mayor’s proposal intends to hide a legacy of police violence behind “youth programs” that actually operate to expand police power, to expand information gathering and surveillance, and to hyper-expose young people to the threat of criminalization.
We demand funding for schools and communities. We demand shifting resources away from policing. Just as we refuse the presence of police in schools and call for police-free schools, we refuse to allow police to occupy all areas of social life inhabited by the young people of New York as put forth in this draft plan.
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