Take Action for #NYCBudgetJustice

This year, CPR’S NYC Budget Justice coalition is demanding $1B cut to the NYPD FY23 expense budget and demanding bold investments in housing, employment, health care and education that will have significant and long-lasting impact on the well-being of New Yorkers, in particular for our communities that have been most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

NYC Mayor Eric Adams ran on a campaign promise to bring a new and fresh approach to public safety, above all promising to decrease police violence. However, in the first six months of his tenure, it has become clear that Adams’ dominant strategy to address public safety is to expand policing and criminalization and increase the size, scope and power of the NYPD, including across many agencies in the city where the police do not belong. 

This year, Mayor Adams has put forward the largest NYPD budget that our city has ever seen — $11.2 billion — while including only minuscule investments in community-based violence prevention and intervention solutions that actually work.

This is not the budget justice that New Yorkers need to meaningfully address issues of public health and safety facing our communities and bring us out of the economic precarity exacerbated by 2.5 years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

TAKE ACTION with us to demand a budget that invests in non-police health & safety solutions --- not more failed policing strategies.

The NYC Budget Justice Coalition calls on the Mayor and City Council to:

1. Move money away from policing and invest in community safety solutions. 

• Cut at least $1 billion from the NYPD FY23 expense budget.
• Redirect all savings to non-police health and safety solutions.

2. Cancel regressive policing tactics, and block any increases to the NYPDFY23 budget.

• Cancel Anti-Crime Plain Clothes Units rebranded as Neighborhood SafetyTeams.
• Cancel NYPD Mental Health Co-Response Teams and NYPD homeless encampment sweeps.
• Cancel abusive units like the Strategic Response Group and Public Morals Division: VICE Enforcement.

3. Require NYPD transparency in the budget by including transparency related terms and conditions in the adopted FY23 budget.

Use the resources below to tell your City Council Member that we need transformative change that includes cutting the NYPD budget and committing significant investments in communities!

Hi, my name is _______ and as a constituent, I’m calling to ask that Council Member _______ cut the NYPD Budget and move that money into public programs and services for Black, Latinx, andother communities of color.

This year the NYPD’s budget is set to increase and add new NYPD staff and programs that won’t make us safer. We cannot continue to flood the NYPD with money at the expense of other critical programs for young people, for homeless people, and for all New Yorkers who are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Will Councilmember _______ commit to cutting the NYPD budget this year and moving that money toward community safety solutions that work?

I would like a response to this request and a chance to discuss this before the fiscal year 2023 budget is voted on. Here is my phone number to get back to me: _______________.

Thank you.

Hit "Click To Tweet" to send the below sample posts, feel free to change .@NYCCouncil to your councilmember's twitter handle or make message your own.