Restructuring New York's Criminal Justice System
For too long, the mismatch between the good intentions of many cops and New York State’s incredibly broken criminal justice system has allowed for a culture of police brutality and racial discrimination to flourish in the Empire State. Bad cops and crooked politicians take advantage, while well intentioned cops face the unenviable choice of either going to war with their own departments or staying silent and becoming part of the problem. All the while, marginalized communities, especially those of color, continue to be victimized to the point of death.
This cycle must be stopped. The recent attention on police brutality is a sign that the country is fed up and demands change. To that effect, Tom proposes the following:
- Abolish all mandatory minimums. A judge should not be forced to lock up someone longer than they believe is necessary. Far too often, the people who bear the brunt of these minimums are poorer black and Hispanic people, which perpetuates systemic racial injustice.
- Eliminate civil asset forfeiture. Allowing the police to profit from seizing personal property creates a perverse incentive to maximize these seizures and forces people to have to sustain lengthy and expensive legal battles to reclaim their belongings. These battles are often out of reach for people without the disposable income and time to wage them, resulting in poorer communities suffering significant losses by overeager police departments.
- Mandate body cameras for all police officers. This allows the police and those they serve to have a public record of the interactions that they have. Filmed police interactions have proven indispensable for identifying police misconduct, and they provide a strong defense for officers falsely accused of wrongdoing.
- Police training must overhauled. The events of the last few months have shown that we do not train our officers to deescalate properly, and until we have more harmony between the police and people, we must ensure that officers are only allowed onto the force when they are capable of keeping the peace.
- Three strikes laws must be eliminated. Similar to the issue with mandatory minimums, judges need more discretion in deciding who really needs to be in jail and who doesn’t. Incarceration comes with risks to the person incarcerated, their family, and the community as a whole, and that risk needs to be balanced on a case by case basis with the risk of the person staying in their community.
- 6) Fire all police officers who avoid charges in court solely through qualified immunity. Just because a court won’t sustain a charge against an officer for wrongdoing doesn’t mean that the officer should remain on the force.