NEW YORK: New York City Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams today called for deeper investment in public safety services and infrastructure, beyond simply law enforcement solutions. At a hearing of the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety, he urged the city to fund non-police infrastructure, and emphasized the broad agreement among New Yorkers in recent surveys on public safety priorities, and how police resources should be utilized.
“The NYPD is often called to address issues of homelessness and mental health crises,” noted the Public Advocate. “We know that dispatching police to remove people perceived as being homeless or experiencing symptoms of mental health and acute mental illness hasn’t worked long-term in the past, and that we must invest in non-police responses to people in mental health crisis to address those in crisis and to help address substance abuse.”
Public Advocate Williams also emphasized the overreliance on law enforcement in subway stations, including the recent addition of the National Guard, and said of the previous surge in subway policing “... Crime decreased outside of the subway during that time period more than it did inside of the subway. Despite the recent deployment of New York State Troopers and the terrible deployment of the National Guard to the city’s subways, a recent shooting occurred on the A train as it pulled into the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, which houses a police station currently. This says to me that police alone can’t solve this, and I think everybody here agrees with that.”
“What I’m hoping is that we have the courage in leadership to not just put money where it needs to go, but to build out an infrastructure of non-police responses that New York City’s actually asking for,”argued the Public Advocate in closing. “... I think if we really want to support our law enforcement partners, the one thing we can stop asking them to do is “everything,” because they can’t do everything, and that's harmful.”
Read the Public Advocate’s full comments as delivered below.
STATEMENT OF PUBLIC ADVOCATE JUMAANE D. WILLIAMS TO THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY MARCH 20, 2024
Thank you so much Mr. Chair and Madame Speaker. Peace and blessings to everyone. Commissioner Caban and the entire NYPD leadership. As was mentioned, my name is Jumaane Williams, and I am the Public Advocate for the City of New York. I would like to thank Chair Salaam, the Speaker, and the members of the Committee on Public Safety for holding this important hearing.
The NYPD is by far the biggest and most expensive police department in the country, and also unfortunately very often is called to do social service functions. If you do permit me just to remind folks, there have been a few surveys that actually showed that most of us almost universally agree where it is best to use law enforcement and where it is not. The Adams administration did a survey I believe almost three years ago, asking what the best way was to address the crime that was going on. The first two answers were housing and mental health. The third was law enforcement. Another recent survey discussed what were the worst things that were happening in the city – affordability was number one.
In January there was a statewide survey, the question was ‘Which of the following would you say is the single greatest cause of crime in New York?’ It went – first was poverty, substance abuse, mental illness, breakdown of the family, migrant influx, inequality – lack of enforcement I believe came in seventh and that remarkably was across Democratic and Republican lines. It’s skewed a little differently under the Republicans, but the end result was the same, which says to me there is a tremendous understanding of what we need to do to address crime and I believe having spoken to much of the leadership in the police department as well, there’s also agreement there. Unfortunately, that agreement doesn’t seem to lend itself to where our finances go, or where we need to focus to build infrastructure.
The NYPD is often called to address issues of homelessness and mental health crises. We know that dispatching police to remove people perceived as being homeless or experiencing symptoms of mental health and acute mental illness hasn’t worked long-term in the past, and that we must invest in non-police responses to people in mental health crisis to address those in crisis and to help address substance abuse.
The mayor’s Subway Safety Plan has once again exacerbated a police overtime surge. I think people may be shocked to learn that the NYPD was actually never defunded. Most other agencies were. A big part of that has to do with overtime. According to the City Comptroller, for FY 2024, the City has spent $461 million through December on NYPD’s uniformed overtime, $109 million more than spent for the same period in FY 2023, and is on target to spend $925 million for the next year. There was a recent report, and I forgot the time frame, it was either six months or a year, where overtime went from $4 million to, I believe, $155 million. What was interesting about that is, crime decreased outside of the subway during that time period more than it did inside of the subway.
Despite the recent deployment of New York State Troopers and the terrible deployment of the National Guard to the city’s subways, a recent shooting occurred on the A train as it pulled into the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, which houses a police station currently. This says to me that police alone can’t solve this, and I think everybody here agrees with that. It doesn’t mean that our law enforcement doesn’t have a role to play and that all of us don’t have a role to play, but it does say that we continually have an over-reliance on our law enforcement and we keep pushing to them solve these problems, which is not what everyone agrees is what we have to do.
So what I’m hoping is that we have the courage in leadership to not just put money where it needs to go, but to build out an infrastructure of non-police responses that New York City’s actually asking for. Hopefully this conversation doesn't continue to change and turn into ‘anti-police’ or ‘non anti-police,’ because I think everyone agrees, again, based on the surveys, based on the discussions that we have. But for some reason the NYPD is the only one who has access to the type of overtime that they claim they need, and other agencies don’t have the access to the resources they need to build out the infrastructure that we all say we need.
The mayor, and the administration and I often disagree, if not in words but often in implementation and practice, on the most impactful ways to address crime and violence in our city, but I applaud his support of alternative solutions to violence, including the Crisis Management System (CMS), a network that deploys teams of credible messengers.
I do believe that with that, it’s been stagnant in how that system has been deployed and grown, and making sure it’s working in the long term. My hope is that we can all sit down and ensure all these things are working together and that everyone has the resources they need, not just one agency. I think if we really want to support our law enforcement partners, the one thing we can stop asking them to do is “everything,” because they can’t do everything, and that's harmful.
When my mother, who had a bullet go through her window, when my sister is dealing with someone who is mentally ill, can’t figure out who to call, that’s an issue. If my mom calls law enforcement, I want someone to be able to provide the services she needs, but if she needs another service, she should be able to get that as well, and we have to be able to build that out.
Lastly, it is vital to adequately and robustly fund our public defender services. While free legal defender services for anyone who needs them are mandated by federal and local law, these organizations are consistently underfunded. It is low-income New Yorkers who ultimately face the consequences of a budget that often favors district attorneys’ offices, deprived of the robust legal representation that they need and deserve. I want to make sure that everyone has the funding they need, and so the DAs hopefully would support us getting funds to local defenders as well, that way everyone can get a speedy trial – which I believe is one of the biggest issues we’re dealing with, but not addressing. I’m looking forward to the conversion, and thank you.
Thank you.