NYPD is Ironically Proving that Most of their Police Work is Completely Unnecessary

Arrests plummeted 66% but I just looked outside and nothing is on fire and the sun is still out and everything. Weird.

— allisonkilkenny (@allisonkilkenny) December 30, 2014

What has been largely reported as a “virtual work stoppage” by NYPD officers as a result of a perceived lack of support coming from the office of Mayor Bill de Blasio, the internal turmoil between City Hall and the police stemmed from the interplay between ongoing street protests in the city that followed the non-indictment of Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the choking death of Eric Garner and public comments made by the mayor in support of those protests. When the man who killed officers Liu and Ramos appeared cite revenge for Garner’s death as part of his motivation, many officers—including union heads and leaders of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association—quickly put the blame on de Blasio for creating what they called an “anti-police” atmosphere.

Though the public debate over the relationship between City Hall and the NYPD has seemingly started to cool, many people are now looking at the “work stoppage” itself—which reportedly resulted in drastic reductions in arrests, citations, and even parking tickets—as rather positive evidence that a city with less arrests may be something to celebrate, not criticize.

Writing for Rolling Stone on Wednesday, journalist Matt Taibbi described the situation in the city as “surreal,” but noted positively that, “In an alternate universe, the New York Police might have just solved the national community-policing controversy.”

In his article, Taibbi explores that if the police protest was done for “enlightened reasons”—as opposed to what he described as “the last salvo of an ongoing and increasingly vicious culture-war mess that is showing no signs of abating”—there would be something wonderful about living in a city that called on officers to prioritize building-up community members instead of finding ways to put officers “in the position of having to make up for budget shortfalls” by issuing unnecessary fines and citations to people who can barely afford to make ends meet in the first place.

“If I were a police officer, I’d hate to be taking money from people all day long,” Taibbi writes. “Christ, that’s worse than being a dentist. So under normal circumstances, this slowdown wouldn’t just make sense, it would be heroic. Unfortunately, this protest is not about police refusing to shake people down for money on principle.”

But as Matt Ford asks in a new piece for The Atlantic, the stoppage—whatever its motivation—still raises this key question: “If the NYPD can safely cut arrests by two-thirds, why haven’t they done it before?”

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