In 2019, New York’s MTA announced a plan to hire 500 additional police officers, citing the need to reduce fare evasion. Transit advocates, community organizers, and police reformers quickly pointed out the racially discriminatory patterns of fare enforcement, and that the additional police presence would lead to more discriminatory enforcement within the system. Analysis of NYPD data by the Community Service Society demonstrates that fare summonses and arrests are disproportionately issued in high-poverty Black neighborhoods. In this episode, Brooklyn Movement Center Deputy Director Anthonine Pierre discusses how over-policing limits the movement of Black and brown New Yorkers, particularly on public transit. BMC is a community organizing group based in Central Brooklyn, and a member of Communities United for Police Reform, which recently led the #NYCBudgetJustice campaign to reallocate funding from NYPD to social services and public infrastructure.
In 2019, New York’s MTA announced a plan to hire 500 additional police officers, citing the need to reduce fare evasion. Transit advocates, community organizers, and police reformers quickly pointed out the racially discriminatory patterns of fare enforcement, and that the additional police presence would lead to more discriminatory enforcement within the system. Analysis of NYPD data by the Community Service Society demonstrates that fare summonses and arrests are disproportionately issued in high-poverty Black neighborhoods.
In this episode, Brooklyn Movement Center Deputy Director Anthonine Pierre discusses how over-policing limits the movement of Black and brown New Yorkers, particularly on public transit. BMC is a community organizing group based in Central Brooklyn, and a member of Communities United for Police Reform, which recently led the #NYCBudgetJustice campaign to reallocate funding from NYPD to social services and public infrastructure.
“We really want to zero into the kinds of policing that people don't often see but feel... That means Black and brown folks being harassed for standing on a sidewalk and being told that they're loitering... We find that rules about how people can move freely in public spaces are often enforced more harshly on people of color.”
TransitCenter’s TransitTool on Policing + Transit can be accessed here
For more on Brooklyn Movement Center's “Defund the NYPD” campaign, click here
Disclaimer: Political views raised by guests on the podcast do not reflect the views of TransitCenter.
Music: “Comma” - Blue Dot Sessions
Hosted and edited by Kapish Singla
Produced by TransitCenter
Please note that transcripts are generated by a combination of automated speech recognition software and human transcribers. There may be errors in the text.
Kapish From TransitCenter, this is High Frequency. I'm Kapish Singla. Late last year in 2019, New York Governor Cuomo and the MTA announced it would hire 500 additional MTA police officers. The primary reason they cited for this decision: fare evasion. Transit advocates, community organizers and police reformers quickly pointed out that this additional presence would lead to more discriminatory enforcement within the system. Data from the NYPD and analysis by the Community Service Society, shows that summons and arrests disproportionately occur in high-poverty Black neighborhoods from 2017 to 2019. Black and brown New Yorkers accounted for nearly 90 percent of arrests for this infraction.
Kapish [00:00:52] The MTA hiring decision is currently on hold due to budgetary issues. But the killing of George Floyd has ignited a national conversation about policing. To talk about the intersection of policing and transit, I spoke with Anthonine Pierre, Deputy Director of the Brooklyn Movement Center. BMC is a community organizing group based in Central Brooklyn and a member of Communities United for Police Reform, which has led the Defund the NYPD campaign.
Kapish [00:01:24] Anthonine, what are some of the ways in which overpolicing affects how communities of color and Black people, in particular, walk, bike, and just generally move around the city?
Anthonine [00:01:36] We really want to zero into the kinds of policing that people don't often see but feel. So that means whether it's Black and brown folks being harassed for standing on a sidewalk and being told that they're loitering. Right? Whether it's people riding a bike on a sidewalk and having that quality of life enforcement. We find that rules about or laws about how people can move freely in public spaces are often enforced more harshly on people of color, because there's this idea that people of color and Black folks in particular are inherently criminals are inherently doing crime. So the easiest way to stop crime is to stop their movement, which of course is a huge catch-all. This ultimately interrupts the movement of Black and brown folks. So often people are going to pick up their kids from school, going to a doctor's office, going for a job interview, and they find that their days will get disrupted because of things that have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the community is more or less safe.
Kapish [00:02:40] And Brooklyn Movement Center is a campaign member of Communities United for Police Reform. How has BMC been involved in police accountability work?
Anthonine [00:02:48] We've done a lot of work in terms of public education when it comes to knowing your rights, because we believe that the first step in police accountabiltiy work is actually having a sense of what are police actually supposed to be held accountable for and what are what are my rights. And beyond that, we've also worked with the family of Saheed Vassell. We're talking about a young man who was killed by police officers on April 4th, 2018. And he was someone who was experiencing mental health issues. The big push, that people I think already know about the Defund the NYPD campaign is our work is not just to move money from the police department. It's also to be able to move money from policing into the kinds of activities that support the growth of our communities. So Saheed Vassell, being someone who was not able to get mental health resources, was gunned down by police. That if his family had been able to access more mental health resources. You know, it's a big question of would Saheed be alive today.
Kapish [00:03:47] What are some of the goals of the Defund the NYPD campaign?
Anthonine [00:03:51] The NYPD has been the best funded institution in a lot of neighborhoods for decades now. Right. If you walk through Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Flatbush, East Flatbush, you get a sense that the strongest funded institution is the police precinct. That is the place where you see all the cars, you see all the cops, you see all of their tools. And, you know, you walk by a school and you don't see the same infrastructure. You walk by a hospital. You don't see that same infrastructure. You walk by our city's burgeoning homeless problem. And you don't see the housing infrastructure that we need to meet it. So we're saying: "Look, we're in a pandemic." We've been in this pandemic for several months now. Who knows how long we're going to be in a state of play around coronavirus? What we definitely need from our New York City Council and from our mayor is to look ahead to fiscal year 21 and say, 'How are we actually moving money from where in the city budget is overfunded, moving money from policing, into the different social services that are often underfunded?'
Kapish [00:05:01] And a significant portion of the NYPD budget is set aside for the transit bureau. And that bureau is widely known for putting broken windows policing into practice. What does broken windows policing look like in transit? And how could funds allocated to those efforts be redirected?
Anthonine [00:05:18] Broken windows policing in transit looks like a police officer arresting someone or giving them a ticket for jumping a turnstile, for example. And most people are jumping turnstiles, don't have money to pay the fare. Right? So we're trying to solve a real social services issue, a real human services issue with policing. Right. Because you give someone that ticket that's not going to make them, so that they have $2.75. If we invest in workforce investment. If we make sure that people can have jobs and housing and things, then like no one is going to want to jump turnstiles because they're going to have what they need to be able to get on the bus and pay the fare.
Kapish [00:05:56] Last year, the MTA actually announced a plan to put more money towards policing by hiring 500 additional police officers. What was CPR's position to that MTA announcement?
Anthonine [00:06:08] Our assessment is that the city didn't need 500 new cops on transit. That was already over-policing happening on transit. And, in particular, happening towards homeless. And when we talk about policing, we talk about the targets of policing. And I think in this country, folks are very clear that Black Americans are one of the number one targets of the state when it comes to policing. And there are so many identities that are targeted, really, because they have less power than a lot of other identities. Right. So when we talk about transit, we're talking about a place where many homeless people actually live and that transit police, their work is often moving people from the transit system and trying to move them to where they don't want to be, which is often shelters. Right. So this, again, comes back to this idea that, well, instead of getting more police to basically move homeless people and shuffle them around the city, why are we not investing in housing? Right. Why are we not sending homeless outreach workers into the subways to do social work intake to actually move people into permanent housing so that we can actually have an end to the homelessness crisis that we have in the city and on the subways.
Kapish [00:07:26] Something that we do find in rider surveys about transit is concerns around safety. What are ways to address safety concerns on the subway or on the bus that don't necessarily rely on an increased police presence?
Anthonine [00:07:42] In terms of safety on the subways. We have a policing problem, right? We have this issue where the culture of the MTA to deal with safety issues is basically go talk to a police officer, go talk to a transit officer. Right. And if we want to actually create real safety. Right? If we want to create safety, we can't rely on the institution of policing. I think we need to start to actually be in community with one another, which is wild because, you know, everybody gets on the subway and they're all like, 'Whatever. I got my AirPods on. I'm trying to talk to nobody.' But creating safety. We don't create safety singularly. And we don't create a system by sending in police. We create safety by being in relationship with each other and being able to actually protect each other. So I'll actually go back to... this is back in October, there was this video of a dozen police officers who tried to storm a subway car. And there was a young man who was he was being told by the police to get down. And he was very scared. And he was screaming to people like, "Please call my mom." And you had people who were taking video. We would not have known about that situation where this unarmed and innocent man was terrorized by the police. If folks were not taking video and cop-watching is a way that we keep ourselves safe from police violence and that that's a really great example of a terrible situation and like how safety was created because people were able to copwatch. And what does it mean for us to be able to look out in those same kind of ways when there are other kinds of threats of violence? Right. When it comes to street harassment, what does it look like for people who are not being sexually harassed or assaulted on the train to actually stand up for folks who are. Right. I think there's a culture of community accountability and community safety that we need to develop, that it's not going to be developed overnight, but will help us decrease our reliance on police in the subways for safety.
Kapish [00:09:43] Something that you mentioned in that October incident is the importance of videos. How do you see the role of that kind of technology in contributing to accountability and safety?
Anthonine [00:09:56] You know, Copwatch is a community accountability structure that was started by the Panthers like they used to go out with like big ass cameras. Giant video cameras. And the idea is that we create community accountability by watching the cops. So many of the egregious actions that police officers take in communities against Black and brown folks is because they think no one is watching. And what has been really beautiful over this last period of movement, which I'll date back to 2014 when the Ferguson uprising happened, is that folks have been really, really leaning into an understanding, the power of cop watching. People who are taking video in that incident in October--were a formal cop watchers? I don't know. Right. Like they could be. But like, what we have seen is that the idea of cop watching, coupled with the availability of video cameras, you know, we all see it. Right. Something happens. Everyone whips out their phone to video the cops. So we want to be I think we want to be really, really clear that, like, there are strategies that people have been using as people are getting more open to this idea of decreasing reliance on police. We want to put forth the strategies that we've been workshopping for decades.
Kapish [00:11:13] And finally, Anthonine, what's next for the Brooklyn Movement Center and its work as a member of Communities United for Police Reform,.
Anthonine [00:11:21] CPR, Communities United for Police Reform, is a coalition. And you know, as a member organization, I think a lot of our member organizations are getting a ton of interest. Everyone's getting really politically developed very quickly. And I think right now is a time for us to say, like, how do we catch people up? How do we do more political education for folks who are really new to these ideas around policing and are really new even to the idea of Black Lives Matter? How are we taking the opportunity of people becoming politically awake and moving, you know, moving folks deeper into the movement?
Kapish [00:11:56] Thank you so much for your time, Anthonine.
Anthonine [00:11:59] Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Kapish,
Kapish [00:12:03] That's all for today's episode. I'm your host, Kapish Singla. High Frequency is taking a break and returning in the Fall. So make sure that you're subscribed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever else you listen to a podcast so that you don't miss our return. High Frequency is part of the events program at TransitCenter. For more information, please visit us at transitcenter dot org.