Will More Cops Make Us Safer?

This month’s horrific shooting in a New York subway train, which left 23 people injured when a man set off a smoke grenade and started firing, served as another tragic reminder of what’s wrong with policing in America.

It simply doesn’t keep people safe.

The initial call about the incident came not from a police officer, but from a community member who dialed 911. Surveillance cameras, which the New York Police Department (NYPD) had installed in each of New York’s 472 subway stations, failed to capture the incident.

And after a 30-hour manhunt by the largest and most overfunded police department in the world, the shooter was finally spotted by a retail worker before ultimately turning himself in.

 Yet, despite these failings, local, state and federal officials have continued to bet big on police-centered approaches to public safety that are putting communities at risk. From New York City Mayor Eric Adams to President Joe Biden, a chorus of public officials are playing up community fears around violent incidents like the subway shooting to justify expensive, ineffective policing.

While they have insisted that policing alone can reduce violence, we know that’s just not true.

America’s largest cities invested about $450 million in police spending last year, but violence in cities like New York, L.A., and Houston is still on the rise.

As this violence grips communities across the U.S., President Biden, Mayor Adams, and other officials are putting lives at risk with their total reliance on a police-only safety model when they should be investing directly into those communities.

And because so much of this violence targets Black people, it’s our communities that are paying the price.

Since taking office, Biden and Adams have been pulling support from vital community resources to lavish funding on ineffective policing. Weeks before the shooting, Adams unveiled his budget proposal to the New York City Council, where proposed $2.5 billion in budget cuts, affecting virtually every city agency and function except its police force.

That included cuts to the city’s housing department during an unprecedented housing crisis and its health department in the midst of a global pandemic. Similarly, Biden recently announced his budget proposal, which increases police spending by nearly $2 billion as part of a budget package that includes $17.4 billion in law enforcement funding overall.

These funding streams don’t even include the millions of dollars in hidden contributions that local police departments receive each year from private police foundations. An analysis from Color Of Change and LittleSis found that nearly 100 major corporations – including 55 Fortune 500 companies – are making secret contributions to local police departments nationwide through these foundations.

This means that police budgets are even bigger than we realize.

Beyond funding,  questionable policy decisions by Biden and Adams have given police free rein to enact violence in our communities. Months before the subway shooting, Adams added more than 1,000 police officers to the city’s subways.

While this made no difference to the subway shooting, they have been harassing people experiencing homeless and targeting Black and Brown New Yorkers. And six months after promising to pursue executive action to rein in aggressive, heavy-handed policing, has reneged on that promise.

Instead, he issued a now-infamous directive to increase police spending in his State of the Union address.

In the meantime, our communities are no safer. The NYPD just announced a spike in “major crimes” just weeks after Adams increased the city’s police presence. And as other cities across the U.S. have moved to expand their police ranks in the past year, more than 1,000 people – the majority of whom of Black and Brown – were murdered by cops.

This sobering data includes 26-year-old Patrick Lyoya, a Black man from Grand Rapids, Michigan whose murder by police officers has drawn national outrage. The false narrative that policing amounts to public safety isn’t just spreading misinformation or taking money from our communities; it’s literally killing us.

Biden, Adams, and other officials must accept that policing alone doesn’t protect us – but investing in community resources will.

In a recent survey, the majority of New Yorkers identified housing and homelessness as their top public safety concern. And in other communities like Minneapolis, residents are demanding more holistic safety solutions, like mental health treatment, health care access, and food security.

These are the issues that need addressing, and the solutions that need funding if we ever hope to meet the scale of this problem.

Scott Roberts

In the aftermath of last week’s shooting, Adams and Biden issued forceful statements urging calm and promising to deliver safety to New Yorkers. But if they’re actually serious about protecting New York and other communities, they’ll need an entirely new approach.

Scott Roberts is the Senior Director of Criminal Justice Campaigns for Color Of Change. Under Scott’s leadership, Color Of Change also became a founding member of the National Bail Out collective, which raised bail money to free around 150 Black women for Mother’s Day.