Mayor Bill de Blasio has agreed to cut $1 billion from the budget of the NYPD, he said Monday.
Amid protests over the death of George Floyd, activists and City Council members have been demanding a billion-dollar cut to the police department’s roughly $6 billion budget. POLITICO first reported Sunday night the mayor’s office had agreed to a slate of cuts laid out by the City Council. De Blasio initially resisted the push, but confirmed at a press briefing Monday that he sent a proposal to the Council that included the $1 billion in savings.
The deal involves moving school safety agents, who are unarmed but wear police uniforms, into the Department of Education, canceling a July class of roughly 1,100 police recruits, and shifting certain homeless outreach operations away from police control.