#NoNewNYPD Petition

As members of the Safety Beyond Policing Campaign we urge you to stop the proposed allocation of an estimated $100 million annually in taxpayer funds to add 1,000 more cops to the New York City Police Department—which is the largest police department nationwide, and the seventh largest militarized force in the world. The recent outcry of communities across the country and city make clear that we need safety beyond policing. We demand that Mayor de Blasio, Council Speaker Mark-Viverito and the City Council redirect the $100 million currently allocated for additional police to programs that will make our communities stronger.

New Yorkers don’t need more cops to carry out broken windows policing, including “community policing” which paves the way for more of the same surveillance, racial profiling, criminalization and police brutality. We reject that a package consisting of more police + only a few million for safety net projects through participatory budgeting could be described as “progressive” or portrayed as innovative or aligned with human rights.

The Black diaspora, native people and communities with roots in the global south have been victim to historic disinvestment in New York; $100 million for our safety net INSTEAD OF $100 million for more police, is about equity and it is more than fair. We need resources that help our communities thrive, lift our social safety net, protect our right to remain and lower the conditions of poverty that daily threaten our safety. All members of our campaign lift up the movement for Black lives and make visible Black children, young people, cis women, trans women, and our sisters and brothers, including immigrants, who have been incarcerated, criminalized and most marginalized. As native people and brown communities from the global south in this movement, we proclaim that the measure of all of our human rights is in direct proportion to the human rights of Black women - we make justice under their leadership and we walk together bound by the values of truth-telling, love, and determination.

Speaker Mark-Viverito and the New York City Council, we call on you to redirect the more than $200 million that would be spent in the next three years for additional police to fund NYCHA, youth jobs, transportation and mental health services, a fund for victims of police violence, and other urgent neighborhood needs.