Borough president panel tackles position in police reform
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Borough president hopefuls outlined their platforms during a forum May 26. Screenshot via Zoom
By Rachel Vick
With early voting for the Queens Borough President primary just weeks away, the Democratic candidates took to the virtual stage on Tuesday to stake out their position on key issues.
All three candidates — Borough President Donovan Richards, Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer and former Councilmember Elizabeth Crowley — participated in the forum, where a discussion about improving public safety turned into a conversation about the role of the New York City Police Department.
While Richards and Van Bramer were in agreement about the value of evaluating the prevalence and financial prioritization of the NYPD, Crowley said she stands firmly against defunding the police.
She said the best way to keep guns off our streets is to “keep the police where they belong, protecting our communities and not cutting the police budget by a billion dollars.”
“While we've seen sweeping reforms in New York State... police reform cannot come at the cost of rising crime,” Crowley said. “We have a defunding crisis on our hands.”
“I don't think there's a defunding crisis,” Van Bramer retorted. “I think there's an important conversation going on about how to re-envision public safety.”
He and Richards, who both participated in the most recent rounds of city budgeting, pointed out that the NYPD has increased their ranks with two new graduating classes. Richards said that proposed cuts to overtime and the shift of school safety under the Department of Education didn’t happen, and Van Bramer rebutted Crowley’s claim that the police budget was slashed by $1 billion.
The number reflected the initial plan unveiled by Mayor Bill de Blasio in June 2020, which included the billion dollar cutback to the department.
Richards outlined his ongoing efforts to support police reform as borough president. He emphasized the need for increased community engagement from within precincts, including the expansion of the Crisis Management System, which deploys trained mediators.
“One way we're going to merge that relationship is by ensuring that there’s a community center but also a food pantry so we can have true community-police relations,” Richards said, referring to the expansive 115th Precinct.
Van Bramer positioned himself further left, committing to a refusal of campaign donations from police unions. He discussed the need for more funding to go towards community and education as a means to lower the crime rate, with Richards nodding in agreement.
“Poverty has a role to play in crime, racism — systemic and structural — has a role to play, food insecurity, housing insecurity, the lack of proper funding for education in communities of color has a role to play substance abuse — all of these are solutions,” Van Bramer said.
“More police hasn’t meant more safety for every community,” he added. “Particularly in communities of color that have been disenfranchised.”
The panel hosted by St. John’s University and the Queens Daily Eagle is available online.
