LDF Calls on NYC Office of Community Safety to Invest in Communities and Youth, and End Broken Windows Policing

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Today, LDF submitted testimony urging the New York City Council Committee on Public Safety to implement effective approaches to public safety by expanding the Office of Community Safety. LDF's research sheds light on previously hidden costs of police encounters and violence, showing that effective community responders can provide a cost savings to the city, and that investments in communities can promote safety. LDF's litigation has shown that for too long, NYPD's public safety strategies, from stop-and-frisk to gang policing, have criminalized Black and Brown young people for where they live or who they know, have destabilized communities, and have punished people for housing segregation and other government-created policies that disadvantaged Black and Brown communities.

The creation of an Office of Community Safety presents an important opportunity to build and sustain credible messenger systems, expand restorative justice and unarmed civilian responses, invest in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and other community infrastructure, and ensure that young people have access to the mental health, educational, social, and economic supports they need to thrive. LDF's Framework for Public Safety envisions responders that resolve disputes and immediate needs through trauma-informed interventions, that connect people with community-based services meeting people's long-term needs, and that provide services and investments in communities that reduce calls to the emergency response system in the long run. For the Office of Community Safety to fulfill its promise, the city must invest in the people and systems that communities have long told us they need, and shift from its punitive approach to public safety.

Read LDF's full testimony here.

Read LDF's report The True Cost of Policing: Hidden Impacts and Smart Alternatives here.

Read LDF's Framework for Public Safety here.

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Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is the nation's first civil rights legal organization. LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957, though it was founded under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall while he was at the NAACP. LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) is a division of LDF that undertakes innovative research and houses LDF's archive. In all media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF (do not include NAACP) and refer to the Institute as LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute or TMI.