95% of NYPD use of force incidents are against young Black and Hispanic men.
When Mayor Eric Adams took office, he pledged to balance safety and justice by rooting out violent, racist cops. He even gave a stern talking to Queens cops about how there’s a new Sheriff in town or whatever. Adams spoke to officers in the very precinct where he’d been beaten as a teenager, promising to support them—unless they crossed the line and abused people in communities of color.
“I’m going to have your backs. But if you are abusive to my community, I’m going to make sure you don’t serve in my department and you don’t hurt your fellow officers.”
“What I’m going to promise my officers is I’m going to allow you to do your job, and I will protect you when you do your job, but if you are abusive in my city, you are going to be out of the department within 90 days,” the then-Brooklyn borough president also said in May before he was elected.
“We are going to lift up the standard and expectation of our officers, and we are going to make sure they have the tools to keep our city safe.”
But according to the NYPD’s own data, every month since Adams has taken office, officers have been accused of physical force almost exclusively against people of color. Black people account for more than 55% physical force incidents, and Hispanic people for almost 30%. In April of this year, almost 58% of abuse force incidents occurred against Black people. These numbers are consistent with the demographic breakdown of physical force incidents before Adams took office.
The age group that faces the most violence is 23 year old men. In that age group, the racial breakdown jumps to 95%. Wow! I didn’t realize 23-year-old white men are so mild-mannered and liable to follow the rules that fewer than 3% in the entire city of New York behave in ways that require cops to use physical force (the category of ‘other’ is greater than white men. Note white men is so small it doesn’t even appear as a numerical value on the graph below). Great news for women and people of color who find themselves in the company of drunk, coked up finance bros on a Friday night!
I guess it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that Adams didn’t transform the NYPD using his magic crystals or whatever. But he’s allowing this status quo on his watch. He’s not even doing cosmetic things, like stern talkings-to every month the status quo continues.
No one expected Adams to overhaul the department, but I did think that he’d have more leeway than Bill de Blasio as a former cop to at least throw the worst cops under the bus. Either he doesn’t have that leverage or he’s actively choosing not to use it.