‘It’s going to be very different’: Mayor
de Blasio lays out 64 NYPD reforms
BY AIDAN GRAHAM
Mayor Bill de Blasio laid out a series
of reforms to the New York
Police Department on Friday,
saying he would end the “school-to-prison
pipeline” with 64 different proposals to
advance racial equity in the city’s justice
system.
“Over the last month in this city, nearly
a hundred meetings and public hearings
have been held as part of our process to
reform the NYPD, to reform the relationship
between police and community. This
is one of the most extraordinary efforts to
hear all stakeholders and to hear the voices
of the public that I’ve ever seen,” Hizzoner
said at a Friday press conference. “What
has often been called the school-to-prison
pipeline, that reality of folks being born
poor, lacking opportunity, finding many,
many challenges in life materially, and
then on top of it ending up involved in the
criminal justice system, magnifying their
challenges, magnifying the inequality and
unfairness, and limiting their lives’ potential.
That must be overcome. It’s going to
be immensely challenging work.”
According to the mayor’s new initiatives,
the city will guarantee that city agencies
offer mental health support to incarcerated
and New Yorkers, and call on the state to
approve “Overdose Prevention Centers.”
Among de Blasio’s most concrete new
proposals, the mayor committed to more
stringent preemptive evaluations of NYPD
officers to “make sure that their work is
not in any way, endangering the people of
this city.”
“We’re deepening our early intervention
efforts to identify officers who have particular
problems and challenges that must be
addressed,” Hizzoner said. “This, in some
cases, means an officer needs retraining.
In other cases, it means an officer who, for
a period of time, should not be doing duty
on our streets, and for whom there needs
to be a deeper reevaluation. For some officers
that may mean the recognition that
perhaps they do not belong on the police
Mayor Bill de Blasio
force.”
The city’s hiring process for new officers
will also place a greater weight on residents
of the five boroughs by doubling the weight
that city ZIP codes have on city dwellers’
applications to join the force.
“Currently, we provide a five-point
NYC MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY UNIT
preference for New York City residents
in the application process to become an
NYPD officer,” the mayor explained. “We
will now double that to a 10-point preference,
and this will greatly advantage New
York City residents who want to serve this
city on the NYPD.”
Three is enough: Manhattan DA Cy Vance
officially announces he won’t seek re-election
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
Manhattan District Attorney Cy
Vance Jr. made the worst kept
secret in New York City politics
official on March 12: He will not seek a fourth
term in office.
The three-term incumbent Democrat,
known for prosecuting movie mogul Harvey
Weinstein for sex crimes and for leading a
financial investigation into former President
Donald Trump, had not conducted an active
re-election campaign over the past year, and
was absent from debates.
Three months away from the June 22
Democratic primary, Vance decided to make
it official. In a statement, he looked back on
the last 12 years of accomplishments and said
that he worked to make the Manhattan DA’s
office more effective and more cooperative
with the communities it serves.
“I never imagined myself as District Attorney
for decades like my predecessors,”
Vance said, a reference to the late Robert
Morgenthau, whom Vance succeeded in 2009
after Morgenthau’s 35-year run of the office.
“I never thought of this as my last job, even
though it’s the best job and biggest honor I’ll
ever have. I said twelve years ago that change
Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. will not seek a fourth term in office.
is fundamentally good and necessary for any
institution. Having secured these lasting impacts
in our communities, our public policy,
and our crimefighting capacity , the time has
come to open the pathway for new leadership
at the Manhattan DA’s Office.”
Vance expressed pride in the work, he
said, his office had done over the last 12
years to make the office more cooperative
REUTERS/BRENDAN MCDERMID
and accountable to the community.
“One, we built safer and stronger communities
– not just by winning in court,
but by making sustained investments in our
neighborhoods so that fewer people became
involved in the justice system in the first place.
Two, we made enduring, systemic reforms –
using the power of our discretion to massively
reduce our criminal justice footprint and the
inequities that underlie unnecessary prosecutions,”
Vance said. “And three, we modernized
our office to future-proof our neighbors
against cybercrime, terrorism, trafficking,
and other 21st-century threats.”
As head of the Manhattan DA’s office,
Vance took on a number of high-profile court
cases during his 12 years. In February 2020,
he successfully gained a conviction against
Weinstein, who was found guilty of raping
and sexually abusing two women in a case
that came to the public fore through the
#MeToo movement.
Over the last year, Vance also fought attorneys
for Trump as he sought the former
president’s tax returns as part of an ongoing
bank and tax fraud investigation into the
former president and the Trump Organiation.
Twice, Trump’s attorneys took the Manhattan
DA all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court
in an effort to keep the financial records out
of Vance’s hands — and twice, the Supreme
Court ruled that Vance needed access to
them.
The Manhattan DA’s office finally got
Trump’s tax records after the latest Supreme
Court ruling on Feb. 22. After the Court’s
decision was made, Vance had issued a simple
statement about it: “The work continues.”
10 March 18, 2021 Schneps Media