Brooklyn town hall on police terror in the subway system

Brooklyn, NY – On September 6, The New York Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NYAARPR) hosted a town hall in Crown Heights to discuss community experiences with the NYPD and ways to fight back against police terror on the subway system. The town hall was held at Another World community center, which emerged from mutual aid efforts started as the Crown Heights CARE Collective in 2022.

The event included a presentation of NYAARPR’s long-term demand for community control over the NYPD, and the immediate demands of getting police off of the subway system and holding the cops who brutally murdered Eudes Pierre accountable.

Since October 2023, the New York City transportation system has been flooded with cops, under the pretext that they are there to prevent violent crimes. In fact, the drastic police presence has had the exact opposite effect. As Shivani Ishwar stated on behalf of NYAARPR, “We believe that the people deserve safe subways and safe public transit—people deserve to feel safe on their commutes, and the cops don’t achieve that. The cops make the subways less safe.”

NYAARPR and community members highlighted many examples of increased violence from police on the subways. Two especially sharp examples of how cops make the transit system less safe come from the past year. In October of last year, NYPD officer shot three riders – hitting Gregory Delpeche in the head and causing a traumatic brain injury – after a young man entered the subway without paying the fare. In December, the NYPD stood by and watched as Debrina Kawam was burned alive on the subway. Video footage shows uniformed officers literally walking past Kawam as she was burning to death – throwing their hands up and walking off, leaving her to die.

Community members also shared many experiences of cops profiling them on the public transit system, “pulling people for hopping turnstiles is really just their way of rounding up people who , fit a profile that they think means someone is a criminal, and its racially biased,” said one attendee. Indeed, of all of the stops made by cops on subways, the vast majority—up to 80% of stops from 2014 to 2018—are of Black or Latino people.

The discussion also emphasized the disparity of funding and resources, where the NYPD is given billions of dollars while at the same time, community programs and services such as libraries and childhood education, are having their budgets slashed.

The 2023 NYPD budget, for example, includes $150 million for cops on the subway to catch fare beaters. At the same time, fare beating is only estimated to cost the MTA $104,000 a year—that means the city is spending 1500 times more money on policing transit riders than the money the MTA is actually losing from fare evasion. In 2024, the NYPD spent $1.1 billion on overtime pay for cops, many of whom were charged with policing the subway. In January 2025, Kathy Hochul ordered a cop on every overnight train, which would cost an estimated $160 million in overtime, half of which is paid directly by NYC taxes.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch comes from the 43rd wealthiest family in the entire country. As NYAARPR member Cicely Robinson pointed out, “This shows who the police really answer to. It’s not the people, it’s the billionaires.”

In 2024, the city government ran a pilot program of free buses, and the bus lines that had their fares waived for the year had an additional 15-20% decrease in violent assaults on bus riders. This shows that the way to actually reduce violent crimes on the transit system is to remove the cost of access, and to fight back against poverty and inequitable resource distribution in the city.

The New York Alliance’s overarching goal is to put an end to this police terror and this waste of community resources and taxes by taking power directly from the NYPD, and resituating it in the community. NYAARPR is demanding an all-civilian board, with zero connection to the NYPD, with full control over every single aspect of policing—from the budget, to the weapons they carry, all the way to the power to fire and punish officers.

NYAARPR’s counterpart in Chicago, the Chicago Alliance, passed the Empowering Communities for Public Safety Ordinance in 2021, which created district councils and a community commission on public safety and accountability—which is an essential step towards complete community control over police forces in this country. “We know that complete control over the NYPD is possible, and our organization is fighting to make it a reality” said NYAARPR member Daniel Koh.

NYAARPR calls on supporters and community members to join for a public comment at the next board meeting of the MTA, at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, September 30 at 2 Broadway, on the 20th floor, in Manhattan. Attendees will be sharing their experiences with police violence on the subway and demanding better from the MTA board.

Interested people can also get in touch with NYAARPR on Instagram (@nyaarpr) or on the organization’s website (https://nyaarpr.org).

#NewYorkNY #NY #InJusticeSystem #KillerCops #PoliceCrimes #Gregory Delpeche #DebrinaKawam #NYAARPR

Source: https://fightbacknews.org/brooklyn-town-hall-on-police-terror-in-the-subway-system?pk_campaign=rss-feed