Police Brutality, Misconduct and Shootings

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      Why Police Accountability Is Personal for This Manhattan D.A. Candidate

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      Alvin Bragg has had encounters with the police both in the streets and in the courts. He wants to change the system from within.The first time Alvin Bragg began thinking about police accountability was not long after an officer put a gun to his head, when he was a 15-year-old in Harlem in the 1980s.Nearly 30 years later, as a prosecutor at the state attorney general’s office in 2017, Mr. Bragg found himself confronting the same issue, overseeing the case against Officer Wayne Isaacs, who was off duty when he killed Delrawn Small in the early morning in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn.The officer was charged with murder and manslaughter. Video of the shooting, prosecutors argued, appeared to contradict the officer’s account. The jury acquitted him anyway.“I felt dejected, demoralized, really upset for the family,” Mr. Bragg recalled. “I felt like our system had not worked.”Now, the issues of police accountability and public integrity that Mr. Bragg confronted as a prosecutor are at the center of his campaign to lead one of the most important district attorney’s offices in the country. Mr. Bragg, 47, a Democrat, is one of nine candidates vying for the office, and is among those seeking to balance concerns about public safety against a progressive push to make the criminal justice system less punitive.In seeking to position himself as the candidate most capable of changing the system from the inside, Mr. Bragg has leaned on his personal history — including both his street-corner and courtroom encounters with the police. And Mr. Bragg, who is the only Black candidate running, would be the first Black person to lead an office where, researchers have found, race continues to be a critical factor in nearly every part of the process.But his history leading the unit that tried Officer Isaacs — a unit charged with investigating police killings of unarmed civilians — undermines a record that sounds better than it looks, his opponents and their supporters charge. Under Mr. Bragg, the unit, then called the Special Investigations and Prosecutions Unit, investigated 24 cases and brought back zero convictions. (It has not fared any better since he left, three years ago.)Officer Wayne Isaacs, center, was found not guilty after a 2017 trial; Mr. Bragg said the verdict still troubles him.  Dave Sanders for The New York Times“The Manhattan district attorney needs to be able to manage the most complicated and difficult cases, and that includes holding police accountable,” said Lucy Lang, another candidate in the race, who at a debate last week attacked Mr. Bragg’s record on police accountability. “Unfortunately, in the 24 cases of police killings that came before him, Alvin wasn’t able to hold a single officer accountable.”Mr. Bragg said that his record leading the unit, now called the Office of Special Investigation, showed only that the law makes it extremely difficult to successfully prosecute police officers.Experts agree. Though there are exceptions, including the recent conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, Mr. Bragg’s record with the unit at the attorney general’s office is not unusual. It remains extremely difficult to charge, let alone convict, police officers.Peter Neufeld, head of the Innocence Project, which works to overturn wrongful convictions, said that Mr. Bragg was fighting within a system that was heavily weighted against him. (Mr. Neufeld endorsed Mr. Bragg last month.)“It doesn’t make sense when looking at somebody who is taking on an adversary with both hands tied behind his back to measure his win-loss record,” he said.Close to homeMr. Bragg grew up on 139th Street in the heart of Harlem. Born in 1973, on the cusp of the city’s fiscal crisis, he said he learned at an early age which blocks were safe and which were not, the places he could go and the places that were best avoided.His mother, a math teacher, kept a close eye on him and made sure he focused on school, drilling him on his multiplication tables on the M10 bus and asking him to stay within the confines of their block. His father, who worked for the New York Urban League, regaled him with stories about the Willis Reed-era New York Knicks and encouraged him to get outside.There could be trouble, even close to home. When Mr. Bragg was 10 years old, he had a knife put to his neck by some teenagers in the middle of the day, in what he described as a “hazing,” but a very scary one.And then there were the police. About five years later, he was walking with a friend when an unmarked police car began driving the wrong way on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, he said. Three officers emerged from the car. One put a gun to Mr. Bragg’s head. They asked if he was dealing drugs and started going through his pockets.“You didn’t need to go to law school to know this was unlawful,” Mr. Bragg said. His interest in criminal justice started there.He went to Harvard and Harvard Law School and clerked for the federal judge Robert Patterson Jr., where he first began to see the way that prosecutors could work on behalf of public safety. After several years working as a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer, he became a prosecutor at the New York attorney general’s office, looking at public corruption and white- collar crime. He later worked under Preet Bharara, then U.S. attorney for the Southern District, as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, before returning to the attorney general’s office, where he focused on police misconduct.Mr. Bharara, who has endorsed Mr. Bragg, said that he had been set apart while a federal prosecutor by his concerns about police accountability and public corruption.“He’s not jumping on the bandwagon in connection with the race for office,” Mr. Bharara said. “He’s cared about these things for a long time.”Mr. Bragg, who met volunteers in Union Square this month, has sought to balance progressive ideas about the criminal justice system with public safety concerns.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesCivil Rights and Public SafetyMr. Bragg is one of nine candidates, eight Democrats and one Republican, running to replace Cyrus R. Vance Jr. as the chief prosecutor in Manhattan, a position that carries immense power to affect the criminal justice system in New York City.He has said that his overall focus will be on decreasing the number of people behind bars, that he will create a new unit to investigate police misconduct, move resources toward prosecutors investigating economic crime and overhaul the sex crimes unit. He has proposed a plan that would work to stem the flow of guns into New York from out of state.Many of Mr. Bragg’s ideas reflect the move to the left in prosecutorial elections in cities around the country in recent years — a shift that has ushered in a new breed of progressive prosecutor.Initially the race in Manhattan seemed to follow that pattern, as the majority of the Democratic candidates promoted lenient approaches to certain low-level crimes.But in recent months, as gun violence has continued to rise in New York City and another leading Democratic candidate, Tali Farhadian Weinstein, has stressed the importance of prosecuting crime, tension has grown between those pushing for leniency and those emphasizing public safety. (As of January, Mr. Bragg had raised more money than anyone other than Ms. Farhadian Weinstein and on Saturday, a racial justice organization, Color of Change, said it would spend $1 million promoting his candidacy.)Mr. Bragg has found a synthesis, based on his biography, that he hopes will persuade voters.“People care about both,” he said. “They want civil rights and public safety. Being safe is your first civil right, and we can’t have safety without community trust, which is based on civil rights.”And so he relies on his record — even when his opponents say it is unflattering. Under pressure from Ms. Lang during last week’s debate, he called the unit that has garnered zero convictions “the most transformative, transparent unit in this space in the history of this country.”Mr. Bragg has argued that the way his office worked with the victims’ families marked the beginning of a productive alliance between prosecutors and protesters, both pushing for justice. The unit was created after Eric Garner’s death in police custody in 2014; Mr. Bragg has been endorsed by Mr. Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr.Mr. Small’s brother, Victor Dempsey, said that Mr. Bragg had consulted him throughout the case against Officer Isaacs. He has endorsed Mr. Bragg’s candidacy.“Alvin has been a tremendous part in my advocacy work and my family’s advocacy work because he kind of gave us the impetus to keep fighting,” he said.But not all of Mr. Small’s family has backed Mr. Bragg. Victoria Davis, his sister, has endorsed Ms. Lang, who worked as a prosecutor under Mr. Vance.In a recent conversation, Ms. Davis said that she did not feel Mr. Bragg had done everything he could for her brother, who she said was demonized during the officer’s trial because of a tattoo. “I think he wasn’t humanized,” she said of her brother.Mr. Bragg still dwells on the acquittal of Officer Isaacs. He agreed with Ms. Davis that the defense team had successfully dehumanized Mr. Small, transforming him into what Mr. Bragg called a “Black boogeyman,” a tactic that predated the modern criminal justice system.“The part that is sad is that it works,” he said. “That racial imagery is a tie that binds throughout our history. Ultimately that’s the original sin, and we’ve got to address that.” More

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      Eric Adams, N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidate, Has Something to Prove

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      Eric Adams Says He Has Something to Prove. Becoming Mayor Might Help.Mr. Adams is a top fund-raiser in the New York City mayoral race, with key endorsements and strong polling, but he still faces questions about his preparedness for the job.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has made public safety a focus of his campaign for mayor.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe New York City mayoral race is one of the most consequential political contests in a generation, with immense challenges awaiting the winner. This is the third in a series of profiles of the major candidates.May 7, 2021Nearly three decades ago, when Eric Adams decided he wanted to someday be mayor of New York City, he started a journal of observations about local governance, making periodic entries before bed.He has now filled 26 notebooks.The long arc of Mr. Adams’s career — from the son of a Queens house cleaner to a reform-driven New York City police officer, from state senator to Brooklyn borough president and now a leading mayoral candidate — is an ode to personal discipline. By his telling, his life has been carefully structured to land him on the precipice of the only job he has ever wanted, in the only city where he has ever really lived.During an Easter Sunday visit to the Church of God of East Flatbush, Mr. Adams cited a biblical passage that describes a test of courage under duress.“I believe in all my heart that this is an Esther 4:14 moment,” Mr. Adams, 60, told the parishioners. “God made me for such a time as this.”To Mr. Adams, his broad life experience is what sets him apart in the vast and fractured field of mayoral candidates.He speaks of growing up poor and Black in Queens, being beaten by the police at age 15, starting as a police officer during the height of the 1980s crack epidemic, and then, in later years, becoming a voice for police reform. In 2013, he was the first Black person elected Brooklyn borough president.Yet there is a perception among some Democratic leaders, strategists and mayoral rivals that Mr. Adams’s career has been driven by self-interest rather than civic-mindedness, and that he is unprepared to lead the city as it tries to emerge from the pandemic.That perception rankles Mr. Adams, who equates efforts to dismiss him to reductive treatment of Black elected officials.His campaign, he believes, will surprise those he said have underestimated him and his ability to connect with the New Yorkers who make up his base: working class and older minority voters outside Manhattan, who prioritize authenticity in their politicians and issues like public safety.Mr. Adams, who has adopted more moderate positions than his left-wing rivals, says his broad life experience has prepared him for the role.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThis confidence gives Mr. Adams’s campaign stops — and his political strategy — a sense of assured purpose. He is not only trying to appeal to voters; he is seemingly running for personal validation, to prove that he is equally worthy to the rivals whom the city’s political class has deemed more polished, serious or qualified.“For years, I’ve had people — for years — calling me an ‘Uncle Tom’ or calling me a sellout,” Mr. Adams said in an interview, adding that he was “immune” to such attacks.“They don’t believe in me, but I believe in me,” he said. “Because I know me, and I’m a beast.”He will nonetheless be tested by a changing city and Democratic Party. New Yorkers have embraced big personalities in politicians before, particularly in mayoral races, but brashness and Blackness can project differently when packaged together.It may not help that Mr. Adams has had a history of embracing divisive figures, aligning himself with Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, and the ex-boxer Mike Tyson after his 1992 rape conviction. Mr. Adams has also faced several ethics probes during his career, including one that questioned his role in allowing a politically connected company to gain a casino franchise at Aqueduct Racetrack.He first rose to prominence in New York by challenging Police Department policies during news conferences, earning scorn from police officials that persists decades later. And bombastic statements, like a pledge to carry a gun while in City Hall and forgo a security detail, have fueled detractors.Mr. Adams, as he darts around Queens and Brooklyn with less than seven weeks to go before the June 22 primary, thinks that unconventionality is a political superpower. He gives out his personal cellphone number to people on the street and often refers to himself in the third person. He shuns the popular language of progressive academics in favor of a relatable grit.He is, at once, a candidate who desires to be taken seriously as a liberal policymaker, and one who mocks the idea that elite-educated activists get to determine what is or is not serious.“I’m in these forums, and they’re talking about legal crack, legal fentanyl, legal heroin! Are you kidding me?” Mr. Adams said to a resident during a recent stop in the Laurelton section of Queens. “Do they remember what crack did to your communities?”A son of two boroughsMr. Adams, right, appeared alongside the Rev. Al Sharpton, center, during a news conference in 1993.Bebeto Matthews/Associated PressThree omnipresent dangers loomed for a young Black man growing up in South Jamaica, Queens, in the late 1970s and 1980s: the crime, the drugs, and the police.At age 15, Mr. Adams and his brother were arrested on criminal trespassing charges. Mr. Adams said he was beaten by officers while in custody and suffered post-traumatic stress from the episode. Yet it fueled his desire to become a police officer six years later, he said, after a local pastor suggested that he could “infiltrate” the department and help change police culture.Beginning as a transit officer and rising to the rank of police captain, he made his largest impact not on the police beat but through his involvement in two Black police fraternal organizations: the Grand Council of Guardians, and 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, a group that he founded.“Eric was always the guy who not just complained about the issues, but then pushed the group to organize to do something about it,” said David C. Banks, president and chief executive of the Eagle Academy Foundation in Brooklyn, which operates a network of schools for boys.“He was a pain in the neck and a thorn in the side of the central command at the police headquarters,” said Mr. Banks, who has known Mr. Adams for 30 years. “A lot of other officers would be afraid to raise these kind of issues.”Mr. Adams helped amplify cases of police brutality or errors, raising public awareness of uncomfortable policing issues, even if it did not sway top police brass, who tended to view him as an attention-seeking gadfly.His reputation also suffered from a series of unorthodox stances or appearances while on the force: He traveled to Indiana in 1995 to escort Mr. Tyson after his release from prison; he repeatedly defended Mr. Farrakhan in the 1990s; and he was registered as a Republican during that same time period, when New York, a predominantly Democratic city, was led by Republican mayors.Flanked by members of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, a group he founded, Mr. Adams held a news conference in 2000 in response to a shooting of a Black man by the police.Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesPaul Browne, a former chief spokesman for the Police Department under Raymond W. Kelly, said it was “laughable” that Mr. Adams was drawing on his law enforcement career to run for mayor on a public safety platform.“I don’t remember him distinguishing himself in any way, except promoting himself through 100 Black Officers in Law Enforcement Who Care,” Mr. Browne said.Mr. Adams “would try to have it both ways — that he was a cop but that we were all racist. He would say Blacks that weren’t as radical were an Uncle Tom,” said Mr. Browne, who is white. “He’d be a disaster as mayor.”Yet on the other side of the political spectrum, Mr. Adams’s law enforcement background is often viewed as a drawback, and as evidence that he is not the right candidate to bring significant changes to policing at a time when activists are demanding a paradigm shift.Mr. Adams rejected that notion, arguing that he helped lay the groundwork for more recent social justice movements. He cited a 2013 federal trial over the constitutionality of the stop-and-frisk program, when he testified that the police commissioner at the time had told him that it existed to “instill fear” in Black and Latino men. The judge cited his words in her ruling that the program violated the constitutional rights of those who were stopped.“They’re marching now saying Black Lives Matter, they’re doing Chapter 2 — I was Chapter 1,” Mr. Adams said. “When no one else was doing this, Eric Adams was doing this.”Mr. Adams, seen at the Capitol in Albany, was elected to the State Senate as a Democrat in 2006. Previously, he spent several years as a registered Republican.Mike Groll/Associated PressRising up in politicsAs early as 1994, Mr. Adams had decided that he wanted to be mayor — a desire he expressed to Bill Lynch, a deputy mayor under David N. Dinkins, the first Black mayor of New York City.Mr. Lynch gave him four pieces of advice, Mr. Adams recalled: get a bachelor’s degree, gain managerial experience in the Police Department, work in Albany, and become a borough president — a path that somewhat resembled the one Mr. Dinkins followed to his historic victory.Mr. Adams followed the advice, but largely kept his mayoral ambitions quiet. It was better to be known as an earnest doer than an ambitious climber, he said, particularly as a Black man.“I am the poster child of missteps, but I am also the poster child of endurance,” Mr. Adams said. “I had a plan.”The first step was to leave the police force and enter politics. There was a failed congressional run in 1994, when Mr. Adams’s relationship with the Nation of Islam proved divisive. His switch to the Republican Party in the following years, while Rudolph W. Giuliani was mayor and the party controlled the State Senate, seemed opportunistic; he explained then that “if you take a look at some of the concepts of the Republican Party, you’ll see that many of them are our values.”By 2006, however, he was a Democrat again, in time for a successful run for State Senate. In the political career that has followed, Mr. Adams has often been ideologically fungible, displaying an independent streak as well as attention-grabbing skills.He was an early supporter of marriage equality and continued to rail against policing practices, like stop-and-frisk, that were shown to disproportionately affect Black and Latino communities. He turned his focus to issues many other politicians would avoid, such as a “Stop the Sag” campaign that called on Black men to pull up their pants and emphasized personal responsibility as a response to racism. He also pushed for higher pay for elected officials — including himself.“I don’t know how some of you are living on $79,000,” Mr. Adams said at the time. “Show me the money!”The comments hurt Mr. Adams’s reputation among the city’s political class in the same way the police news conferences had in the years before. In 2010, a scathing state inspector general report said that Mr. Adams, then the chairman of the Senate Racing, Gaming and Wagering Committee, had given the “appearance of impropriety” by getting too close to a group that was seeking a casino contract at Aqueduct Racetrack.The inspector general said Mr. Adams had attended a party thrown by the lobbyist, earned campaign donations from the group’s shareholders and affiliates, and conducted a process that amounted to a “political free-for-all.”By 2013, Mr. Adams had left Albany for a successful bid for Brooklyn borough president, succeeding Marty Markowitz, and becoming the first Black person to head New York’s most populous borough..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}As borough president, a job with limited formal duties but a sizable bully pulpit, Mr. Adams expanded the role that Mr. Markowitz pioneered as a garrulous cheerleader for Brooklyn.He put himself through what he sometimes calls “mayor school,” reaching out to donors, community activists and business leaders to check their pulses on which direction they felt the city should go in.“I knew I had to prove I was serious,” Mr. Adams said. “People had to see Eric had serious plans. They had to see Eric could raise the money and that I could articulate issues of impact.”But he also drew more criticism over potential conflicts of interest. In his first year as borough president, the city’s Department of Investigation found that his office appeared to have violated conflict of interest rules in raising money for a nonprofit Mr. Adams was starting. No enforcement action was taken.The final taskMr. Adams accepted an endorsement from the FDNY Uniformed Fire Officers Association last month. He has earned several major endorsements from organized labor.James Estrin/The New York TimesIn the early stages of the mayoral race, Mr. Adams was viewed as one of three leading candidates, along with Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, and Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker. Only Mr. Adams was thought to appeal to large swaths of Black and Latino voters, especially outside Manhattan.He also had longstanding relationships with union leaders and other elected officials, and a network of donors cultivated over the past decade.But the dynamics have changed. Mr. Johnson is running for comptroller, not mayor. Mr. Stringer is now facing an allegation of sexual assault.The Black Lives Matter movement has pushed younger voters and some white liberals to the left of Mr. Adams on racial justice and policing. And other top Black candidates — Maya Wiley, the former lawyer to Mayor Bill de Blasio and MSNBC analyst; Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street leader; and Dianne Morales, a nonprofit executive — are in the running.And then there is Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate who appears to be the front-runner, according to the limited polling that exists, and who has drawn donors and media coverage to match.“Before Yang, I was the Chinese candidate,” Mr. Adams said. “I was the Bangladeshi candidate — which I still am. I’m going to get overwhelmingly the Muslim vote.”Mr. Adams has sought to portray Mr. Yang as unprepared to be mayor.“When I look over the lives of everyone else, I see moments of commitment. And I’m asking like, ‘Who is Andrew?’” Mr. Adams said. “Maya Wiley, I see a civil rights activist. Ray? Successful businessman. Dianne Morales, I see her commitment to fighting against injustice.”He added: “They didn’t just discover that we have injustice in this city.”Mr. Adams believes people have underestimated his ability to connect with the working-class New Yorkers who make up his base.Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesIn a statement, the Yang campaign pushed back against the idea that Mr. Yang had not demonstrated a commitment to service. “Andrew is known by the most New Yorkers in the race for starting a national movement on universal basic income,” said Alyssa Cass, Mr. Yang’s communications director. “While some candidates were handing out patronage jobs or getting investigated for corruption, Andrew was fighting poverty.”Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang tend to have more moderate positions than some of their left-leaning rivals, like Mr. Stringer, Ms. Wiley and Ms. Morales.But Mr. Adams argues that his platform, which includes an expanded local tax credit for low-income families, investment in underperforming schools, and improvements to public housing, amounts to the systemic change progressives want.His “100 Steps for New York City,” a plan he partly drew from his journal of observations that began decades earlier, includes a special focus on public safety initiatives like releasing the names of officers being internally investigated for bad behavior.Mr. Adams has proposed diverting $500 million from the New York police budget to fund crisis managers and crime prevention programs, and has pledged to further diversify the police force.He has also proposed restoring a maligned plainclothes anti-crime unit that was disbanded by the Police Department last year, and refashioning it to focus on getting guns off the streets. Mr. Adams says proposals like these showed a responsiveness to the city’s most needy residents, including some Black neighborhoods suffering the brunt of violent crime. Critics point out that the disbanded unit has been behind several police shootings.As he runs to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio, left, Mr. Adams has faced skepticism from the city’s progressive Democrats.Dave Sanders for The New York Times“Those other candidates, their names don’t ring out over here,” said Takbir Blake, a community activist who shepherded Mr. Adams during a business tour in Laurelton. “It’s that you know he’s been on the front lines. But you also know he’s from the streets.”As the primary approaches, Mr. Adams has begun to demonstrate the benefits of his long-honed political relationships. He has won major labor endorsements, including from the city’s largest municipal union, 32BJ SEIU, which represents private-sector building service workers. He has raised more money than his rivals participating in the city’s matching-funds program, yet has spent less than several of them — maintaining his war chest for the stretch run.And he believes that he will eventually win over the party’s progressive wing, especially if it becomes clearer that Democratic voters still favor Mr. Yang as their top choice.“The polls are not everything, or always honest, but it’s going to send a message,” Mr. Adams said. “They not only need a person that they agree with, but I’m the person that could win the race.”Mr. Adams says he can form a coalition of the marginalized, who want a mayor who has not had an aspirational New York experience, but who has experienced the common struggle.It is the path of Mr. Dinkins, laid out by Mr. Lynch, and executed over decades by the most disciplined loose cannon in New York City politics.“Say what you want, but there’s very little misunderstanding about me,” Mr. Adams said. “When you pull that lever, you know who you’re voting for.”“An actual, real blue-collar New Yorker.” More

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      How New York’s Mayoral Hopefuls Would Change the N.Y.P.D.

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      Some candidates in the Democratic primary want to cut $1 billion or more from the police budget, while others have more moderate proposals, frustrating activists.When the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty this week of murdering George Floyd, the Democrats running for mayor of New York City, unsurprisingly, offered a unanimous chorus of support.The two leading moderates in the race — Andrew Yang and Eric Adams — said that justice had been delivered, but that the verdict was only the first step toward real police accountability. Maya Wiley and Scott Stringer, two left-leaning candidates, seized the moment more overtly, appearing with other mayoral hopefuls at a rally at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the site of many of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests.“For once, we got a little bit of what we deserve — to be seen as people who deserve to breathe,” Ms. Wiley said to a crowd, within hours of the verdict.But the candidates’ unanimity disappears when it comes to their approaches to running the New York Police Department, the nation’s largest. From the size of the police budget to disciplining rogue officers, the candidates offer starkly different visions.In the wake of the Floyd case and other recent police killings, several candidates on the left, including Ms. Wiley and Mr. Stringer, have adopted the goals of the “defund the police” movement and want to significantly cut the police budget and divert resources into social services.Another candidate, Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive who also attended the rally at Barclays, has embraced that movement more fully, calling for slashing the $6 billion budget in half and for eventually abolishing the police altogether. She and others argue that having fewer officers would reduce violent encounters with the police.But Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams, more centrist candidates, strongly oppose reducing the police force and instead are calling for more expeditious decisions on police discipline and for improving accountability.The debate is happening at a precarious moment for New York City, which is facing a troubling rise in gun violence: Last year was the city’s bloodiest in nearly a decade, and the number of shooting victims doubled to more than 1,500.Shootings typically spike as the weather gets warmer, and the coming months will reveal whether the increase in violence over the last year was an aberration linked to the pandemic or the beginning of a worrisome trend.If gun violence increases in May and June, in the weeks leading up to the June 22 primary that is likely to decide the city’s next mayor, it could have an outsize impact on the race. And it may help moderate candidates like Mr. Yang, a former presidential hopeful, and Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, who tied for first when voters were asked in a recent poll which candidate would best handle crime and public safety.Mr. Adams, a Black former police captain, has positioned himself as a law-and-order candidate, saying that he is far better equipped than his rivals to make the city safer — a key step in its recovery from the pandemic.“Public safety is the prerequisite to prosperity in this city,” Mr. Adams often repeats on the campaign trail.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, is a former New York City police captain who strongly opposes reducing the size of the force.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesMr. Adams is allied with moderate Black lawmakers who have criticized the defund movement and have argued that their communities do not want officers to disappear. Similarly, Mr. Yang supports some police reform measures but has not embraced the defund movement.Chivona Renee Newsome, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Greater New York, said she feared that Mr. Yang or Mr. Adams would not bring meaningful changes to the Police Department.“I want a mayor who will listen,” she said, someone who was “not at the mercy of the N.Y.P.D.”Calls for sweeping changes and a push to defund the police last summer led to laws banning chokeholds, limiting legal protections for officers facing lawsuits and opening police disciplinary records to the public. But elected officials did not make substantial cuts to the police budget or limit the types of situations officers respond to.“We’re long past the time where people are going to be satisfied with cosmetic reforms or some attempts that really don’t get at the root question around reducing police violence and surveillance, increasing police accountability and transparency, and basically divesting from the N.Y.P.D.’s bloated budget and reinvesting that into our communities,” said Joo-Hyun Kang, the director of Communities United for Police Reform.Left-wing activists are already applying a fresh round of pressure on the City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio to reduce police spending in next year’s budget.The death of Eric Garner in Staten Island in 2014 put a particular focus on holding officers accountable. Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who put Mr. Garner in a chokehold, was not criminally charged, and it took the city five years to fire him from the Police Department.Mr. Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, endorsed Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive who has more moderate views on policing. Ms. Carr said the next mayor would only be able to tackle police reform if the city’s finances were stabilized. Mr. McGuire supports measures like increasing funding for the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates accusations of police brutality and misconduct and makes disciplinary recommendations.The next mayor and his or her police commissioner will have to resolve a host of thorny issues: how to discipline officers; whether the police should respond to calls involving the homeless and mental health issues; and how to address protests over police brutality. To put it more simply, in the post-Floyd era, what is the correct form and function of the police force and its 35,000 officers?When it comes to firing an officer, Mr. Yang believes the police commissioner should continue to have final say; Mr. Adams argues it should be the mayor; and Mr. Stringer wants it to be the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Ms. Wiley has not given a clear answer.The left-leaning candidates want to prevent police officers from responding to mental health emergencies and remove them from schools; Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams are reluctant to do so.While Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller, and Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio and former chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, have distanced themselves from the word “defund,” they both want to cut the police budget. Ms. Wiley has suggested cutting $1 billion per year. Mr. Stringer says he would trim at least $1 billion over four years and released a detailed plan to transfer 911 calls for issues involving homelessness and mental health to civilian crisis response teams.Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, has proposed removing police officers from public schools in New York City.Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesMs. Morales has called for the most sweeping changes to the criminal justice system: She wants to decriminalize all drug use, eliminate bail and build no new jails. Two other candidates — Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, and Shaun Donovan, the former federal housing secretary — have more moderate positions that are nuanced enough that activists have created spreadsheets to keep track of where the candidates stand.Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams have their own proposals, but activists are skeptical. Earlier this month, when Mr. Yang attended a bike vigil for Daunte Wright, a young man killed by the police in Minnesota, an organizer recognized him and grabbed a bullhorn.“You’re pro-cop — get out of here,” she said. “Boo! Shame on you, Andrew Yang.”Mr. Yang said in an interview that he decided to leave after that, and that he had spent more than an hour with the group biking from Barclays Center to Battery Park in Lower Manhattan.“I wanted to join this event in order to really have a chance to reflect and mourn for Daunte Wright’s unnecessary death at the hands of law enforcement,” he said.Mr. Yang said he supported measures like requiring officers to live in the city and appointing a civilian police commissioner who is not steeped in the department’s culture. He said officers like Mr. Pantaleo should be fired quickly. But he rejected the idea that he was pro-police or anti-police.“I think most New Yorkers know that we have to do two things at once — work with them to bring down the levels of shootings and violent crimes that are on the rise, and we also need to reform the culture,” Mr. Yang said.Andrew Yang has said that he would choose a civilian police commissioner if elected mayor.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesProtesters were upset that Mr. Yang called for an increase in funding for a police task force in response to anti-Asian attacks. They also have doubts about Mr. Yang because Tusk Strategies, a firm that advises him, has worked with the Police Benevolent Association, the police union, which embraced President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Adams attended the same vigil for Mr. Wright, and he was peppered with questions over his support of the stop-and-frisk policing strategy. Such stops soared under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and they disproportionately targeted Black and Latino men. Mr. Adams said he believed stop-and-frisk could be a useful tool, but that it was abused under Mr. Bloomberg.Mr. Adams has offered his own ideas: diversifying the Police Department, where Black officers are underrepresented; disclosing the department’s own internal list of officers with records of complaints and giving communities veto power over precinct commanders.He also argues that he is the only candidate with the credibility to transform the force. Mr. Adams has said that he was beaten by the police as a young man and that inspired him to push for changes when he later joined the Police Department.In an interview, Mr. Adams said that it took the city too long to fire Mr. Pantaleo and he would move more quickly on disciplinary matters if elected.“I’m going to have a fair but speedy trial within a two-month period to determine if that officer should remain a police officer,” he said. “And if not, we’re going to expeditiously remove him from the agency. The goal here is to rebuild trust.”Mr. Adams wants to appoint the city’s first female police commissioner, and he has spoken highly of a top official, Chief Juanita Holmes, whom the current police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, lured out of retirement. Mr. Yang is also considering Ms. Holmes or Val Demings, a congresswoman from Florida and a former police chief, according to a person familiar with his thinking.Mr. de Blasio has praised a new disciplinary matrix that standardizes the range of penalties for offenses like using chokeholds and lying on official paperwork. But while current leaders settled on these rules, the agreement signed by the police commissioner and the chairman of the Civilian Complaint Review Board is not legally binding, allowing the next administration to set its own policies.Many of the mayoral candidates have called for changing how the city handles mental health emergencies. Since 2014, N.Y.P.D. officers have killed more than 15 people with histories of mental illness. The city is currently conducting a small experiment that sends social workers instead of police out on calls with emergency medical technicians in parts of Harlem.As the Police Department says it is trying to build trust with the community, one recent decision appeared slightly tone deaf: bringing a robot dog to an arrest at a public housing building. The candidates criticized the use of the device, which costs at least $74,000.Mr. Adams said the money would be better spent “stopping gun violence in communities of color.”“You can’t build the trust we need between those communities and police with a robot,” he said. More

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      In a Changing Boston, a New Mayor Challenges the Police

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      Three weeks into her tenure as Boston’s acting mayor, Kim Janey has done something her predecessor did not: order the police to release documents about a leader accused of sexual abuse.BOSTON — Three weeks after her swearing-in as acting mayor of Boston, Kim Janey was enjoying a sort of honeymoon, enacting feel-good policies like forgiving library fines and basking in the spotlight that came with her status as the city’s first Black and first female mayor.Though she had landed the position in part by happenstance — she was City Council president when her predecessor, Martin J. Walsh, was tapped to be secretary of labor — Ms. Janey has moved slowly and deliberately to build her political profile, taking her place on the growing list of Black women running major U.S. cities.That cautious approach ended last Saturday, when Ms. Janey found herself responding to a police scandal.A report in The Boston Globe reviewed the handling of sex abuse allegations involving Patrick M. Rose, 66, the former president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, the largest and most muscular of the city’s three major police unions.The police, The Globe reported, had allowed Mr. Rose to serve for more than two decades after a 12-year-old accused him of sexual assault. Though the victim ultimately recanted and the criminal case was closed, an internal affairs investigation by the police subsequently found he had most likely broken the law.Those allegations resurfaced last year, when another child came forward, alleging abuse between the ages of 7 and 12, followed by four more victims. Mr. Rose was ultimately charged with more than 30 counts of sexual abuse of children.Patrick M. Rose, former president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, served on the police force for two decades after a 12-year-old accused him of sexual assault.Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe, via Associated PressMr. Rose maintains his innocence, both in the 1995 charges and in the more recent ones, said his lawyer, William J. Keefe.Ms. Janey, one of six candidates running for election in November, was faced with a choice: Should she keep the internal police records private, as Mayor Walsh, her predecessor in City Hall, had, citing the victims’ desire for privacy?Or should she take the path urged by fellow progressives in the City Council, demanding that the police release the records to the public — and risk unsettling the victims and poisoning her relationship with the powerful police union? This week, Ms. Janey’s choice became clear.“As a mother and as a grandmother I was heartbroken and angry to learn nothing was done to keep Mr. Rose away from children, or to terminate him, for that matter,” she said. “Transparency cannot wait any longer.”Her decision points to a larger political calculus, said Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University.“She has probably made the calculation that she is better off without the police, which is amazing,” he said. “Because the support of the police is, to some extent, code for the support of white voters in Boston.”This election will provide a snapshot of a city undergoing rapid change, as professionals move into neighborhoods once dominated by middle-income Irish-American and Italian-American families.Though Boston’s white population had dipped to 44 percent by 2017, white voters historically turn out in far greater numbers in city elections, and police union endorsements, telegraphed early in the race, were signals to them.This year, however, “none of the top-tier candidates are shopping for police support,” said Erin O’Brien, a professor at University of Massachusetts Boston.A poll released on Wednesday by WBUR and MassINC, a polling group, found that 46 percent of voters were still undecided. But it identified two front-runners — City Councilor Michelle Wu, with 19 percent support, and Ms. Janey, with 18 percent — who are both outspoken proponents of policing reform.Describing the way politicians viewed the police in the past, Dr. O’Brien said, “It’s like the boogeyman, in some ways — ‘don’t cross the police, don’t cross the police’ — well, no one’s done it, they’re afraid of them.” Rachael Rollins beat a prosecutor with police backing when she was elected Suffolk County district attorney in 2018.Cody O’Loughlin for The New York TimesBut recent elections suggest the clout of the police is waning, she said, pointing to the 2018 upset win of Rachael Rollins, a progressive, as district attorney in Boston, over a longtime prosecutor with police backing. Dr. O’Brien compared the union’s political clout to the Wizard of Oz, who appears formidable but only from a distance.“They have a lot of power until the curtain gets pulled,” she said. “The question is whether the curtain has already been pulled.”The internal affairs file on Mr. Rose, which will be made public early next week, should shed light on the decision to return him to street duty after a 12-year-old came forward with an allegation of sexual abuse.Although the victim’s complaint was dropped, ending the first criminal prosecution, a subsequent internal affairs investigation by the police, which uses the lower legal standard of preponderance of the evidence, found he had broken the law, according to The Globe.The findings should have been forwarded to the department’s legal adviser and the police commissioner at the time, Paul F. Evans, who would determine a punishment, said Daniel Linskey, a former superintendent in chief of the Boston Police, who is now a managing director at Kroll, a security consultancy firm.Mr. Linskey said he supported Mayor Janey’s decision to make the files public, which he said could help “restore trust and integrity in the system.”He added that, as far as he knows, police officers are not rallying to Mr. Rose’s defense.“I don’t think the police union is going to die on the hill for this one,” he said. “There is no rallying cry behind Pat on this because the information to date seems to indicate that there is some substance to the charges.”Mr. Keefe, Mr. Rose’s lawyer, said his client did not pressure any witness to withdraw the charges.“He denies anyone was pressured to do anything,” he said.A police spokesperson referred The New York Times to the mayor’s statement. An official at the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association did not respond to requests for comment.The Rose case is only one of the thorny police matters that Mayor Janey inherited, including the fact that the department has no permanent commissioner. Though Mr. Walsh appointed one, a veteran officer named Dennis White, he was placed on paid leave after The Globe reported that he had threatened to shoot his wife, also a Boston police officer, and was later ordered to stay away from his family.Many of the legal structures governing Boston’s police, like overtime rules and disciplinary practices, are outside the direct authority of the mayor, determined in collective bargaining between the city and the unions.Still, Mr. Walsh, before leaving office, had embarked on new steps to increase oversight of police, including creating a new Office of Police Accountability, which includes a civilian review board.Thomas Nolan, who served as a Boston police officer for 27 years and is now an associate professor at Emmanuel College, said Boston could follow the lead of cities like Oakland, Calif., or Chicago, which have increased civilian control over policing.“It may come to a point where we scratch our head and say, ‘Do you know there was a time when they let the police investigate themselves for wrongdoing?’” he said. “The accountability will come when they can’t basically absolve their own people of wrongdoing.” More

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      Eric Garner’s Mother Endorses Raymond McGuire for Mayor

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?11 Candidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsA Look at the Race5 Takeaways From the DebateAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyEric Garner’s Mother Backs McGuire for Mayor Over Progressive RivalsGwen Carr said she was endorsing Ray McGuire because his financial background could help him lead New York’s recovery and make the city a “safer place.”In a nearly two-minute ad, Raymond McGuire and Gwen Carr visit the location in Staten Island where her son, Eric Garner, had his fatal interaction with the police.Credit…Ray McGuire for MayorFeb. 11, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETIn the nearly seven years since Eric Garner died at the hands of the police in Staten Island, his mother, Gwen Carr, has helped turn her son’s cries of “I can’t breathe” into a national movement against discriminatory policing.Ms. Carr has also become a sought-after endorser for political hopefuls looking to represent themselves as candidates of change, especially on policing matters.That is especially true in New York City’s crowded Democratic primary for mayor, where several candidates have been coveting Ms. Carr’s endorsement in the wake of the national protests that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year.But instead of giving her endorsement to one of the more liberal, progressive Democratic candidates, Ms. Carr will announce on Thursday that she will endorse Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive who served on the New York City Police Foundation and who has embraced calls to reform the police, but not defund them.Mr. McGuire, formerly the vice chairman at Citigroup, is a moderate Democrat who was recruited to run by the city’s business community and quickly raised $5 million in three months. But he still must overcome his lack of name recognition among most voters, and expand his appeal beyond the Wall Street elite.Ms. Carr’s endorsement could help Mr. McGuire with some left-leaning voters and shore up support in the Black community, which makes up 26 percent of the electorate.“Eric Garner and George Floyd are examples of what can happen to any Black man in this country and what has happened to all too many Black men in this city,” Mr. McGuire said in an interview. “Gwen Carr’s endorsement means she recognizes that I have what it takes to lead this city and to reflect the voice of those who would not otherwise have a voice.”Ms. Carr said the next mayor can only undertake the necessary police accountability reforms if the city’s future and finances are stabilized.“We know that the budget is in a mess, and from what I read he can balance budgets,” Ms. Carr said. “I have grandsons and granddaughters growing up in this city and I want it to be a safer place for them.”Mr. McGuire, who is Black, has adopted a policing stance that echoes that of Black lawmakers in the city who resisted calls to defund the police last year, citing rising violence in the communities they represent.“Black people want better policing. We want to reform, restructure and reallocate the dollars,” Mr. McGuire said. “We want our policing to be respectful, accountable and proportionate.”Mr. Garner was killed in 2014 after being placed in a chokehold by a police officer, Daniel Pantaleo. A grand jury did not indict Mr. Pantaleo and federal prosecutors decided against pursuing civil rights charges. Mr. Pantaleo remained on the police force for five more years until he was fired and stripped of his pension in 2019 by the police commissioner at the time, James P. O’Neill, after a police administrative judge found him guilty of violating a departmental ban on chokeholds.Ms. Carr said that her pursuit for justice in her son’s death was caught up in politics. She has been critical of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to delay a departmental trial and not fire Mr. Pantaleo. The mayor was elected in 2013 on a promise to overhaul the relationship between the New York Police Department and Black, brown and poor communities.“He has never been a politician,” Ms. Carr said of Mr. McGuire. “We need new blood.”Ms. Carr said she admired Mr. McGuire’s support of the National Action Network, the civil rights organization headed by the Rev. Al Sharpton. The group has been one of her biggest supporters since her son’s death. Mr. Sharpton has credited Mr. McGuire as one of many anonymous Black businessmen who had helped fund his organization during difficult times.Mr. McGuire’s campaign will reveal the endorsement on Thursday in a digital ad created by John Del Cecato, who is responsible for the successful 2013 campaign ad that featured Mr. de Blasio’s son, Dante; and Mark Skidmore, chief executive of Assemble the Agency, who wrote the script for Mr. McGuire’s campaign launch video that was narrated by Spike Lee.In the nearly two-minute ad, Mr. McGuire and Ms. Carr visit the location in Staten Island where Mr. Garner had his fatal interaction with the police. Ms. Carr holds onto Mr. McGuire’s arm as they walk toward the location, which is commemorated with a plaque and a mural. He refers to her as “Mother Carr”; she calls him “Mr. McGuire,” but he tells her to call him Ray.Her endorsement will be a disappointment to other candidates such as Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer who was Mr. de Blasio’s legal counsel and former head of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, said Susan Kang, an associate professor of political science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.“There are some moderates in the reform criminal justice world for whom this will carry a great deal of legitimacy, particularly those of Ray McGuire’s and Gwen Carr’s generation who are very likely voters,” Professor Kang said. “Trust is an important issue among older voters and that group makes up a high percentage of people who turn out to vote in municipal primaries.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      They Supported ‘Defund the Police.’ Then the Mayoral Campaign Began.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceA Look at the Race5 Takeaways From the DebateAndrew Yang’s CandidacyWho’s Running?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThey Supported ‘Defund the Police.’ Then the Mayoral Campaign Began.Most of the leading mayoral candidates have been wary of embracing the “defund the police” movement, which has lost some mainstream political momentum.Many in the Democratic field for mayor have backed away from the defund movement, reframing the issue as a broader need for changes to city policing.Credit…Byron Smith for The New York TimesJeffery C. Mays and Feb. 3, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETNearly eight months ago, Scott M. Stringer stood in Brooklyn before an angry, unsettled gathering to memorialize the death of George Floyd. The best way to honor him, Mr. Stringer said, was to send a clear message to City Hall: “It’s time to defund the N.Y.P.D. now.”But with the New York City mayoral primary looming in June, Mr. Stringer has distanced himself from the defund movement.At a recent mayoral forum, Mr. Stringer was asked if he supported defunding the police, and whether he would commit to slashing the Police Department’s $6 billion budget in half. He responded with a less drastic proposal to cut $1 billion, spread over four years, and said he did not want the city to return to a period of high crime like in the 1970s.“I do remember when the A train was a rolling crime scene, and I don’t want my children or any child to go back to that time and place,” he said. “But I also know that overpolicing in communities of color has got to stop.”His remarks immediately drew fire.“This is not what a progressive would say,” said Lauren Ashcraft, a Democratic Socialist and former congressional candidate in Queens. Other progressives questioned whether several leading Democratic candidates had the courage and commitment to win their support.The escalating tensions over the issue highlight the challenges that Democratic candidates face as they try to cultivate the city’s growing progressive flank without embracing stances that may scare off moderate New Yorkers — especially at a time when shootings and murders have sharply risen.The issue cuts across racial and class lines: Two Black moderate Democratic candidates, Eric Adams and Raymond J. McGuire, have voiced concerns — echoed among other Black lawmakers in the city — that defunding the police would worsen crime in neighborhoods that suffer the most from violence.Maya Wiley, a former top counsel for Mr. de Blasio who gained a national following as an analyst for MSNBC, was often critical of the mayor’s handling of policing. Now she appears to be recalibrating her message to avoid using the defund slogan.“The word means different things to different people,” Ms. Wiley said. “We should focus on the clarity of the demands.”Others in the wide-open Democratic field for mayor have sought to distance themselves from the defund movement and instead speak more of the need to bring meaningful change to the Police Department.The debate over the defund movement has roiled the Democratic Party over concerns that the slogan scared away moderate voters during the election in November. Some Democratic leaders blamed candidates’ embrace of the movement for the party’s losses in the House.President Barack Obama discouraged candidates from using the slogan — arguing you have “lost a big audience the minute you say it” — while leaders on the progressive left like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defended it and blamed moderates for running weak campaigns.Even in Minneapolis, where Mr. Floyd was killed by the police, efforts to essentially dismantle the city’s police department collapsed. A far less ambitious move — cutting the police budget by 4.5 percent — was approved in December, disappointing defund supporters.In a survey of the nine leading Democratic mayoral hopefuls, only two said they supported the defund movement: Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, and Carlos Menchaca, a councilman from Brooklyn.Some defund activists are expected to raise their demands and ask that the city cut as much as half of the police budget this summer.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThe race for mayor this year may be the city’s most consequential in a generation, with New York facing a resurgence of the coronavirus that may prolong and worsen the city’s economic crisis. The pandemic’s effect on the city has overshadowed other issues on the campaign trail, including defunding the police.Many of the campaigns have commissioned polls to measure which issues voters want the next mayor to prioritize, and they have consulted with policing experts about how to tackle reforms. Keeping New Yorkers safe from the pandemic was the top concern in one poll; defunding the police was not among the Top 10 issues, with voters caring more about keeping crime down.“A lot of people, including in communities impacted by policing, bristle at the term,” Barry Friedman, a professor and director of the Policing Project at New York University School of Law, said of the defund slogan. “There are people who are frustrated at how police respond to situations, but don’t think they’re going to be safer without the police.”Still, many left-leaning leaders in New York are committed to trying to keep defund efforts alive. Two advocacy groups and one union — Make the Road Action, Community Voices Heard Power and 1199 Service Employees International Union — plan to unveil an independent expenditure committee to make the defund movement one of the top issues in the mayor’s race.The New York City Democratic Socialists of America, which helped Ms. Ocasio-Cortez win her primary in 2018, intends to make a concerted push to make defunding the police a key issue, according to the group’s co-chairwoman, Sumathy Kumar.Tiffany Cabán, a progressive-backed City Council candidate who nearly scored an upset win in the 2019 Democratic primary for Queens district attorney, wrote a 40-page public safety platform that is expected to be the philosophical basis that defund supporters running for mayor or City Council organize around.Protesters set up camp outside City Hall last year, hoping to pressure the City Council to cut at least $1 billion from the police budget.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesMs. Cabán has spoken with Ms. Morales, Ms. Wiley and Mr. Stringer about what proponents of defunding the police want. She said she often had to tell candidates that their positions did not go far enough and believes that will change.“There will be a domino effect,” she said. “One of the big, more forward-facing mayoral candidates is going to release their comprehensive police plan, and everyone else is going to have an answer to it.”Mr. Stringer, who has won endorsement from several progressive leaders who support the defund movement, said that he was “the first elected official to put forth a detailed proposal to reduce the N.Y.P.D.’s budget by $1 billion,” and that his “position on these issues has not changed.”But when asked directly whether he supports defunding the police, Mr. Stringer gave a more indirect answer, saying that he wanted to “make concrete change when it comes to systemic racism and our criminal justice system.” Mr. Stringer will soon release a report that explains his policy ideas to transform policing that he says is more ambitious than his proposal in June. The report, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, does not mention the word “defund” or cite a dollar figure for budget cuts, but it outlines how he would move certain responsibilities away from the Police Department and identifies specific areas for reinvestment in communities.Most of the other major candidates seemed even less likely to make major cuts to the police budget.Mr. McGuire, who served on the New York City Police Foundation, has called for “better policing with greater accountability, not fewer police officers,” even as he has said that as a Black man he could “easily be the next George Floyd” — a contrast that he does not view as a contradiction.Mr. Adams, a former police officer, said that he does not “support taking resources away from crime fighting — especially in communities of color where shootings and other predatory crimes are on the rise.”Ms. Wiley said at a recent mayoral forum that the Police Department budget was “bloated,” but declined to say how much she would seek to cut police spending.“I don’t have a number for you, but that’s because it has been such a black box,” Ms. Wiley said. “There really is so little transparency about what and how the budget is spent.”Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, has called for “police reform through strict accountability and structural change,” including raising the minimum age of recruits to 25 and holding “police officers accountable for depraved acts with a zero-tolerance policy.”Shaun Donovan, the former federal housing secretary and budget director, called for a reduction in “overpolicing” and reinvestment in “wraparound social services.”Andrew Yang, a former presidential candidate, said the Police Department needs resources to address rising crime, but he supported shifting some of its funding to other city agencies that could better handle certain issues.“Not every problem requires an armed police officer,” Mr. Yang said.Last year was New York City’s bloodiest in nearly a decade with more than 460 homicides; the number of shooting victims doubled to more than 1,500. Mr. de Blasio and police leaders have blamed the economic losses and upheaval of the pandemic.Murders surged in Black and Latino neighborhoods including East Harlem, East New York in Brooklyn, Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, and areas near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. In the 73rd Precinct in Brooklyn, which includes Brownsville and where about 70 percent of residents are Black, there were 25 murders last year, compared with 11 in 2019.The June 22 Democratic primary will take place just days before the City Council’s deadline to approve the budget for the next fiscal year, all but assuring that the push to defund will be in the public and political discourse.Last June, the defund effort led the city to pass a budget that called for the Police Department to suffer “$1 billion in cuts and cost shifts,” according to the mayor. But an analysis by the Independent Budget Office concluded that a smaller portion of the police budget was actually cut, and some of the losses were spread out over a number of years.Mr. Menchaca voted against that budget because it failed to cut $1 billion from the Police Department; he said he plans to raise the issue during upcoming Council budget negotiations.The defund movement, he said, “is going to be on the ballot.”Ms. Morales said she reached out to the Brooklyn Movement Center last summer to get a sense of what defund advocates expected from the next mayor. She now wants to cut $3 billion from the police budget — a position that has won her support among defund advocates.“We need to take that money and invest it in meeting people’s needs,” she said at a recent mayoral forum.Anthonine Pierre, deputy director of the Brooklyn Movement Center and a member of Communities United for Police Reform, one of the architects of the city’s defund movement, said that she was not surprised that more mainstream candidates have not reached out to her group because they think of “defund the police” as a communications strategy.“Scott Stringer has had over a two-decade career in New York City politics, and never has police accountability been a banner issue for him,” said Ms. Pierre, who worked for Mr. Stringer in 2008 when he was the Manhattan borough president.“There is really a lack of courage from these candidates,” she said, adding that she would welcome discussions with the mayoral field — or a direct message on Twitter.“My DMs are open,” she said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Meena Harris, Building That Brand

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      Kashmir Votes, and India Hails It as Normalcy in a Dominated Region

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyKashmir Votes, and India Hails It as Normalcy in a Dominated RegionIndia’s ruling party worked to make Kashmir’s rural development council elections a showcase. But a visit by Times reporters showed a place still struggling under heavy-handed rule.An Indian soldier stood guard outside a polling station in Kashmir’s northern Bandipora district during its first local election since the government’s crackdown.Credit…Showkat Nanda for The New York TimesDec. 22, 2020, 12:17 p.m. ETSRINAGAR, Kashmir — Votes were counted on Tuesday in the first local elections in Kashmir since the Indian government waged a harsh political and security crackdown in the restive region last year. Officials hailed a solid turnout as a sign that democracy has been restored, but little in Kashmir feels normal.“The voting shows democracy being alive at the grass roots,” the region’s top civil servant, B.V.R. Subrahmanyam, told a group of reporters. “People taking value of their own lives is visible, palpable.”The election — a vote to choose rural development officials — was called suddenly, giving parties only a week to register candidates before the first round of the eight-phase polling began in November, political leaders said. Many prominent Kashmiri politicians and public figures remain in detention with no recourse, or under threat. And hundreds of thousands of political workers for India’s Hindu-nationalist ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, traveled through the region carrying banners and signs, hoping to make a strong showing in a mostly Muslim territory where it has traditionally been loathed.The party, known as the B.J.P., did appear to make some inroads, winning at least three seats and leading in several dozen races in the 280-seat District Development Council. But some of the voter engagement appeared to stem more from defiance than satisfaction.“We’d never want B.J.P. to be in power in Kashmir,” said Kulsoom Chopan, 21, who warmed her hands over a wicker fire pot while waiting to vote at a public boys’ high school in Bandipora, a northern district hemmed in by the Himalayas and Asia’s second-largest freshwater lake. “We would never vote for India.”The New York Times was part of a small group of international media outlets permitted to visit Kashmir on a tightly controlled, government-organized trip to cover the polls.Voters waiting in line outside a polling station in Kashmir’s central Budgam district.Credit…Showkat Nanda for The New York TimesThis relatively small-stakes election was the first time India has allowed foreign reporters into Jammu and Kashmir since August 2019, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked the constitutional provision that gave the region some political autonomy. Jammu and Kashmir, which used to be India’s only Muslim-predominant state, is now a federal territory ruled directly by the Indian government.Mr. Modi said at the time that Kashmir’s special status had helped fuel a 30-year-old armed separatist struggle that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths of security forces, rebels and civilians, and was an impediment to outside investors.However, just as the security clampdown eased, the pandemic hit. Kashmir’s tourism-reliant economy and civil society are now on the verge of collapse: In a year and a half, there’s been no new private investment in Kashmir, and police officials say that recruitment by militant groups is on the rise.Activists say hundreds of people, including separatists, political moderates, civil society advocates and journalists remain in jail after they were swept up last year. Accusations of torture by security forces were widespread.In this climate of fear and uncertainty, the B.J.P. has made a big push into the Kashmir Valley, the center of the separatist struggle, unleashing 300,000 party workers and bringing Muslim politicians in Kashmir into its fold for the first time.“We’re only in the takeoff stage,” said Ghulam Mohammad Mir, B.J.P.’s Kashmir spokesman and a candidate for the development council elections in the valley’s Kupwara district.“We have thousands in election areas in every nook and corner of the valley, open, with flags,” he said.Shepherding sheep outside a polling station in Bandipora. The polls cover 280 District Development Council seats across Jammu and Kashmir.Credit…Showkat Nanda for The New York TimesSeven B.J.P. party workers have been killed in 2020, and a candidate affiliated with the party was shot and injured in November by militants, according to the Jammu and Kashmir police.In the days before the Indian government unilaterally stripped Kashmir’s autonomy, Mr. Modi sent in thousands of army troops to quell anticipated unrest.Prominent Kashmiri politicians, including former chief ministers of Kashmir, some of their relatives and other opposition party leaders, were arrested and detained in government houses for months. Cellphone and internet access were blocked.A dozen petitions challenging the constitutionality of the move remain pending with India’s Supreme Court.Among those detained were Mehbooba Mufti, the head of a powerful regional party, and Farooq and Omar Abdullah, the father and son who led another influential bloc. They have since been released, but when contacted by The Times, they said they were unable to grant interviews. On Saturday, it was announced that the Indian government was investigating Farooq Abdullah on money-laundering charges.Despite the pressure, Waheed ur Rehman Para, a youth leader of Ms. Mufti’s party, trounced his B.J.P. competitor in the restive southern district of Pulwama from a jail cell in Jammu, where he is being held under accusation of being linked to militants. He and his family deny the accusation.A demonstration in Soura, Srinagar, last year, after the Indian government stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomy.Credit…Atul Loke for The New York TimesMohamed Bhat ran as an independent candidate in Bandipora as part of the Gukpar Alliance, a coalition of opposition parties led by Farooq Abdullah promising to restore Kashmir’s autonomy.“There was democracy in Kashmir previously, but with abrogation it was trampled upon,” Mr. Bhat said, speaking of the constitutional provision that was scrapped. “We have united to bring back the special status,” he said.Hasnain Masoodi, a member of Indian Parliament from Mr. Abdullah’s party, complained about the haste with which the central government unilaterally decided to hold the development council elections.“We were not given a level playing field,” he said. “There was no campaign at all. Most of the time we were either denied permission or senior leaders were confined.”Mr. Masoodi, who earlier served as chief justice of Jammu and Kashmir before joining Mr. Abdullah’s party, said the coalition partners weren’t able to vet candidates, but fielded them anyway to avoid leaving the field open for the B.J.P.“They made it into a referendum” on the change to Kashmir’s political status, he said of the B.J.P.Dilbag Singh, the top Indian police officer in the region, denied that opposition parties were refused permission for campaign events. He also denied accusations that police had tortured people.Mr. Singh said that of the hundreds of people detained in August 2019, only 155 remained in custody in Kashmir and other jails around India.“Today we have shown restraint. Not a single bullet has been fired, no civilian has been killed,” Mr. Singh said. “That’s a fact — let them prove it otherwise.”Soldiers guarding the area near a polling station in Bandipora district. Hasnain Masoodi, a member of Indian Parliament, complained about the haste with which the elections were held.Credit…Showkat Nanda for The New York TimesShowkat Nanda contributed reporting from Srinagar, and Sameer Yasir from New Delhi.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More