Mayor Mamdani's 'Broken Windows' Promise

Brian Lehrer (0:01)

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we'll go back to the Mayor's Management Report, the annual report card the city gives itself on how its agencies are doing. Yesterday, Katie Honan from The City Reporter joined us to walk through Mayor Mamdani's first one. Today, we're turning to policing to take a deeper dive at that aspect of the Mayor's Management Report. Starting with one number, the NYPD issued more than 220,000 low level summonses last fiscal year, up from about 196,000 the year before. Now, we should say, the fiscal year covers the last six months of the Adams administration and only the first six months of Mamdani's, so it's half and half. But in a statement on Monday, responding to the report, the Legal Aid Society said the numbers show the city, quote, continuing down the same troubling path, unquote, of aggressive, low-level enforcement, and that Mayor Mamdani has not delivered on his promise to move New York away from so-called broken windows policing.

Related, I'll also note that the number of people in New York City jails is up slightly in the last fiscal year, despite the goal of getting it down so they can close Rikers Island and move to a smaller borough-based system. Joining us now to discuss what the numbers in these categories show, is Amanda Jack, Director of Policy with Criminal Law Reform at The Legal Aid Society. Amanda, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Amanda Jack (2:06)

Good morning, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer (2:09)

In that statement, your organization called this a troubling increase in NYPD broken windows enforcement. What kinds of offenses are people receiving these low-level summonses for?

Amanda Jack (2:19)

Well, and let me zoom out for a quick second, Brian, just to set the table that these numbers are also, we're seeing them nine months into the administration. When we had, when Mayor Mamdani, he really, refreshingly so, campaigned on a very different vision of public safety, one that didn't rely on broken windows and quality of life policing, one that centered a public health approach to safety, and had greater reliance on the health and social service responses that we know work to help keep our communities safe. So nine months in, we're seeing a lot of retraction of those promises or dilution of those promises, and then we see these numbers. And as your question, Brian, that the quality of life summonses are for things like taking up two seats on a subway, public urination, the kinds of small crimes that we've been hearing about for decades, and the theory of which has long been debunked.

Broken windows policing does not make our communities safer.

Brian Lehrer (3:17)

You said nine months in. Of course, it's nine months in now, and maybe this is splitting hairs, but the Mayor's Management Report just covers the first six months, because it's that fiscal year of July 1st to June 30th. So these numbers are from the first six months of the Mamdani administration, as well as the last six months of Adams. Let me ask kind of a pushback question on what this actually means. So the increase in quality of life summonses by the NYPD, I'll say the number again, it went up from 196,000 over the course of that year to 220,000. That's a 13% increase.

According to the news organization, City and State, one driver of that increase was a 16% bump in noise complaints, bigger than the overall bump by a few points. So does that change your judgment of whether the Mamdani administration is doing old school broken windows policing, the Giuliani-Bloomberg type that led to mass incarceration rather than actually just addressing quality of life? Noise is a perennial complaint in the city, as you know, that many New Yorkers feel is perennially under addressed.

Amanda Jack (4:36)

It's true, Brian, we all live with a different decibel, don't we? But no, it doesn't address our concern because these are still police response to social problems. Like why are we having police respond to quality of life? Brian, something that I'll point out is one of the other offenses within these civil summonses is public urination. A great example of what to do rather than have police respond is something that the administration recently announced, which is more publicly available restrooms. As a mom of two young kids, I know I certainly appreciate more publicly available restrooms in our city.