Mayor Bill de Blasio rejected growing demands to cut the Police Department’s budget because the Big Apple financial crisis deepened and angered the NYPD’s handling of the protests after the curfew.
“I don’t believe it’s a good idea to reduce the agency budget that is here to keep us safe,” de Blasio said on Friday in his City Hall briefing.
“We have to explain that most working class, middle-class New Yorkers, every day, they want safety first,” he later told WNYC host Brian Lehrer.
“They linked it to the NYPD,” he added, “and they want the NYPD to be different and better.”
Civil rights activists and liberal councilors have demanded that any budget deal between de Blasio and Board Chair Corey Johnson cut at least $ 1 billion from the NYPD’s $ 6 billion annual budget.
Calls for “denuding” the police department have become calls for massive protests throughout the Big Apple in recent days as New Yorkers flock to the streets following the brutal death in George Floyd’s custody in Minnesota, complaining that years years of local reform have not produced any significant changes to the NYPD.
Even before the protests erupted, the top MPs in the City Council had asked the NYPD to make a list of budget cuts of at least $ 300 million – furious that the April de Blasioo budget proposal to deal with Gotham’s current deficit of $ 9 billion left most police untouched while cutting spending on popular social programs, such as summer youth work.
The monitoring has only increased in recent days because city police officers have repeatedly and aggressively disperse peaceful protests after curfew, although Mayor de Blasio promises, repeatedly, the marches will be permitted.
Hizzoner and Police Commissioner Dermot Shea awkwardly tried to answer questions about the disconnect between City Hall statements and police actions by claiming that the reporters and photographers covering the protest would not observe “reality”.
When asked at a press conference on Friday, what are the rules when the NYPD will move to break the protests after curfew, de Blasio tried to argue with the premise of the question.
“I witnessed with my own eyes for days now not using violence in peaceful protests that I saw with my own eyes there,” he said.
And when other reporters offer his direct observation from the tactics used in the aggressive protest of the Bronx which was closed aggressively, Hizzoner claimed some protesters planned to commit violence and ignored journalists’ observations.
“I believe that you believe what you say,” he told reporters. “I also believe that the information submitted by Commissioner Shea is based on facts.”
