NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio has made yet another about-face move and has broken yet another promise to the Black Lives Matter movement. Black Lives Matter demanded massive cuts to the New York Police Department (NYPD). However, Mayor de Blasio has approved spending $105 million dollars to build a new NYPD precinct in Southeast Queens. His decision on Tuesday reversed a decision last year to cut the project.
Under intense political pressure last June, de Blasio promised to cut one billion dollars from the NYPD operating budget, and another five hundred million dollars from the capital budget according to Politico.
Aside from all the politics and BLM grandstanding, it seems residents did not want NYPD to be defunded. Mayor de Blasio’s promise to de-fund NYPD, along with the elimination of the new precinct brought backlash from the black community—where local leaders had been pushing for the precinct to serve Rosedale, saying residents had to wait too long for police response.
Other elements of the NYPD budget cuts pledged by de Blasio and the City Council have also been reversed. The announcement that school safety agents and crossing guards would be moved out of the schools remained in the budget.
A cap on police overtime was also touted as part of the “defunding” efforts but that has been missed by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, like many other major cities in America, New York City has seen shootings increase in 2021 by 50%—following a record increase in 2020.
Rather than defunding cops, de Blasio rolled out a plan on Tuesday that will deploy cops to 100 blocks around the five boroughs that have the highest rates of shootings.
