CUT NYPD FY23 BUDGET & INVEST IN NON-POLICE SAFETY SOLUTIONS

Since 2020, Communities United for Police Reform has led a historic #NYCBudgetJustice coalition comprised of over 200 local and national organizations to demand cuts to the NYPD budget and reallocation of those resources to fund core service programs and infrastructure for Black, Latinx and other communities of color.

This year, our NYC Budget Justice coalition is demanding $1B cut to the NYPD FY23 expense budget and demanding bold investments in housing, employment, health care and education that will have significant and long-lasting impact on the well-being of New Yorkers, in particular for our communities that have been most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

NYC Mayor Eric Adams ran on a campaign promise to bring a new and fresh approach to public safety, above all promising to decrease police violence. He has often used language indicating that he would invest in the public institutions and programs that have track records for making our communities safer. However, in the first six months of his tenure, it has become clear that Adams’ dominant strategy to address public safety is to expand policing and criminalization and increase the size, scope and power of the NYPD, including across many agencies in the city where the police do not belong. 

Adams has consistenly moved to expand regressive and failed policing tactics of the past that have caused tremendous harm in communities of color and has put forward the largest NYPD expense budget that our city has ever seen — $11.2 billion — while including comparatively minuscule investments in community-based violence prevention and intervention solutions that actually work.

This is not the budget justice that New Yorkers need so that we can meaningfully address issues of public health and safety facing our communities and bring us out of the economic precarity exacerbated by 2.5 years of the COVID-19 pandemic. We demand a budget that invests in non-police health & safety solutions --- not more failed policing strategies.

The NYC Budget Justice Coalition calls on the Mayor and City Council to:

1. Move money away from policing and invest in community safetysolutions. 

• Cut at least $1 billion from the NYPD FY23 expense budget.
• Redirect all savings to nonpolice health and safety solutions.

2. Cancel regressive policing tactics, and block any increases to the NYPDFY23 budget.

• Cancel Anti-Crime Plain Clothes Units rebranded as Neighborhood SafetyTeams.
• Cancel NYPD Mental Health Co-Response Teams and NYPD homelessencampment sweeps.
• Cancel abusive units like the Strategic Response Group and Public Morals Division: VICE Enforcement.

3. Require NYPD transparency in the budget by including transparency related terms and conditions in the adopted FY23 budget. The NYPD’s lackof transparency serves as structural protection from any meaningful fiscaloversight. That allows the NYPD’s budget to continue to balloon and theNYPD’s impunity and power to grow unchecked.

TAKE ACTION WITH US: Tell your City Council Member that we need transformative change that includes cutting the NYPD budget and committing significant investments in communities!