NEW YORK — While working as a monitor in the dean’s office her freshman year of high school, Alexis Lanysse spent most of her time filing papers and signing late passes. But she sometimes had another task: She’d log onto Facebook or Snapchat to track incidents that the dean’s office would investigate. The office at the Brooklyn high school would use the evidence to help decide how they punished students. Sometimes they handed out suspensions and mandated transfers. Once, her school called a group of monitors to track a Snapchat story of a student getting shoved into a locker.
UPDATE: The original Instagram video was taken down. The updated video linked below is to a news story of the June 30, 2020, protest. Watch video below
NEW YORK — After a slew of new laws were passed in the last month aimed at reining in aggressive policing tactics, police unions in New York City are now instructing officers to wait for a supervisor or call in a specialized unit if someone is resisting arrest. In a July 1 newsletter sent to NYPD officers, the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) instructed officers to wait, saying that officers' jobs have “changed radically over the past few weeks,” citing new laws. Frustrated by an apparent lack of guidance from the city on how officers should comply, the PBA is now demanding clear legal interpretations of how officers can comply with the new laws.
NEW YORK — The Surrogate's Court in Lower Manhattan received a fresh coat of paint — albeit an unprompted one, after graffiti, as colorful in its language as it was in its incandescence, was scrawled across the building by anti-police protesters. Nearby, an elevator shaft for the City Hall 4/5/6 train was covered in scraps of cardboard etched with messages memorializing the lives of Black Americans killed by police. Demonstrators had encamped in the area around City Hall for days while inside city officials dealt with one of the most significant political issues of their time — how to effect massive reforms to the nation's largest police department without sacrificing public safety. The solution from city leaders, much to the consternation of some protesters who envisioned a wholesale removal of police altogether, has been to enact a massive shift in funding away from the New York Police Department (NYPD), to the tune of nearly $1 billion, and reinvest it into communities of color. After midnight this morning the City Council voted on a budget that includes deep cuts to NYPD personnel and shifts millions to other city agencies.
As a budget deadline looms for New York today, the city’s Public Advocate said he will hold up the budget if he does not get commitments for massive reforms to how school safety is administered.
NEW YORK — After weeks of protest across New York, state and local elected officials are still scrambling to develop plans to divert funding from police departments, and deciding to reallocate the funds toward youth-based social services.
On Friday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order stating funding will be withheld if any local police department — including the New York Police Department — does not implement plans that reinvent and modernize police strategies and programs based on community input, the statement said. In a joint statement released late Friday afternoon, New York City Council leaders, including the co-chairs of the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus and Speaker Corey Johnson, announced their intentions to “cut over $1 billion dollars, including reducing uniform headcount through attrition, cutting overtime, shifting responsibilities away from the NYPD, finding efficiencies and savings in OTPS [Other Than Personal Service, or nonsalary] spending, and lowering associated fringe expenses.”
Johnson had indicated his willingness to support reforms earlier in the week, and expressed frustration that initial budget cuts forced by coronavirus were not sufficient. “As we have said, a less than one percent cut to the NYPD and a 32% cut to Department of Youth and Community Development is not representative of our values and the City Council will not approve a budget that fails to significantly reduce the NYPD budget and start us on a path to bringing structural change and transformational reforms to the police department,” a statement from Johnson’s office said Wednesday. Reallocating the funding is expected to produce a raucous debate among city officials, no matter how much money is taken from the department, with no clear sense of where the money should go. In a statement, the president of the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) predicted that if the city moved forward with its plan to cut funding, crime could increase as a result.
“For decades, every time a city agency failed at its task, the city’s answer was to take the job away and give it to the NYPD.
After multiple reports of police using excessive force against anti-police brutality protesters in New York and charges filed against only one NYPD officer, activists are questioning whether prosecutors across the city are taking the issue of brutality seriously.
One speaker at the New York march for Tamir Rice was inspired by the leadership of young people who led the march. He said he hoped it emboldens other adults to stand up with young people and get them involved in what he sees as a crucial historical moment.
Sixteen and 17-year-old first-time offenders with low-level offenses are heard by a court of their peers as part of a new pilot program called Project Reset taking flight in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
