Mr. Mayor: Stop NYPD Profiling of Youth of Color
David R. Jones, The Urban Agenda
The three years of the coronavirus pandemic’s acute stage of peaks and surges left a trail of fear and deaths, joblessness, rising apartment rents, soaring food prices, vacant office buildings and growing interest rates.
The pandemic also left in its wake an increase in the number of New Yorkers, ages 18-24 years old, who are “out-of-school and out-of-work.”
A new report by JobsFirstNYC and my organization, the Community Service Society of New York, estimates there are about 138,000 out-of-school, out-of-work young people who are disconnected from daily life, which leaves them at risk for poverty, mental health problems, substance abuse and chronic health conditions. Without even a high school diploma, they are all but guaranteed a life below the poverty line and few skills to improve their economic station.
These NYC youth need training and jobs that, under ideal circumstances, match their skills and interests. Violence disruptors and other intervention programs are great, but nothing is more effective at keeping young people out of trouble and on a pathway to economic mobility than having a job, money in their pocket, and hope for the future.
This matters because youth are at a heightened risk to encounter the New York City Police Department’s Neighborhood Safety Teams officers, who a federal monitor this summer found were stopping, frisking and searching innocent Blacks and Latinos. An earlier New York Civil Liberties Union report found that 88 percent of the drivers arrested in 2022 by the NYPD during traffic stops were also Black and Latino.
No one is saying the NYPD should stop enforcing the laws. But let’s not return to the Giuliani era of stop-and-frisk and racial profiling. The decade discussion of these abuses goes to show the NYPD is hard-headed or only knows how to wield an indiscriminate unconstitutional hammer.
The federal monitor, Mylan Denerstein, audited stops by the NYPD’s Neighborhood Safety Teams for six months in 2022 and concluded a quarter of the stops were unlawful. She called for more extensive oversight and “corrective action immediately.” Her report follows whole cloth the 2013 ruling of federal Judge Shira A. Scheindlin, who found the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk tactics violated the constitutional rights of minorities.
Mayor Eric Adams and new Police Commissioner Edward Caban – both New York City natives and men of color experienced in patrolling the five boroughs – know the peril aggressive policing places on people, especially young Black and brown men.
In his two-decade police career, Adams spoke out against police brutality, and, later, the department’s stop-and-frisk tactics. In fact, Adams at age 15 spent a night in Spofford Juvenile Detention Center, a onetime rite of passage for many Black and Latino youth. In Adams and Caban, the NYPD’s first Latino commissioner, the NYPD is under the command of New Yorkers who know first-hand the dangers of rogue police behavior. By controlling the levers of police power, they are empowered to break the decades-long cycle of abusive NYPD practices, while still providing tough police protection for working-class neighborhoods.
They both came of age during the NYPD’s aggressive “broken windows” policing campaign of surging cops into neighborhoods experiencing crime spikes, which in turn tended to be areas with high levels of poverty, unemployment, and social problems. Consequently, Adams and Caban witnessed the costs and benefits of the broken windows strategy, which is based on social disorganization theory, a large body of research that draws a direct line between unemployment, disrupted community patterns, disconnected youth, crime and excessive police encounters.
Having steady work addresses the root causes of crime, which is often times driven by poverty and unemployment. During the Great Recession, the number of Americans under age 25 that were neither educated, employed or in job-training reached as high as 15 percent in the first quarter of 2011, according to the Pew Research Center.
To his credit, since taking office Mayor Adams has budgeted record levels of summer youth employment opportunities for young people ages 14 to 24. Research shows summer jobs save lives, cut crime, and strengthen communities. A 2021 study found that NYC Summer Youth Employment Program participation lowers participants’ chances of being arrested by 17 percent and the chance of felony arrest by 23 percent.
And we applaud the mayor’s announcement this week of a “Gun Violence Prevention Task Force Blueprint” featuring $485 million in investments aimed at curbing gun violence in high needs communities while stirring young people into better housing, employment opportunities and support services.
The mayor’s “Blueprint” mirrors some of the recommendations in our report, including creating integrated services across education and youth development agencies. Other report recommendations include permanently expanding the EITC to earners 18-24; increasing the minimum wage; strengthening wage equity policies for young adults workers; and, prioritizing support programs and investment in communities with high and rising rates of out-of-school, out-of-work youth.
By providing our young people with greater opportunities and the support they need, we can help them build a brighter future for themselves and a safer city for everyone.