Since 2014 NYC has spent $1.3 billion to pay for police misconduct claims. That’s not a functional policing system and the result is discrimination and death for far too many black and brown New Yorkers. We can keep people safe and reinvest in education, and civic engagement so that we can work to dismantle systemic racism, fight poverty, and build power. To ensure the safety of our communities, we must:
- Divest $1 billion from the NYPD and divert these funds to communities in the aforementioned or similar means
- Reduce the number of cops in schools. Children cannot learn and thrive in a police-state setting. Significantly reduce the NYPD School Safety program to be a small handful of officers on site for emergency response only. Re-train School Safety officers to be members of the unarmed first responder unit.
- Remove the NYPD from mental health checks, we have to expand this to include community safety workers as first responders for all non-violent crisis calls including behavioral health, sexual assault, suicide risk, drug overdose, homelessness, and mental health crises.
- Make marijuana legal and tax it. Overturn and expunge any and all sentences based on minor quantities of marijuana possession. Aggressively invest the resulting tax profits in neighborhoods disproportionately devastated by the racist war on drugs and over-policing.
- Decriminalize all drugs and institute fines for possession of small quantities of illegal drugs. Utilize portions of the revenue generated through marijuana tax and drug possession fines to fund rehabilitation centers and safe injection sites.