Rushing into reforms was big mistake
It’s always important for people not to jump to conclusions about the reasons for New York City’s recent outbreak of gun violence — or conclude the world is ending. That said, you’d be hard-pressed to find a worse set of factors that are descending on the city at this point.
The disbanding of the anti-crime units is a big deal, even though it just happened. People are aware that patrol cops are service cops, so if you’re someone planning some criminal activity, when you’re in a neighborhood you’re looking for the unmarked cars — that tells you the crimefighters are here. They’re not there now.
And it’s wrong to point the finger at the bail reform effort as a reason for the violence. A likely bigger factor has been the push to empty jails, even before COVID-19 hit.
The cold hard fact is that you have thousands of people who are now out there, in the poorest neighborhoods, in the middle of a pandemic and a looming economic catastrophe. Some of the reforms pushed through by the City Council were done without real input from the public, and that includes victims of crimes.
All this needed to be done with care. The City Council could have had hearings. They didn’t. The Council’s attitude is “don’t know, don’t care” about what police do and how they do it. Essentially it was, “We’re going to take a billion dollars from the police budget — don’t bore us with details.” These reforms would be much harder to do it they were done with real context, if they were data driven, if victims got a chance to participate.
The line is frequently blurred between criminal conduct and mental crisis, and deinstitutionalizing people from jails, prisons and secure mental health settings without after-care and resources is falling hard on the most vulnerable communities. All of this requires in-depth analysis and careful planning. What we are seeing is political vandalism instead.
Even though New York City’s gun violence pales in comparison to some other big U.S. cities, there are now shootings at 11 o’clock in the morning. Guns are ubiquitous and available, and there’s no apparent consequences. The numbers are still low, but the new normal is 300, 350 murders, so I don’t think it works to tell people how much worse it was in 1992. People don’t want to hear that.
O’Donnell, a former police officer and prosecutor, is professor of law and police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY.