Racist State Violence Pervades New York's Police, Jails and Prisons
Hon. Carl Heastie, Assembly Speaker
New York State Assembly
188 State Street, Legislative Office Building, Room 932 Albany, NY 12247
Hon. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Majority Leader
New York State Senate
188 State Street, Legislative Office Building, Room 907 Albany, NY 12247
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie,
People across the world are witnessing the pain of hundreds of years of Black subjugation, abuse, and murder at the hands of the state. We’ve seen the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade and countless others taken by law enforcement. But the deaths and violence don’t stop at police interactions. They are perpetrated against Black people in jails and prisons across New York and have taken the lives of Layleen Polanco, Benjamin Smalls, Kalief Browder, and too many others. The system that purports to “protect” and uphold “public safety” has instead subjugated, dehumanized, and murdered Black people for centuries.
We need bold and immediate change that will pull power away from the system that has made clear that Black lives, Black pain, Black existence, and Black humanity do not matter. To that end, we are calling on you to do what is right and address racist state violence from policing to courts to jails and prisons.
Police violence is one piece of a larger system, and we believe that this element is critical to address through the full repeal of 50a and the full Safer NY Act. It is also important to address other forms of violence happening across the system and that leave generational trauma and scars across the Black community, including Black immigrants, Black incarcerated people, and Black LGBTQIA+ people.
That is why, next week when the legislature reconvenes, we call on you to pass a slate of bills to peel away at the devastation wrought on Black New Yorkers by a system of mass criminalization and state violence. This includes:
Full Repeal of 50a: S.3695 (Bailey) / A.2513 (O’Donnell)
Police Statistics & Transparency (STAT): S.1830 (Hoylman) / A.05472 (Lentol)