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De Blasio Vows for First Time to Cut Funding for the N.Y.P.D.

The mayor made his pledge following 10 nights of mass protests against police violence and mounting demands for an overhaul of the police department.

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De Blasio Pledges to Cut N.Y.P.D. Funds and to Increase Social Services

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York said for the first time that he would divert city funds from the New York Police Department to youth and social services.

I said in our State of the City speech, quote, ‘Our young people don’t need to be policed. They need to be reached.’ And that is the spirit of the reforms we’re going to talk about today and beyond. We will be moving funding from the N.Y.P.D. to youth initiatives and social services. The details will be worked out in the budget process in the weeks ahead. But I want people to understand that we are committed to shifting resources to ensure that the focus is on our young people. And I also will affirm, while doing that we will only do it in a way that we are certain continues to ensure that this city will be safe.

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Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York said for the first time that he would divert city funds from the New York Police Department to youth and social services.CreditCredit...Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday pledged for the first time to cut the city’s police funding, following 10 nights of mass protests against police violence and mounting demands that he overhaul a department whose tactics have caused widespread consternation.

The mayor declined to say precisely how much funding he planned to divert to social services from the New York Police Department, which has an annual budget of $6 billion, representing more than 6 percent of Mr. de Blasio’s proposed $90 billion budget.

Mr. de Blasio said the details would be worked out with the City Council in advance of the July 1 budget deadline.

“We’re committed to seeing a shift of funding to youth services, to social services, that will happen literally in the course of the next three weeks, but I’m not going to go into detail because it is subject to negotiation and we want to figure out what makes sense,” Mr. de Blasio said.

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A curfew that Mr. de Blasio ordered was in effect from Monday until Sunday. Credit...Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

As recently as Friday, Mr. de Blasio expressed skepticism about cutting police funding, even as he noted that all city agencies might face cuts, absent more financial assistance from the federal government.

His Sunday morning reversal was one of two shifts in his stance toward protesters. In the early morning, he announced on Twitter that New York City’s first curfew since World War II would end effectively immediately, a day earlier than planned. He attributed the course correction to his belief that the protests had become more peaceful in recent days.

The mayor’s announcement that he favored the budget cuts represented the latest turn in his fraught relationship with the Police Department.

Mr. de Blasio campaigned for the mayoralty in 2013 on promises of reforming the department, which had been embroiled in controversy over its aggressive use of stop-and-frisk in communities of color. He made his wife, who is African-American, and his children central to his campaign. But by the time he took office, the use of stop-and-frisk had already fallen sharply.

During his first year in office, Eric Garner died in a police chokehold on Staten Island, and his final words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for activists across the country.

Mr. de Blasio tried to empathize with protesters, telling reporters that he had advised his son, Dante, “on how to take special care” during interactions with officers.

When, later that month, two police officers were fatally shot in Brooklyn while they were sitting in their patrol car, a police union leader said de Blasio had blood on his hands.

Police officers turned their backs to the mayor when he attended the officers’ funerals — events that proved to be a turning point in the de Blasio administration, making the mayor more eager to accommodate the department.

Now, Mr. de Blasio is facing a possible $9 billion budget gap and significant unrest within his own administration over his handling of both the coronavirus crisis and the mass demonstrations following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.

Many protesters and observers have accused the Police Department of using violent tactics during the unrest while enforcing the curfew, which began Monday.

The Brooklyn district attorney’s office said on Sunday that it was investigating two police officers over their actions during the demonstrations.

One officer was seen on video shoving a female protester, who fell on the street and hit her head. The other officer was seen on video removing a protester’s mask and pepper spraying him.

On Saturday, dozens of employees at the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice signed a statement demanding that Mr. de Blasio support several policing reforms, including a ban on the use of chokeholds by the police proposed by the City Council.

The legislation, which is believed to have a veto-proof majority in the Council, would criminalize the use of chokeholds by law enforcement, making it easier for district attorneys to prosecute infractions.

Mr. de Blasio has resisted signing on to the measure unless it includes an exemption for officers in life-threatening situations. He did not address the issue in his announcement on Sunday.

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Many protesters and observers have criticized the department’s tactics during the unrest. Credit...Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York Times

The statement from the criminal justice employees said the demonstrations in the streets mandated transformative change.

“As soon as the protests started, we felt such a disconnect, because we’re supposed to be the ones out there figuring this stuff out, we want to effect change and make things better,” said one of the letter’s signatories, who wanted to remain anonymous for reasons of job protection. “We were left leaderless.”

That statement came on the heels of a June 3 letter, signed by hundreds of former and current staffers, demanding that Mr. de Blasio cut Police Department funding by $1 billion.

In an apparent effort to quell rising internal unrest, on Saturday morning, Mr. De Blasio sent an email to staff assuring them that he and his wife, Chirlane McCray, understand “how deeply this moment hurts.”

“We are here for you,” reads the letter, which was acquired by The New York Times. “We will never stop fighting for you. Black Lives Matter in New York City.”

On Sunday, Mr. de Blasio’s chief of staff, Emma Wolfe, organized a remote meeting between the mayor, Ms. McCray and staff members.

Mr. de Blasio and his wife arrived 15 minutes late to the video conference meeting, one attendee said.

Ms. McCray spoke first. According to an audio recording of the event, she and Mr. de Blasio repeated many of the same points they’ve made in more public settings: that they have been facing a perfect storm of challenges; that Mr. de Blasio, above all, wanted to prevent any protest-related deaths; and that more police officers will face disciplinary measures.

“It may be true to say that no people in government have ever dealt with so complex and so deep a challenge,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Mr. de Blasio didn’t take any questions directly from staff members, but did respond to some questions that his spokeswoman, Freddi Goldstein, said deputy mayors solicited from staff in advance.

“Government is incredibly hard,” he told the employees.

Mr. de Blasio’s assertion on Sunday that he would redirect some police funding was met with skepticism from both protesters and police leaders. He paired the proposal with a handful of other ideas, including removing street vendor enforcement from the Police Department’s purview.

Advocates for vendors, many of whom are immigrants, have long accused the city of harassing the vendors. In November, police sparked a firestorm of criticism when they arrested a woman for selling churros on the subway.

He also affirmed his support for an effort to replace a state civil rights law known as Section 50-A, a law that his administration says requires it to protect the confidentiality of police disciplinary records.

It took five years for de Blasio’s police department to fire Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who put Mr. Garner in a chokehold, after a police administrative judge found that the officer had violated a department ban on chokeholds.

Given that history, critics are skeptical that de Blasio’s vow to cut funding for the Police Department would amount to anything substantive, or that it came from the heart.

“I hope he’s not trying to make it seem as if that was his calling,” said Anthony Beckford, president of Black Lives Matter Brooklyn, which has called for at least $1 billion to be cut from the department. “That was basically one of our major demands, one of many, but we were specific on numbers.”

“He’s trying to thread this needle where he can sound like he’s meeting the demands and not actually do it,” said Anthonine Pierre, deputy director of the Brooklyn Movement Center and an advocate for overhaul of the police.

Ed Mullins, the president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, a police union, expressed doubt that Mr. de Blasio would stick to his stance, too.

“I know he just recently said that he wasn’t going to do that,” Mr. Mullins said. “I guess, let’s see what he says on Monday and what his next decision is going to be.”

Ashley Southall contributed reporting.

Dana Rubinstein is a reporter on the Metro Desk covering New York City politics. Before joining The Times in 2020, she spent nine years at the publication now known as Politico New York. More about Dana Rubinstein

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: In Reversal, de Blasio Warms to Notion of Cutting Funding to N.Y.P.D.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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