TESTIMONY OF:

Maryanne Kaishian

BROOKLYN DEFENDER SERVICES

Presented before

The New York City Council Committees on Public Safety

Oversight Hearing on New York City’s Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative Draft Plan.

March 16, 2021

My name is Maryanne Kaishian and I am Senior Policy Counsel with the Criminal Defense Practice at Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS). I want to thank Chair Adrienne Adams and the Committee on Public Safety for holding this hearing on New York City’s Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative Draft Plan, published in two parts in March 2021. For the reasons set forth below, we believe this plan falls woefully short on delivering the fundamental change necessary to alleviate the harms currently being perpetrated by the NYPD.

Every year, Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) represents nearly 30,000 people in the criminal, family, and civil court systems of Kings County. Many of the people we serve, primarily Black and brown New Yorkers, have been subjected to abuse and misconduct by members of the NYPD. We at BDS have joined our communities in the call for meaningful, top-down change to the NYPD for years. However, we have instead seen a parade of broken promises and toothless “reform” proposals that have ultimately done little to affect NYPD conduct or improve the lives of people here in New York City. Unfortunately, the City’s most recent plan is yet another example of officials co-opting the language of social justice movements in service of the status quo.

We are disturbed by the City’s characterization of the past seven years as an unqualified achievement in the realm of police abuse and reform. Community members and activists have been tirelessly calling attention to racist, violent, and abusive police practices that persist despite countless revisions and reforms reflected in the NYPD’s Patrol Guide and official procedures during this time. Officers who assault, harass, maim, and even kill New Yorkers, including on- camera, have remained on the job. There have been countless City Council hearings on abusive, biased, and harmful police practices. The NYPD refuses to meaningfully engage with communities, defenders, or advocates, routinely leaving these hearings into their behavior before the public can comment. Despite the ongoing and demonstrably racist practice of Stop and Frisk, deployed even more frequently now in the name of gun possession enforcement, the City falsely claims that “[t]ogether, we ended the racist policy of Stop and Frisk.” This is a shocking misrepresentation of the current state of policing in our City.

Similarly, the City uncritically publishes NYPD propaganda surrounding previous “reforms.” For example, the Report includes claims by the NYPD that these “reforms” include the mandated use of Body Worn Cameras, which we know are routinely turned off with impunity in instances of police abuse and while targeting demonstrators for their speech. In another example, the NYPD claims that, in 2015, the Department instituted “gang database reform” consisting of “improved accuracy and precision” and “tighter standards for entry and oversight.” As community members, advocates, and defenders know, the NYPD’s current Criminal Group Database is a 99% non-white catalogue of mostly Black and brown young people, lacks any oversight mechanisms whatsoever, is riddled with errors, and includes the names of unaffiliated young people who have never been arrested. It is impossible to separate police propaganda from the substance of this plan.

It is also disheartening to see recommendations for panels, task forces, and assessments— including by the NYPD itself—into issues that can and should be addressed swiftly, directly, and unequivocally. For example, while the Policing Report claims to include plans to “break the school to prison pipeline,” essential services for young people were slashed while COVID-19 ravaged the City and while the NYPD’s budget remained largely intact. As another example—in the wake of horrific reports from victims of the NYPD’s Vice Squad and amidst calls to disband the notoriously abusive unit and decriminalize sex work—the City calls for continued and even increased police engagement with sex workers. This reflects a lack of commitment to addressing the core issues facing our City as well as a fundamental misunderstanding of the role and impact of police, and convening task forces can only be seen as a tactic to delay implementing real change. Viewed in context, the City’s lofty promises ring hollow.

Tellingly, the City calls for additional investments into policing and trust in the ahistorical claim that the NYPD can be tasked with policing itself. We reject this basic premise. Indeed, it is clearer than ever that fundamentally changing the NYPD requires drastic divestment from the Department and investments in the community. We cannot repeatedly try to reform a Department that has rejected oversight and accountability at every turn.

Furthermore, there is simply not enough time to meaningfully respond to this plan prior to a required City Council vote on April 1, particularly at a time when gathering stakeholder input is more difficult than ever and the public is demanding an open, effective, comprehensive process that results in transformative change. The fundamentally flawed process at hand, precipitated by the delayed release of the City’s Report, will inevitably yield ineffective results and only exacerbate the significant harms done to New Yorkers by the NYPD.

I thank the Committee for your time and for accepting my testimony on this critical issue. We welcome the opportunity to speak with you about these issues and how the City Council can hold the NYPD accountable for making real change. Should you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact me at mkaishian@bds.org or (347) 525-4054.