Immigrant-led coalition demands an end to broken windows policing

From: Sampeur, Jane-Roberte
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2017 12:02 AM
Subject: Immigrant-led coalition demands an end to broken windows policing

See press release below. Events today and Saturday.

Immigrant-led coalition demands an end to broken windows policing and further criminalization of immigrants.

On Thursday, February 2nd, an immigrant-led coalition will gather outside City Hall at 12:15pm to announce their city-wide rally on Saturday, February 11th to directly challenge the criminalization of immigrants under the NYPD’s current broken windows policing before it worsens under Trump’s fascist administration.

Elected officials are talking up NYC’s sanctuary status and lining up to say they will do whatever it takes to protect “law-abiding” families and ensuring public safety. However, sanctuary under Trump’s “law and order” administration requires ending NYPD’s broken windows practices and dismantling the current policing apparatus that acts as a funnel to mass incarceration and the deportation machine.

Broken Windows strategies, and decades of over-policing, continue unabated in this city and has led to the targeting of some of New York City’s most vulnerable populations — including Black immigrants, Central and South American immigrants, and transgender immigrants.

Sanctuary, as elected officials are claiming, cannot exist without acknowledging that criminalization and deportation begins as soon as immigrants engage with the NYPD. Everyone it arrests, charged or not, has their fingerprints sent to the FBI, where ICE can use them to locate people for deportation proceedings.

These include offenses like jumping the subway turnstile – which led to over 29,000 arrests and 124,000 summonses in 2015 alone – as well as selling DVD’s on the street, forgetting to pay a fine, trespassing in a NYCHA building and having a small amount of marijuana. These arrests and prosecutions do not make us safer, and already disproportionately burden poor communities of color, specifically black people.

The term “sanctuary” most recently refers to policies that limit when and if NYPD communicates with, or submits to, (often unconstitutional) requests from federal immigration agents. But in a country where over-policing results in 1 in 3 people being arrested at least once by the age of 23, during a time when evolving technology places fingerprint scanners in the palm of every law enforcement officers’ hand, and as we anticipate the growth in federal agents active in our cities, sanctuary in practice, and as a movement, must evolve.

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito have largely ignored community concerns with the IDNYC program and have prioritized maintaining power within the NYPD. Their consistent disregard, plus their willingness to expand criminalization, will only lead to more deportations which divide our families and communities.

Immigrant New Yorkers have more to fear from an increasingly militarizedpolice department than they have to gain from them. As immigrants in this city, we know far too well how the NYPD preys upon our communities, entraps, detains and kills people of color. Last week the Mayor claimed to be worried about immigrants when he was in fact worried about potential cuts to federal funding for the NYPD. Enhanced surveillance capabilities of NYPD counterterrorism have targeted Muslim communities in the past–a population that the city now purports to want to protect from harm.

We seek public safety and protection for and defined by all: immigrants—documented or undocumented, people with criminal convictions, workers, gender nonconforming folks, the poor, people with disabilities, Muslims, women, and all people of color. This requires a moratorium on broken windows strategies, divestment from the NYPD, an end to willful collaboration between police and ICE, and the city’s investment in our communities.

ICE FREE NYC, Coalition to End Broken Windows, Families For Freedom, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Equality for Flatbush, ANSWER Coalition, El Grito de Sunset Park, Why Accountability