New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) has kept funding levels for the city’s police department flat in his first proposed budget while proposing various cuts in other parts of the city budget.
Adams, who ran on a pro-law enforcement platform, avoided proposing an increase in the police budget while arguing that shifting some officers from desk duty to the streets would help curb crime.
“We’re going to redeploy our manpower, we’re going to make sure that everyone who is supposed to be on the streets doing their job is doing their job, and then we will make the analysis if we have to put more money into it,” Adams said at a news conference Wednesday, according to The New York Times.
In addition to cutting 10,000 municipal workers through attrition and unfilled openings as well as adding to the city’s reserve funds, the new budget will require most city agencies to cut their budgets by 3 percent, the Times noted.
The Department of Correction, which has endured a crisis at Rikers jail complex, and the Health Department, which is leading the COVID-19 response, are exempt from the cuts, the Times reported.
“I’m not going to do anything that’s going to get in the way of keeping New Yorkers safe,” said Adams, a former police captain himself.
Earlier this month, President Biden visited New York City and voiced his support for Adams’s efforts to combat increasing gun violence in the city.
“Mayor Adams, you and I agree, the answer is not to abandon our streets, that’s not the answer,” Biden said.
“The answer is to come together, police and communities, building trust and making us all safer. The answer is not to defund the police, it’s to give you the tools, the training, the funding to be partners, to be protectors. And the community needs you; know the community,” the president also said.