In the Media

NEW YORK — For the past few weeks, Mayor Bill de Blasio has struggled to communicate his alliance with New Yorkers troubled by police misconduct — marooning himself on a lonely island between the NYPD he oversees and a growing movement demanding it be reformed.

Now he appears to be finding some footing.

At a City Council hearing in late May, Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, urged for sweeping cuts to the proposed budget for the New York City Police Department.

“No one knows better than me that when you prioritize, fund, and shield the NYPD—instead of investing in our communities—the impact is devastating for black and Latinx communities,” she said. “In the most extreme cases, the impact is deadly. For me and my family, it means that Eric is gone forever.”

As protests over the killing of George Floyd continue across the country, momentum in New York to repeal a decades-old police transparency law appears to be gaining steam, according to activists and legislators involved in the effort, in what they say would be a major step forward in the fight for police reform.

At some point, history may show us that after years of aggression, after so much brutality that suggested so little fear of consequence, it took the looting of Chanel and the reversion of SoHo to a wasteland to disable a law that has made real police accountability so difficult in New York City. It required a political class moved by fear — of disorder and desecration — rather than compelled by the logic of justice, which had been obvious for so long.