Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed to significantly reduce funding to the NYPD on Monday, announcing that he'd overcome his initial skepticism of the idea just one day before the deadline for the city's 2021 fiscal budget. As hundreds of New Yorkers continue occupying the sidewalk outside City Hall to demand the reallocation of $1 billion from the NYPD to social services, the mayor said he'd presented a proposal to the City Council this weekend that would do just that.
"We have found a plan that will keep this city safe, will achieve the $1 billion in savings, will allow us to redistribute money to youth programs and communities that need it most," de Blasio told reporters during his daily press briefing.
The mayor declined to go into specifics about the proposed cuts to the NYPD's $5.7 billion operating budget, citing the ongoing negotiations with the City Council.
According to some councilmembers briefed on the plan, the $1 billion figure touted by the mayor is based on budget maneuvers and outright "fictions" that do not meaningful reduce the size or scope of policing in New York City.
"This budget deal is not a people’s victory," said Brooklyn Councilman Carlos Menchaca, one of the council's most vocal supporters of the defunding effort, which has been a rallying cry at protests against racist police violence across the city for the last month. "It’s a retreat into fear, with accounting gimmicks standing in for the real thing."
The primary issue, according to some progressive members of the council, rests with the mayor's refusal to implement a full-scale hiring freeze within the police department.
A proposal from the council would have paused all hires for the next year, reducing the NYPD headcount by roughly 2,300 officers through attrition, while saving the city more than $300 million in this fiscal year. The mayor's plan would eliminate two cadet classes — saving an estimated $81 million — but would not freeze hires altogether, according to a draft of top-line budget items shared with councilmembers.
"If it’s anything less than a hiring freeze, when we’re still not hiring teachers, then the whole thing is a house of cards," Councilman Brad Lander told Gothamist. "I don’t know how you can stand in front of it and say this represents anything significant."
A collection of signs placed at the gates of City Hall by occupiers
Another sticking point for both elected officials and activists concerns the shifting of school safety agents from the NYPD to the Department of Education. The transfer would move $459 million away from the police department's budget, the largest by far of the mayor's proposed cuts to the NYPD's operating expenses. Beyond shifting the costs to another agency, it's unclear how the diversion would impact the city's controversial school policing program.
In a statement on Monday, a coalition of students and reform advocates called on Speaker Corey Johnson to remove the safety agents from schools altogether. Transferring the guards to another agency should not be considered divestment, they wrote, "as there would be no actual reduction in funds allocated to policing."
Confusingly, the Mayor's Office appears to be counting the transfer of fringe benefits, which are not part of the NYPD's operating budget, to achieve its $1 billion figure, according to some councilmembers. Those benefits would still be paid by taxpayers, regardless of whether the school safety agents are part of the DOE or the NYPD.
"That's neither a move nor a cut," Lander said. "It's a fiction."
The budget battle comes as New York City braces for a $10 billion shortfall in tax revenue due to COVID-19, triggering wide-ranging cuts to a range of municipal services. The mayor has faced sustained criticism of his approach to those cuts; his initial executive budget in April called for freezing new teacher hires and cancelling a widely popular youth unemployment program, but left the NYPD's budget essentially untouched.
The latest proposal for NYPD cuts were informed by police leaders, the mayor noted, who "did a hell of a good job of saying, ‘Okay here’s a bunch of things we can do while still keeping this city safe.’”
De Blasio did not specify which community or youth programs would receive additional city funding, or how much of the $1 billion in diverted funds they would get.
Activists have roundly rejected the broad outlines of the budget, and plan to ramp up pressure on the mayor and council speaker ahead of the midnight budget deadline on Tuesday.
The mayor's $1 billion claim is "a farce," said Nelini Stamp, a participant in the City Hall occupation, whose day job involves directing strategy for the Working Families Party.
"We don't need more Black Lives Matter signs painted on streets," she told Gothamist. "We need a real, true cut, and this money laundering ain't it."
