CM Cabán on summonses, community partners, and recidivism framing
Cabán challenges the premise that more police means less crime, cites GIV community reductions, and criticizes NYPD for not acknowledging community partners until prompted by the Public Advocate. She also questions the reasoning behind targeting homeless people as transit summons recidivists.
Thank you.
Mr.
Gerber, I'm going to start with a statement.
I promise I will give a cue for when I'm asking you a question.
I'm going to start with my colleague mentioning the summonses.
I just want to state, to kind of add context to the record, that a lot of these summonses are being dismissed because they are legally facially insufficient.
It's not just some, like, sloppy handwriting, and maybe we shouldn't be wasting time on those things.
I think there also was a suggestion that more...
Police officers would mean less crime and actually there is a really sound assessment that more police officers are not
needed to reduce crime.
And that's a trend that is seen locally, statewide, and nationally.
It's backed up by data.
In fact, Governor Hochul specifically points out that the murder rates in GIV communities have huge decreases.
And so that is a state program that uses community-based orgs working with police to intercede before violence happens.
And so here in New York City, we have something better.
We have CMS that we know from the Comptroller's report could use some strengthening, whether it's the bureaucratic hurdles, some of the oversight hurdles, some of the funding mandates.
I thought it was curious that it wasn't until the public advocate brought up crisis.
Violence interrupters that it was acknowledged that those are partners in the work.
When you guys were asked, hey, how are you getting these numbers down?
You said DAs and police and precision policing, but you did not offer community partners up once in that.
It had to be brought up by the public advocate, and I think that that's telling.