City Hall protesters want NYPD cut $1B
A growing throng of protesters camped outside the gates of City Hall say they’re not leaving until the city defunds the NYPD by at least $1 billion.
The crowd of about 500 demonstrators — many them with folding chairs and blankets under colorful beach umbrellas along Park Row — on Friday brandished signs that said “Defund the Police” and “Black Lives Matter.”
Crowd members booed when a white-shirted NYPD officer — a lieutenant or above — passed through on Day 3 of the stakeout.
“I hope [the] City Council votes to cut the NYPD [budget] by at least half — and that we keep the pressure on them to do so,” said 25-yearold Khalil Smalling of East Flatbush, Brooklyn, who led the crowd in a “Close Rikers” chant.
“My [Councilwoman] Farrah Louis from District 26 has not signed on, and until they do I am going to stay in spaces like this and I keep building the movement,” Smalling said.
The Occupy City Hall protest — so named in a nod to the 2010 Occupy Wall Street movement a few blocks away in Zuccotti Park — began to form this week in the wake of citywide demonstrations over the death of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.
Mayor de Blasio has said he’s not on board with chopping $1 billion from the NYPD’s $6 billion budget, and is even threatening to thwart hundreds of millions of dollars in discretionary funding for City Council members as they push to slash NYPD funding, sources told the Daily News on Thursday.
The city’s next budget is supposed to take effect July 1.
“City Hall is where they’re going to be passing the [city] budget,” said Ramiya Gopalakrishnan, 22, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
“We want to invade their space so they see us and hear us. We have demands, not just asks, and we’re hoping that they give us the bare minimum, and invest that into black and brown communities.”
Ten police cruisers lined up on Chambers Street Friday evening to keep tabs on the crowd, with some protesters reporting that law enforcement maintained a heavy presence on Wednesday and Thursday.