Immediately after the election of Donald Trump, Mayor Bill De Blasio, in front of a crowded auditorium, pledged that New York would remain a sanctuary city for undocumented people, that it would protect Muslims and that he would do everything he could to help resist Donald Trump. The video, posted on Facebook, instantly went viral.
It was good political theater for sure. Unfortunately, that was all it was.
This summer, I worked as a canvasser for Bob Gangi's mayoral campaign in Union Square. It resulted in lots of intense interactions with New Yorkers coming from all different contexts, but one of the most memorable was a conversation I had with a formerly homeless woman who I will refer to as "Sarah." Sarah was a young woman who had just gotten off the street and was a recovering heroin addict.
We got into a conversation about discriminatory policing in NYC and she admitted that she had recently been arrested. She and her partner were panhandling outside of a Chase bank, when the police approached her and told her that what she was doing was illegal. They offered to move, but the police instead arrested them for "aggressive panhandling."
She and her partner were kept in jail overnight, but since they were both recovering addicts, they needed methadone. The police refused to give it to them, and both were forced to suffer through intense withdrawal symptoms.
Sarah was one of many victims of "broken windows policing," a theory of policing in which police arrest people for very minor infractions, usually in low-income communities of color. This results in a system in which countless people of color are fed into the jaws of the criminal justice system because of minor, nonviolent crimes. For example, the second most common arrest by the NYPD is fare evasion and the overwhelming majority of those arrested are young people of color.
As a side note, 'broken windows' also means that immigrants are put at much greater risk for deportation, as getting arrested for a minor crime puts them on ICE's radar. Thus, so long as 'broken windows' exists, NYC can never be a sanctuary city.
Despite originally campaigning as a police reform advocate, De Blasio has wholeheartedly supported the use of broken windows policing, even appointing the architect of 'broken windows' as police commissioner. De Blasio has even explicitly endorsed arresting people for fare evasion, saying that turnstile jumping is "not an economic issue."
Panhandlers like Sarah are some of the biggest victims of broken windows policing. De Blasio recently claimed that panhandlers asked for money on the street not out of need, but because it was "fun." Even though panhandling is not illegal in NYC, De Blasio has explicitly wished it to be and promised that the NYPD would be "aggressive and creative" in cracking down on panhandlers.
'Broken windows' is not the only area in which De Blasio has actively worked against racial and social justice in NYC. Rikers Island, a brutal jail colony named after a racist 19th-century judge who would send escaped slaves back to the South, has continued to operate under De Blasio. In Rikers, 80% of inmates have not been convicted of anything, and are apparently supposed to be presumed innocent.
De Blasio has promised to close Rikers... in 10 years. In fact, it could be closed much, much sooner. Ten years means ten more years of countless human rights abuses in the center of NYC. Plus, as De Blasio will not be mayor in 10 years, there is absolutely no way to hold him accountable for this promise.
Something Sarah told me was that New York was "either a Yuppie playground or hell." And insofar as De Blasio remains mayor, that will continue to be true.
