March 25, 2021, New York – As the City Council prepares to vote on the New York City Police Reform and Reinvention Plan, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following response: 

New York City cannot address the NYPD’s long history and continuation of unconstitutional and racially discriminatory policing practices without substantive engagement with the communities most heavily impacted by those practices, particularly Black and Latinx communities. Eight years after a federal court found the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policies and practices violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, racially discriminatory policing by the NYPD remains an issue in our communities. We encourage the New York City Council to take meaningful steps to end these discriminatory practices by rejecting all portions of the New York City Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative plan that would expand police funding and reach through programs with no track record of fixing the problem of racially discriminatory policing and that are likely to make the problem worse.