NYC Council progressives blast Mayor Adams’ anti-gun plan as heavy-handed, discriminatory: ‘We cannot police our way out of this’
Mayor Adams’ top public safety officials came under rhetorical fire during a City Council hearing Wednesday over the administration’s anti-gun violence plan, with left-wing members blasting it as a blueprint for “overpolicing” Black and Brown communities.
The virtual oversight hearing, held by the Council’s Public Safety Committee, highlighted the deep policy rifts that exist between the Adams administration and progressive Democrats in the city when it comes to policing.
A key component of Adams’ crimefighting plan is the reintroduction of a modified version of the NYPD’s plainclothes units.
In their testimony, NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell and Philip Banks, Adams’ deputy mayor of public safety, contended the new units are far different from the ones that were disbanded in 2020 amid a national reckoning over police brutality following the death of George Floyd.
“These are not the anti-crime units of old,” Sewell said. The new units undergo more rigorous training, are subjected to stricter oversight and must wear some identifiable police clothing, she said.
But self-identified socialist Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron voiced fear that the units will be a rehash of the disbanded teams, which were involved in a disproportionate number of incidents of police violence, including the 2014 death of Eric Garner.
“It doesn’t matter if the personnel changes if the policies do not change,” Barron told Sewell. He ripped the plan as a “rationale for overpolicing” without enough focus on investing in social services for crime-burdened communities.
“This blueprint — 75% of it is policing, 25% of it is lip service for mental health and youth entrepreneurship,” Barron said. “The dollars simply don’t match. Mayor, we cannot police our way out of this.”
NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey pushed back and noted that the units have confiscated 20 illegal guns and made more than 80 arrests since hitting the streets about two weeks ago.
“That’s a good start,” Queens Councilman Robert Holden, a moderate Democrat, told Corey.
Adams’ “Blueprint to End Gun Violence” is his response to an uptick in gun violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. While levels are far below crime waves of previous decades, shootings are up more than 17% so far this year as compared with the same point in 2021, according to NYPD data.
Determined to crack down on the violence by beefing up the NYPD, another aspect of Adams’ plan is to focus more resources on fighting quality-of-life crimes like fare evasion and public drinking — a tactic often referred to as “broken windows” policing.
Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, the Legal Aid Society released a report finding that 91% of the NYPD’s quality-of-life arrests in 2021 targeted nonwhite New Yorkers — a data point Molly Griffard, an attorney for the group, said “raises serious concerns” about whether the NYPD can carry out Adams’ mission “in a lawful manner.”
Following up on Griffard’s argument, Councilman Chi Osse (D-Brooklyn) grilled Corey during the hearing on a recent caught-on-camera incident in which a 19-year-old in his district was arrested by officers for hopping a turnstile at a subway stop in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
“She was physically attacked by them,” Osse said, adding that body cam footage he reviewed revealed that an arresting officer told the teen he would “pop you in your f-----g mouth.”
Corey disputed Osse’s characterization and said the teenager kicked, struck and bit officers before her tumultuous arrest.
Though Adams’ officials spent most of the hourslong hearing defending the mayor’s crimefighting agenda, Banks also acknowledged that the plan might be flawed in places and require attention.
“There may be some mistakes in this blueprint that we need to adapt, and we need to modify. So we’re not standing still on anything here,” said Banks, a former NYPD chief whose City Hall appointment raised controversy because he resigned from the department in 2014 while under federal investigation.
Asked about Banks’ comments afterward, Adams praised the deputy mayor as a “smart law enforcement person.”
“If he states that there’s some things we need to look at ... I’ll follow up and find out from him,” the mayor told reporters.
Another aspect of the Adams officials’ testimony that rubbed some Council members at the hearing the wrong way was a perceived lack of transparency.
Councilwoman Tiffany Caban (D-Queens), a former public defender, pressed Sewell to share studies that the NYPD reviewed on the negative public health impacts of focusing too much on quality-of-life crimes.
But the commissioner only committed to “discuss” those studies with Caban, drawing a rebuke from the councilwoman.
“The lack of willingness for transparency is deeply, deeply concerning,” Caban said.
Shortly after that back-and-forth, Sewell left the virtual hearing to make it over to City Hall, where she would join Adams for a news conference on the administration’s recent push to dismantle homeless encampments.
With Michael Gartland
