New York will be shifting funds from the police to youth groups as part of reforms, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced, saying the Big Apple’s citizens “need to be reached, not policed.”
“We committed to move resources from the NYPD to youth and social services as part of our City’s budget,” de Blasio wrote on Twitter amid ongoing violent protests in New York and many other US cities, provoked by the death of African American man George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota in late May.
“Our people need to be reached, not policed,” the mayor said, insisting that it would still be possible to keep New York safe.
In another statement, de Blasio explained that the move is part of “deeper reforms” needed to tackle the “profound disparities” in the city.
He didn’t specify how much funding would be taken from the NYPD’s $6 billion budget and redirected, saying only that the “details will be worked out in the budget process in the weeks ahead.”
Also on rt.com NYC curfew lifted ‘effective immediately’ following peaceful protests against police brutality‘Defund the police’ has become one of the main slogans of the protestors in the US. It became especially popular this week after a group of celebrities, including John Legend and Jane Fonda, signed a petition calling for police funding to be withdrawn.
Donald Trump earlier decried calls to cut funding for law enforcers, using them to launch another attack on his Democratic rival in the upcoming president election, Joe Biden.
Biden would go even further and defund not only the police but the US military as well, the president wrote on Twitter, insisting the Democrats were “controlled by the radical left.”
Earlier this week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti promised to remove $150 million from the planned budget increase for the Los Angeles Police Department and allocate the money to youth jobs, health initiatives and “peace centers” for victims of discrimination. The mayor of Minneapolis was called on to resign by protesters after refusing to commit to defunding police.
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