In recent weeks, lawmakers and activists have been apoplectic to see the NYPD’s bloated budget shielded from cuts amid the worst fiscal crisis in generations. But while we may know a lot about the billions being poured into the largest police department in the country, we don’t know one crucial fact: How much money does it actually get?
That’s because the NYPD has grown into far more than a police force. It’s an intelligence agency as well, using everything from drones and helicopters, to foreign agents, and high-tech tracking tools like facial recognition. Much of the agency’s intelligence budget mirrors the opacity of agencies like the CIA and the NSA, only without any oversight.
Every spy group in Washington has to submit even their most sensitive expenditures to Congress. Even the CIA has a so-called “black budget” that provides intelligence committees an overview of their spending. These classified briefings are far from perfect, but they maintain the fundamental function of a legislature to oversee how the executive is spending money.
The NYPD has no such oversight over some of its most sensitive spending.
But when reformers rightfully object to the NYPD’s nearly $6 billion budget being spared from cuts, that’s just part of the story. That’s because the NYPD obtains untold millions through contracts with the federal government and its own private foundation, purchasing invasive spy tools without any review by the City Council that New Yorkers elect to oversee our agencies. In some cases, the NYPD even gets a commission for helping private firms develop tools that are bought up by other cities.
In one of the rare publicly disclosed deals, Microsoft agreed that whenever they sell their pricey Domain Awareness System software to other police departments, the NYPD gets a 30% cut. That’s right, our police department helped develop new surveillance software, and they get to keep the profits.
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Luckily, there is legislation that would help fix this problem: The Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act. The POST Act wouldn’t stop the NYPD from purchasing these pricey spy tools, but it would force the agency to tell the public and the Council what tools it’s buying, what privacy safeguards they have, and how our information is being shared with other government agencies such as ICE.
For the first time in decades, New Yorkers and our lawmakers would get a window into how money is being spent to track and police New Yorkers. This reform is long overdue, but it’s particularly crucial in the age of COVID-19, as our city embarks on the most far-reaching contact tracing effort in generations.
Contact tracing is crucial to public health and we know it will save lives, but it will only work if the public trusts that they can give public officials their most intimate details and not have it used against them in a court of law. The need for safeguards is only amplified by the NYPD’s controversial role in policing social distance, turning a public health matter into a law enforcement matter.
The vast majority of the City Council agrees. Nearly two-thirds of the Council already sponsor the legislation, along with the public advocate, and the bill has been endorsed by everyone from the Council’s Progressive and BLAC Caucuses to The New York Times. This is the long-overdue solution to so many of New York’s transparency problems, but we need Speaker Corey Johnson to call a vote to have this reform become a law.
At a time when our leaders are contemplating painful cuts to life-saving services, we can’t leave the NYPD above scrutiny. The dollars we spend on policing are dollars that could go towards education, housing and other priorities. Unless we pass the POST Act, the NYPD will be left with no oversight of its black budget.
Cahn is the founder and executive director of The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) at the Urban Justice Center, a New York-based civil rights and privacy group and a fellow at the Engelberg Center for Innovation Law & Policy at N.Y.U. School of Law