dailymail | New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York
Governor Andrew Cuomo have been pushing for enforcement instead of
education, leading to heavy-handedness and a 'business as usual'
attitude within the NYPD which has long been accused of marginalizing
communities of color.
'We were told
we were getting a mayor who was going to change this,' Williams said.
'That's what makes some of this so difficult to swallow.'
The mayor claims that police have actually shown restraint during the lockdown period.
'We
do not accept disparity, period,' de Blasio said during a coronavirus
briefing. 'On the arrests and summonses, the thing to focus on first, is
the sheer fact that we're looking at numbers across a city of 8.6
million people and across a time span I believe is six weeks, the
numbers of arrests and summonses are extraordinarily low.
'So,
I don't, for a moment, misunderstand folks who raise alarms and
concerns, or project forward concerns,' said de Blasio. 'But I say,
"Hey, start with these sheer facts, that we're talking about very few
people have been arrested and very few people have been summonsed."
'And there's been a huge amount of
restraint by the NYPD. That's just factually obvious from the numbers,
and we intend to keep it that way only using summons and arrest when
needed.
'We're dealing with something
absolutely unprecedented, and there's no way in hell we are going to be
able to keep people safe if we don't use the strongest, best public
safety organization in this country.'
Police
Commissioner Dermot Shea also stressed that arrests are down 50
percent across the city and believes overall social distancing
enforcement has gone smoothly.
'We have been doing it with an extremely light touch,' he said.
'We
have been interacting with millions of people and given out only a
handful of violations, summonses and arrests, and that's the way it
should be,' Shea said. 'I don't want the NYPD to be the morality
police.'
The viral videos of black
people and other people of color getting violently arrested across the
city stand in sharp contrast to photos and video tweeted by the NYPD
showing friendly officers handing out face masks and gently reminding
people to stay 6 feet apart.
