Photos: Wikimedia Commons
This week, as the New York City Council prepared to vote on the New York City Police Reform and Reinvention Plan, and to adopt Mayor Bill de Blasio’s policing plan, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights both condemned the effort which they say won’t fundamentally change policing in New York City.
The New York Civil Liberties said the plan would fail to alter the status quo of policing. New York Civil Liberties Union senior policy counsel Michael Sisitzky issued the following statement:
“The Mayor’s plan is a far cry from the transformative change New Yorkers demanded in the streets and at the polls: it is, simply put, more of the same.
“The de Blasio administration has had since June to respond to the requirement to build a plan that would decrease the size, scope and power of the NYPD. Instead, they are laying a shoddy foundation for future reform that privileges NYPD input over the voices of Black and Latinx communities that have been afflicted by police abuse for far too long.
“The City Council should reject the Mayor’s plan, and return to the real work of reducing the impact of police violence by investing in communities.”
The Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following response to the police reform plan:
“New York City cannot address the NYPD’s long history and continuation of unconstitutional and racially discriminatory policing practices without substantive engagement with the communities most heavily impacted by those practices, particularly Black and Latinx communities.
“Eight years after a federal court found the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policies and practices violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, racially discriminatory policing by the NYPD remains an issue in our communities.
“We encourage the New York City Council to take meaningful steps to end these discriminatory practices by rejecting all portions of the New York City Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative plan that would expand police funding and reach through programs with no track record of fixing the problem of racially discriminatory policing and that are likely to make the problem worse.”
