‘Seriously harmful’ to city to cut cop budget
NYPD First Deputy Commissioner Ben Tucker, defending the nation’s largest police force at a sometimes testy Tuesday hearing, described a proposed billion-dollar departmental defunding as a threat to all New Yorkers.
“We are not looking at $1 billion,” Tucker (top) said during a lengthy appearance for a City Council Committee on Public Safety hearing. “That would be seriously harmful to the department and the city.”
Mayor de Blasio committed last week to slashing the NYPD’s $6 billion budget amid a national outcry to begin cutting funds to law enforcement. Tucker, the department’s highest-ranking black official, was also quick to reject suggestions about eliminating the department entirely.
“It’s unrealistic to think about disbanding the police department in a city of 8.6 million people,” he said. “Crime is down low as it can be. There’s a reason for that … I believe it to my core.”
Tucker, in his opening statement, said the NYPD backed — with a few quibbles — legislation criminalizing any form of chokehold restricting the flow of air or blood by compressing the windpipe, diaphragm or carotid arteries of a suspect during an arrest.
“The department can support this legislation with minor amendments,” said Tucker, noting the bill as proposed “fails to take account of the particular circumstances of many struggles during the course of arrests.”
The hearing was called to consider legislation aimed at dramatically changing the way the NYPD does business, including the affirmation of citizen’s rights to record police officers and a requirement for cops to keep their shields visible at all times. Councilman Rory Lancman of Queens said the chokehold proposal was particularly important, with the sixth anniversary of Eric Garner’s death on Staten Island approaching next month.
“It will make clear to officers that they really, truly, really, really cannot use chokeholds,” said Lancman.
Councilman Donovan Richards said the intent of the proposed legislation was to illustrate the NYPD worked for