AOC Claims DeBlasio Is Not Doing Enough Damage To The NYPD
Mayor DeBlasio is planning to cut One Billion from the police. He is doing so to appease protesters that have started to camp outside of City Hall demanding the police be defunded. This is a serious blow to the NYPD budget which is usually 6 Billion a year. Police are talking about how they are not going to afford overtime and the streets will not be properly manned. But Progressive Dem Alexandria Ocasio-Corte thinks that taking One Billion from the police is not enough, she wants them fully defunded.
"Defunding police means defunding police,” the congresswoman said in a statement. “It does not mean budget tricks or funny math. It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so the exact same police remain in schools.”
"Ocasio-Cortez said that cutting the police budget is not effective if it does not result in the reduced presence of law enforcement.
“It does not mean counting overtime cuts as cuts, even as NYPD ignores every attempt by City Council to curb overtime spending and overspends on overtime anyways,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “If these reports are accurate, then these proposed ‘cuts’ to the NYPD budget are a disingenuous illusion. This is not a victory. The fight to defund policing continues.”
"According to the Gotham Gazette report Ocasio-Cortez was referring to, the agreement would reduce the number of officers in the city by canceling its July class of 1,163 cadets. It also includes $350 million in cuts to overtime pay and various other expenses such as travel enforcement and vehicle purchases.
The new budget will shift school safety and school crossing guards out of the NYPD’s jurisdiction to account for $483 million total, according to the Gazette.
That $1 billion would go instead to education, social services in communities hit hard by the virus, and summer youth programming for over 100,000 young people.
Cuts are also coming for the NYPD’s capital budget, such as canceling plans to build a new precinct in Jamaica, Queens, and instead, building a community center. The city is also planning to shift some police capital funding to install broadband internet in public housing complexes."
It looks like DeBlasio buckled and gave away 1/6 of the police budget, which will create less of a presence in a city that is having a record high crime. But I guess that's what these Liberals want. AOC is just delusional if she thinks that they should get rid of the police entirely, that would be utter chaos. Thankfully DeBlasio seems to have enough sense to know that.