New York’s Unnecessary Helpers

Despite the city being safer than ever, the gap between police and citizens is enormous. The security forces swing between refusing to work and reform.

It is hard to get to Breezy Point without a car. You have to take the A train until the end of the line, then take the bus, and walk the last few kilometers because the shuttle doesn’t come. Whoever makes it to the most outer tip of the Rockaway peninsula in Queens, sees simple single-story homes, unhappily dressed in wood, one small church; bars or restaurants are nowhere to be found.

Many of New York’s police officers live here while working in the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan. Since the U.S. metropolis got safer and gentrification changed the districts, the police were driven to the suburbs. One bedroom apartments are rarely under $1,800, even in Brooklyn, and they are almost prohibitive to the forces of the New York Police Department with their $35,000 starting salaries. “They made the districts safer but cannot afford to live in them with their salaries,”* says Robert Gangi from the Police Reform Organizing Project, which is also demanding reforms for the police apparatus. Frustration is very high, and it has risen higher in the past weeks.

With 40,000 officers, the NYPD is the largest police force in the USA, and it feels it was let down by the city and mayor. The case of Eric Garner, a black New Yorker who was dealing cigarettes on Staten Island and died of a chokehold by a NYPD officer when they tried to arrest him, has turned the public against police violence.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has publicly announced his understanding for the citizens’ rage and weeklong protests. A little later, when a mentally ill man killed two officers in their patrol car in Brooklyn, the officers found themselves with their backs to the wall.

The mayor’s statements supported the citizen’s indictment against the police, or so was said by the powerful police union. De Blasio “has blood on his hands,” said Police Commissioner William Bratton. As the mayor spoke during the funeral, thousands of officers turned their backs to him as a sign of protest.

NYPD’s Refusal to Work

The NYPD’s work was almost at a standstill shortly before Christmas. The number of tickets and citations for small offenses went down 94 percent within a few weeks, and the number of arrests went down 66 percent. The patrol cars disappeared from many areas known for violence and crime – overnight. The New Republic wrote that the police wanted to teach the city a lesson.