After a Rise in Gun Violence, Criminal Justice a Focus at NYC Council Meeting

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams opened her first Stated Meeting the New York City Council Feb. 10 saying they had to focus on gun violence. “We must confront this challenge now and always,” she said. “This crisis Is not new, especially in communities of color.” She is also the first African American woman to ever be elected for the position and leads a council which is majority women.

Adams began her speech by giving a tribute to Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora, the two police officers who were killed in Harlem going to a domestic violence call on Jan. 21.

But policing is only one part of the equation, according to Adams. “Bringing an end to this violence requires a multifaceted approach which requires comprehensive solutions,” she said.

The focus should shift to preventing crime before it even occurs by “investing in community-based safety solutions, violence prevention programs, mental healthcare and crisis resistance, and a range of other communities’ investments that promote the well being of all of our neighborhoods.” Adams explained.

Furthermore, there has to be an investment into the health and stability of New Yorkers. “Especially those at greater risks of experiencing violence because of where they live,” she said. Adams also said that young people must be provided with education and employment opportunities.

While her speech was centered on how New Yorkers need to join together to fight crime and violence, the meeting ended with a set-to between Council Member Charles Barron (D. Brooklyn and Council Member Kalman Yeger (D. Brooklyn) over approaches to crime reduction.

Barron attacked Mayor Eric Adams who had spoken in the state capital the day criticizing the reduction of cash bail for non-violent crimes that had been passed by the legislature last year. Adams, in his speech in the state capital, brought up the case of an 11-month old baby who was shot by a stray bullet.

“Mayor, you should feel ashamed of yourself. To use the blood of an eleven month child, the blood of police officers and other innocent people who were killed to try to push back on no cash bail,” Barron said. “For the mayor to get up there and use the blood of innocent people to manipulate you emotionally and to tell us to debate the mother, not him, that is unconscionable and totally unacceptable.”

Council Member Kalman Yeger attacked Barron. “What [Adams] said is that he wants there to be a dangerousness standard that a court can look at whether or not somebody is too dangerous to put back out on the streets.” Mayor Adams does not want to “lock people up” and he is not using the blood of innocent people in order to push his political agenda. “If anybody is in this building and feels like showing up and having a conversation with the mayor, this mayor has shown that he is willing to have a conversation with the members of this council.”

Several prominent social justice organizations agree: New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ “blueprint” to end gun violence is a way to “oversee and maintain social control of black bodies,” adding technology to the 2003 version of stop and frisk. With rising crime rates in New York City, Adams released his plan on Jan. 24, introducing artificial intelligence and other advanced technology to the New York City Police Department. The groups pushed back at a press conference on Feb. 3.

Adams’ plan’s details include giving the NYPD facial recognition technology and gunshot detection programs. An overall increase in mass surveillance, causing a whirlwind of disagreement by groups which include the Legal Aid Society, the National Lawyers Guild and Amnesty International.

As mentioned by Jason Williamson, executive director of the NYU Center of Race, Inequality, and the Law, black and brown communities would be affected disproportionately by this new technology as they have with the stop and frisk policy. That policy was ruled unconstitutional and race-based by a federal judge in 2013.

This AI technology has been proven to be faulty and racially biased according to Jerome Greco, supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s Digital Forensics team. “Studies show that it [facial recognition] is less accurate on people of color, women, and young people and transgender people,” he said. 

This tech would be added to programs police use such as bite mark evidence, something that teams at the Innocence Project showed was not unique the same way DNA and fingerprints are. The Innocence Project is a 30-year-old organization that exonerates wrongly convicted people.

“The NYPD’s claims about wanting to establish positive ties with the community they allege to serve are inconsistent with the use of faulty tech on people who live or work there,” Greco said. Just this past year Nijeer Parks, a 30-year-old black carpenter in New Jersey, was wrongfully arrested for assault charges because of the facial recognition software used by police.

Racial biases aside, the new technology would be considered a “violation of the right to privacy,” as said by Matt Mahmoud, Artificial Intelligences for Human Rights advisor at Amnesty International. The field of vision of controlled cameras used by the NYPD is estimated to be about one and a half to two blocks according to Mahmoud.”A protester walking a sample route from Washington Square Park subway to Washington Square Park proper is potentially exposed to facial recognition for 100% of their journey…surveilled by up to four NYPD cameras at a time,” he said. 

This level of surveillance in impoverished communities, a majority made up of minorities, will only increase the level of suspicion between the public and law enforcement.

”Americans love a technological fix and they will take one bit of anecdotal info and run with it because it allows elected officials to avoid responsibility for creating the conditions that are producing violence in our community,” said Alex Vitale, a Brooklyn College sociology professor. “It is a set of political slogans designed to appeal to people’s worst fears.”

As an alternative to proposing this advanced technology, three participants at the Conference, Vitale, Christina Swarns of the Innocence Project and Erica Johnson of the National Lawyers Guild all suggested “community policing,” where officers would be working closely with community members to mend relations between damaged communities and the police. It is a proven solution that has been successful across the country. They expressed dissatisfaction that Adams’ plan to rely so much on new software was going in the wrong direction.