BDS commends this Council for recognizing the importance of community-based responses and crisis management as crucial components of violence prevention. We urge the council to remember that community accountability and healing coupled with investment in education, housing, and employment are key elements of a holistic approach to preventing violence, particularly gun violence. The City Council can and should exercise its authority to divert funding from the NYPD and invest in proven solutions. The NYPD is an omnipresent force in certain NYC neighborhoods, yet it is abundantly clear that they do not offer a solution to
violence. The Brooklyn communities with the highest rates of violence are already the most
surveilled by NYPD. We call on the City Council to meaningfully invest in both pre- and post-arrest programming that addresses gun and other violence as a public health issue as well as
addressing the harm of police profiling and surveillance in low-income, Black and Latine, and
immigrant communities.

View the full testimony here.