NYC Must Reimagine Traffic Enforcement
Report Finds NYPD Traffic Enforcement Is Ineffective and Unfairly Targets New Yorkers of Color, Recommends Reallocating Portion of NYPD Budget to DOT
NEW YORK -- Street safety advocacy group Transportation Alternatives (TA), together with several elected officials and other legal and advocacy organizations, is calling on Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Council to reallocate a portion of the NYPD’s budget to invest more heavily in street safety infrastructure and automated enforcement technology to create “self-enforcing” streets.
In a report released on Friday, “The Case for Self-Enforcing Streets: How Reallocating a Portion of the NYPD Budget to the DOT Can Reduce the Harm of Racial Bias and Improve Safety for All New Yorkers,” TA finds that police-based approaches to traffic enforcement are ineffective and put people of color at risk. Police enforcement of traffic laws can result in disastrous outcomes for people of color, from onerous fines to daily harassment, incarceration, and death, particularly for Black New Yorkers.
In the report, TA argues that infrastructure changes such as leading pedestrian intervals, protected bike lanes, and a variety of automated enforcement, like school zone speed safety cameras, achieve better results toward reducing traffic crashes and saving lives than armed police enforcement. Such investments also drastically reduce the need for interaction with police. For example, on Prospect Park West in Brooklyn, the installation of a protected bike lane reduced cycling on the sidewalk by 94 percent. Furthermore, these interventions afford no privileges to police union “courtesy card” holders, nor do they carry biases that may lead to police harassment or violence.
The report’s recommendations include:
Repurposing part of the NYPD budget to invest in “self-enforcing” street redesigns, with an emphasis on calming traffic speeds and an approach to the curb that reduces the need for parking enforcement
Expanding automated enforcement technology to include parking, bus lanes, bike lanes, failure to yield, and protection at crosswalks
Advancing a new approach to crash investigations, which includes not only NYPD’s Collision Investigation Squad but also the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Department of Transportation (DOT)
Expanding transparency in reporting street and sidewalk enforcement, including geographic, race, and ethnicity data
Rolling back the 2019 expansion of transit police, along with the creation of a new multi-agency unit of social workers to assist unhoused people on public transit
Ending the crackdown against working cyclists and affirmatively legalizing the e-bikes used by food delivery workers
Piloting and adopting equitable deterrence mechanisms, such as sliding scale fines and the option to fix equipment violations in exchange for waived fines.
Along with the report, Transportation Alternatives has launched a petition calling for the reallocation of a portion of the NYPD budget to the DOT.
“It has become abundantly clear that the NYPD’s approach to traffic safety is not working, especially for New Yorkers of color,” said Transportation Alternatives Deputy Director Marco Conner DiAquoi. “We know what works, and that’s street design that is always on duty, and automated enforcement technology that doesn’t discriminate. This is an inflection point, and our elected leaders have a choice: will New York become a leader in progressive, racially-just traffic safety, or will we continue with the police-dominant status quo?”
"Physically redesigning streets to encourage safer driving and automating enforcement are major steps toward reducing the interventions of police in the daily lives of New Yorkers. Traffic stops are disproportionately directed at minorities, result in a disproportionate number of shootings, and most cops say they hate having them as part of their jobs," said Shayana Kadidal, Senior Managing Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“The more we work to build our transportation infrastructure and safer streets, the less need there will be for patrolling that leads to uneven enforcement. Thank you to Transportation Alternatives for continuing to advocate for new and different ways to advance street safety and address racially biased policing,” said New York City Council Member Keith Powers, Chair of the Criminal Justice Committee.
"It is time to adopt consistent and objective standards for vehicle safety in NYC, that do not depend on the whims and summons quotas of individual officers," said Steven Wasserman, Attorney -- Criminal Justice Division, Legal Aid Society.
"Ending traffic enforcement is another step to ending racist policing and making our communities safer," said New York City Council Member Carlos Menchaca. "The City started Vision Zero because the data and history of traffic fatalities proves they are not a necessary condition of life, but a totally preventable policy decision. Traffic enforcement is part of the muddle that thinks punishment will create deterrence, when in reality it perpetuates the very systems of oppression that the pandemic and recent police brutality laid bare. As we move to defund the NYPD and refund our communities, we must also end this retributive traffic model."
"Racist systems of enforcement have no place in the movement for safe streets. As we strive to create a city that facilitates mobility, promotes health, and strengthens communities, the methods for advancing these goals must embody our values and focus on structural solutions. The roadmap for Removing the NYPD from Traffic Enforcement contains important recommendations for how to redirect resources to design and other methods that will more effectively and fairly achieve these goals. We are proud to join in the call for this necessary and overdue shift," said Elena Conte, Deputy Director, Pratt Center for Community Development.
“I want to thank Transportation Alternatives for releasing this report and championing the fight to end NYPD-involvement in traffic and transit enforcement as we know it,” said New York City Council Member Carlina Rivera. “We know that New Yorkers’ most common encounter with a police officer is during a traffic stop, and these incidents disproportionately target New Yorkers of color and can lead to further incidents of police violence. Rather than asking police officers to take the place of educators, social workers, and traffic engineers, we need a traffic and transit enforcement program staffed solely by civilians from the Department of Transportation. This is the only way we can achieve a Vision Zero future with no traffic crashes and police brutality on our streets and sidewalks.”
"The Street Vendor Project supports removing NYPD from traffic enforcement. The NYPD has a history of targeting hard-working immigrants and people of color who make a living in our streets, like delivery workers and food truck operators, criminalizing their work and penalizing them for making an honest living. NYPD reform will not be acceptable without ensuring that their budget is reduced by at least $1 Billion and getting them out of the traffic enforcement”, said Mohamed Attia, Executive Director of the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center.
"The police have no expertise in assuring vehicular and pedestrian safety. Instead, too often we have seen targeted enforcement against black and brown cyclists and drivers that is discriminatory and does little to actually keep our streets safe for those using them. We need to get the police out of traffic enforcement and move this important function into an agency that’s primary mission is the work of street safety," said New York City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer.
"The NYPD's inexcusable efforts to subjugate New Yorkers in public space -- from framing and killing civil rights and anti-war leaders and protesters in the 1960s and 70s, to deliberately harming political protesters at the Republican Convention in 2004 and Occupy Wall Street in 2011, to the repeated violence against today's anti-racism protesters on NYC streets -- all serves as a searing indictment against the agency, proving that the NYPD is beyond the potential for reform," said Andy Izenson, President, National Lawyers Guild New York City Chapter." The National Lawyers Guild-NYC embraces the demands for radical institutional change to the City of New York's policing of our streets and sidewalks."
"The era of using the NYPD as a Band-Aid to street safety has to come to an end," said New York City Council Member Costa Constantinides. "We have seen a lack of enforcement against reckless drivers while cyclists and pedestrians remain at constant risk. All the while police and DOT have gone back at forth over who owns the responsibility of street safety. We must end the unfair targeting of delivery workers on bikes as well as black and brown men for simply crossing the street."
"From blocked bus lanes to handcuffed food vendors, NYPD involvement in our transportation systems has too often interfered with transit service and disproportionately harmed Black and Brown riders," said Riders Alliance Organizing Manager Stephanie Burgos-Veras. "Our streets should be inclusive and welcoming spaces where people from every community can access the city affordably and efficiently. Automated Bus Lane Enforcement means faster trips and more reliable public transit service. Now it's time to broaden the effort and redirect police resources to neutral technologies and engineering solutions that better protect riders. We join our partners at Transportation Alternatives in calling for an end to NYPD traffic enforcement."
"As New York City rethinks policing with the clarity of mind that the Black Lives Matter movement has brought us in 2020 we need to take another step back and re-imagine how our traffic and street laws are enforced," said New York City Council Member Ben Kallos. "It is time we work to improve the current inconsistent, selective, and often biased traffic enforcement system that governs our streets. With a small piece of the $1 billion being re-allocated from the NYPD we could redesign streets and work to find a way to enforce traffic and street laws without potentially violent interactions with armed police officers."
"As our cities are forced to re-imagine urban spaces including streets, transit, and sidewalks, it is clear that the over-policing of public space is grossly discriminatory, expensive, and ineffective at achieving public safety," said Justin Wood, Director of Organizing and Strategic Research, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. "This report puts forward clear evidence that accessible, equitable, and sustainable street and sidewalk designs can offer safety and security to all New Yorkers, including those experiencing or perceived to be experiencing mental health crises, far better than a militarized and costly police force."
"We need to fundamentally change the way we police in New York and everywhere. We all have seen the horrifying murders of Ahmad Aubrey, Breanna Taylor, and George Floyd and the videos of violence and brutality too often inflicted on Black men and women. But they are not new. There was Eleanor Bumpers, Abner Louima, and the treatment of the Central Park 5. All are stark examples of the institutional racism that has plagued this country for 400 years,” said New York City Council Member Bill Perkins. “And while I'm heartened by the masses of people who have marched this week declaring ""Black Lives Matter"", it won't mean anything unless we as a city, a state and a country act to address the racism, prejudice and violence still embedded in our system. We must repeal Section 50-A that prevents disclosure of police misconduct and pass more reforms in Albany, pass the Justice in Policing Act in Washington setting a national standard for use of force, and we must do much more to stop people of color from being targeted unjustly, sentenced more harshly, and beaten and killed by those whose job it to protect us. And here in the New York City Council, we must re-order our priorities, defund the police in a way that maintains the core police services but makes us safer by reinvesting money in youth programs, mental health, and community programs and by taking the police out of our schools, homeless outreach, and other functions better performed by other people. These are things I've been fighting for a long time. Let's use this time to do something to change it and live up to the promise of America before another generation is harmed."
The full report is available at transalt.org.