Long-suffering proponents of criminal justice reform are calling for Mayor Zohran Mamdani to rein in his police department and significantly reduce the burgeoning number of arrests for minor offenses. So far, as the mayor continues to tout declines in major crimes alongside his anti-reform police commissioner, advocates are doing so gently.
At a small press conference outside Manhattan Criminal Court Thursday afternoon, a parade of activists and lawmakers called for the mayor to break from the policing strategies his police commissioner pursued under Mayor Eric Adams and has continued this year.
"This is the same aggressive, racially discriminatory enforcement of low-level offenses that we saw under Eric Adams," said Samy Feliz, an organizer at the Justice Committee, whose brother Allan Feliz was killed by police in 2019. "It is the punishment of poverty, and no matter what anyone tries to call it, we are calling what it is: broken windows policing."