@tanzinavega (1) Tanzina, it’s a hugely important issue, and I certainly can’t speak for other activists and civil rights organizers, but here are a few responses. Each of these shootings is heartbreaking. truly, and that can’t be lost in the broader public policy debate.
@tanzinavega (2) One of the things we need is to better understand how crime is changing on the ground this year. Most of the data we have comes from police department themselves, giving departments tremendous power to shape the data that drives the public safety narrative.
@tanzinavega (3) sadly, it’s impossible to know how much violent crime has increased in NYC. In the past, I’ve seen officers and detectives go to great lengths to re-classify offenses and improve crime stats. But right now the department is strongly invested in selling the narrative of chaos.
@tanzinavega (4) i’m not disputing that there has been some increase, just that we don’t know the magnitude of the increase in violent crime. More broadly, it seems that the national increase has correlated with a deteriorating economy and the deadly threat of COVID-19.
@tanzinavega (5) To the extent that’s true, it seems that providing economic stimulus, effective healthcare responses, and a broader social safety net will address many of the economic factors and social stressors driving an increase in violence.
@tanzinavega (6) But if that investment simply got us back to the baseline level of violence we saw in prior years, that wouldn’t be good enough. Other evidence-based responses include violence interruption programs and grassroots community organizations that invest in at risk youth.
@tanzinavega (7) This gets into the work that abolitionist organizers have done for years to explain why investing in safety is very different from investing in policing.
