The Legal Aid Society is decrying the newly unveiled “Crime and Quality-of-Life Enforcement Initiative” from Mayor Eric Adams and the New York City Police Department (NYPD) that it would, in effect, reinstate broken-windows policing.

“Broken-windows policing has long been discredited for furthering mistrust between the police and the communities we serve, and this rebranded version will yield those same results, with the same disparate enforcement,” said Jennvine Wong, a staff attorney with Legal Aid’s Cop Accountability Project. “It will undoubtedly send more Black and Latinx New Yorkers to Rikers Island, a facility that is wholly incapable of caring for the people in its custody.”

“This is a botched opportunity for Mayor Adams to address the root cause of crime – poverty and a lack of robust services – and this plan will send our entire city back decades,” she continued.