NYC Cops Prove They Aren’t Really Needed [View all]

[NewDeal_Dem]

A huge number of entitled, mostly white cops in New York City, who have apparently been engaging in a two-week job action to protest their boss’s (that’s Mayor Bill deBlasio’s) support for protesters against the police killing of Eric Garner, a black man busted for selling “loosie” cigarettes on the street on Staten Island, may be unintentionally offering the public a demonstration of their own irrelevance.

For two weeks now, the largest police force in the nation has essentially stopped making arrests. According to a lead story in the New York Timestoday, ticket issuance by police in this city of 8.4 million is down by 90 percent. The paper reports that:

Most precincts’ weekly tallies for criminal infractions — typically about 4,000 a week citywide — were close to zero.

And yet, New York continues to function normally, with people going about their business, secure on sidewalk, street, public transit and in their homes.

Could it be that the city has been wasting much of the nearly $5 billion it spends annually on its over 34,000 uniformed cops (15% of the city’s budget)? Could it be that having all those cops cruising around neighborhoods harassing people — mostly, statistics show, people of color and poor people — by stopping them and frisking them, by busting them for “crimes” like public urination, smoking a joint, drinking a beer outside, selliing trinkets or “lossie” cigs, or just “looking suspicious” — has been doing nothing to reduce major crimes and violence after all?

(getting rid of police) would cut the bloated police force in the city down to size, and, because almost all of those dropped from the payroll would be white, it would go a long way towards making the NYPD much more reflective, racially, of the city they are policing.

If New York still continued, at that point, to function normally, without any evident surge in lawlessness, the Mayor would find himself suddenly with the funds he needs to do those progressive things that so far he has been blocked from doing by lack of funds and by obstruction from the governor, fellow Democrat Andrew Cuomo — things like universal preschool, rent subsidies for the poor, etc.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/07/nyc-cops-prove-they-arent-really-needed/