www.msnbc.com Open in urlscan Pro
2600:141b:1c00:239d::1fe9  Public Scan

Form analysis
0 forms found in the DOM

Text Content

MSNBC Logo
 * Decision 2024
 * Rachel Maddow
 * Morning Joe
 * Inside with Jen Psaki
 * Deadline: Legal Blog
 * The ReidOut Blog
 * Trump Documents Library
 * Columnists
 * MSNBC Films


MSNBC Logo

Featured Shows

 * The Rachel Maddow ShowMondays 9PM ET
 * Morning JoeWeekdays 6am ET
 * Deadline: White House with Nicolle WallaceWeekdays 4PM ET
 * The Beat with Ari MelberWeeknights 6PM ET
 * The ReidOut with Joy ReidWeeknights 7PM ET
 * All In with Chris HayesWeeknights 8PM ET
 * The Last Word with Lawrence O’DonnellWeeknights 10PM ET
 * The 11th Hour with Stephanie RuhleWeeknights 11PM ET
 * Alex Wagner TonightTuesday-Friday 9PM ET

Follow msnbc

 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

More

 * MSNBC on Peacock
 * MSNBC Columnists
 * TV Schedule
 * MSNBC Newsletters
 * Podcasts
 * Transcripts
 * MSNBC Insights Community
 * MSNBC Store
 * Help
 * Trump Trials Documents Library

Weekday Shows

 * Way Too Early
 * José Díaz-Balart Reports
 * MSNBC Reports
 * Andrea Mitchell Reports
 * Katy Tur Reports
 * Symone
 * The Katie Phang Show

Weekend Shows

 * Velshi
 * Inside with Jen Psaki
 * Weekends with Jonathan Capehart
 * Alex Witt Reports
 * Yasmin Vossoughian Reports
 * PoliticsNation
 * American Voices with Alicia Menendez
 * Ayman
 * The Mehdi Hasan Show

 * About
 * Contact
 * Help
 * Careers
 * MSNBC Store
 * AD Choices
 * Privacy Policy
 * Do Not Sell My Personal Information
 * CA Notice
 * Terms of Service (Updated JULY 7, 2023)
 * MSNBC Sitemap
 * Closed Captioning
 * Advertise
 * Join the MSNBC Community

© 2023 NBCNEWS.COM

Close the sidebar
Opinion


FLOODING NYC'S SUBWAYS WITH POLICE COST MILLIONS — AND DIDN'T FIX ANYTHING

Is a $151 million increase in NYPD overtime ultimately worth it to create the
illusion of safety?


SHARE THIS —
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

Dec. 28, 2023, 4:44 PM EST
By Marisa Kabas, MSNBC Columnist

If you’d like to visit a New York City public library on a Sunday, you’re out of
luck, thanks to recent city budget cuts. But if you’d like to see a subway
station crawling with cops (including the PR-friendly robot variety), the
possibilities are bountiful. This is life in Eric Adams’ New York.

The outrageous increase in funding resulted in a minuscule improvement in crime
rates.

In 2022, amid concerns about rising crime in the city’s transit system, New York
Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams took the idea of “defund
the police” and flipped it on its head. They dreamed up a strategy of “the three
Cs” — “Cops, Cameras, Care” — which Hochul announced in October last year. What
if, they imagined, we added more than a thousand uniformed police officers to
patrol the subway every day and paid them much more — millions more? Now, one
year later, city records show it led to a $151 million increase in NYPD overtime
pay, a negligible decrease in crime and a vast increase in fare evasion tickets
and arrests of people of color.




From 2021 to 2022, the city’s subways saw an almost 40% increase in reported
felonies. The dramatic rise was due to vastly decreased ridership during the
peak of the pandemic, and yet it was still overall lower than pre-pandemic crime
rates. But that didn’t stop hysteria from seizing city residents and tabloid
covers, after a number of high-profile incidents, including the death of Jordan
Neely and several incidents of women being pushed onto the subway tracks in
separate attacks. And thus Hochul and Adams’ more cops, less crime plan was
hatched.

But the outrageous increase in funding resulted in a minuscule improvement in
crime rates and, in some categories, increases. The stats, obtained by
Gothamist, found that there were 48 fewer serious crimes (such as murder, rape
and robbery) overall in the city’s subways this year. Despite that drop,
assaults increased by 5%, with 26 more than last year. (The mayor and the
governor didn’t respond to Gothamist's requests for comment.) To say we’re not
getting our $155 million worth appears to be an understatement.



Most disturbing of all, however, is the focus on fare evasion. According to the
city’s stats, 82% of those ticketed for fare evasion and 92% of those arrested
were people of color. On top of being racist, these interventions do nothing to
actually reduce fare evasion. A report issued in June found that the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority lost $690 million in 2022 trying to fight
fare evasion, despite an already beefed-up crackdown. A 2018 analysis of fare
evasion enforcement in Seattle, meanwhile, found that it actually cost more to
enforce and prosecute than it cost simply to lose the revenue from the lost
fares. (NYPD Chief of Transit Michael Kemper told Gothamist that "targeting fare
jumpers saves the MTA money and brings 'order' to the underground.")

In practice, it’s not the job of police to prevent and fight crime.

“You have people who genuinely cannot afford the cost of transit because they
cannot afford the cost of living in New York City,” Molly Griffard, a lawyer
with the Legal Aid Society, told The New York Times in June. “There’s this sort
of kneejerk reaction to just rely on policing our way out of a problem that
police can’t solve.”



If we zoom out, we can see that the Cops, Cameras, Care program hasn’t actually
achieved its stated purpose. It has actually made subway riding more perilous
for Black and brown New Yorkers.

It also reminds us that, in practice, it’s not the job of police to prevent and
fight crime. Reuters, reporting on a 2022 analysis of county budgets and
policing data by Catalyst California and the American Civil Liberties Union of
Southern California, noted that its conclusions contribute “to a growing line of
research showing that police departments don’t solve serious or violent crimes
with any regularity, and in fact, spend very little time on crime control, in
contrast to popular narratives.”


RECOMMENDED


OPINIONBIGOTRY MASQUERADING AS PHILOSOPHY WAS A 2023 LOW POINT

And yet those narratives go a long way toward frothing up public fears over
crime, making people believe that a $151 million increase in overtime for cops
is ultimately worth it to create the illusion of safety.

“The media dramatically over-cover low-level crime by the poor,” civil rights
lawyer Alec Karakatsanis told Prism last year. “And so you see local news media
every single day all across the country, in the national media as well,
constantly talking about shoplifting, robbery, carjacking, shootings, things
like that. When you compare them to the leading causes of suffering and death in
the U.S., [low-level offenders are] minuscule contributors.”



Adams’ desire to bloat police earning potential comes at the cost of city budget
cuts that have led to, among other things, public library branch closures on
Sundays. Last week, the City Council voted overwhelmingly to pass a police
transparency bill, which aims to “check racially biased policing by requiring
police to report demographic information about people they stop, including their
perceived race and ethnicity.” But before its passage, Adams reportedly offered
at least one council member restoration of budget cuts in areas important to
that member in exchange for a no vote on the bill. (A spokesman for the mayor
told Gothamist that "the mayor did not offer to a councilmember to restore any
budget cuts in exchange for a vote on Intro 586-A.")



It’s a dark reflection on this city when the mayor would use public resources as
bargaining chips to help cops avoid accountability. Families having a free
educational space to spend a Sunday is a building block of a healthy society;
vastly overpaying law enforcement to be bad at its job is not.

Marisa Kabas

Marisa Kabas writes about politics, media and gender and their many
intersections. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, HuffPost and The New
Republic, and she writes a newsletter called The Handbasket. She is based in
Brooklyn, New York. 

CONTINUE READING




we and our partners use cookies on this site to improve our service, perform
analytics, personalize advertising, measure advertising performance, and
remember website preferences. by using the site, you consent to these cookies.
for more information on cookies including how to manage your consent visit
our cookie policy.

continue
 * About
 * Contact
 * Help
 * Careers
 * MSNBC Store
 * AD Choices
 * Privacy Policy
 * Do Not Sell My Personal Information
 * CA Notice
 * Terms of Service (Updated JULY 7, 2023)
 * MSNBC Sitemap
 * Closed Captioning
 * Advertise
 * Join the MSNBC Community

© 2023 NBC UNIVERSAL

NBC News LogoMSNBC LogoToday Logo