Dear John:
2020 is on track to have the highest number of deaths and injuries from traffic violence in NYC in a decade.
While we’ve made life-saving design changes on many streets, budget cuts imperil that work. And despite evidence that reckless driving is a primary cause of so many crashes, we’ve done almost nothing to address it.
My plan takes a data-driven, restorative justice, public health approach to public safety. Because, when it comes to road safety, the truth is that police are simply not the right tool.
There were 46,000 hit-and-run crashes in 2017, but NYPD detectives arrested just 1% of hit-and-run drivers. The NYPD’s Collision Investigation Squad has long been a source of frustration for street safety advocates.
Traffic enforcement by police does little to achieve safer streets -- but brings with it the risk of racial profiling and escalatory violence. Here in NYC, Allan Feliz was shot and killed by an NYPD officer in October 2019 in the Bronx after a routine stop for failure to wear a seatbelt. Philando Castile and Sandra Bland were both killed after routine traffic stops.
Mayor de Blasio continues to spend $11 billion on policing, but he has failed to provide the mere $1.6 million to implement my Reckless Driver Accountability Act. We have better tools to reduce crashes, save lives, and prevent thousands of injuries every year -- but we have to get our priorities straight.
One of New York City’s profound challenges in the years ahead is to improve public safety and public health for all New Yorkers, across lines of race, class, and neighborhood, while significantly reducing the number of problems for which our response is to send police.
As a candidate for Queens district attorney, Tiffany Cabán led the conversation on decarcerating our city and investing in other approaches to public safety. Today, I was proud to endorse her candidacy for city council, and to receive her endorsement in my race for NYC Comptroller.
You might not think of the New York City Comptroller’s office as a place to help transform how we achieve public safety in our city. But the comptroller is our “chief accountability officer,” with the assignment to look hard at the data and then recommend how we can make government smarter, more effective, and more just.
Whether it’s about traffic safety, policing, or climate change, the time for quick fixes and old assumptions is over. Together, we’re building a movement for new leadership, from top to bottom, to bring NYC into the future.
Thank you so much for your support,
-- Brad
