NYC to sink $1 billion in school for cops

New York’s billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg has earmarked $1 billion to build a new police training center in Queens on the site of the current police auto pound. It will house “instruction space, support and administration buildings, a field house, indoor shooting ranges, a tactical village, a housing facility, driver training fields, K-9 environments, parking, a vehicle maintenance facility and a utility plant,” according to the press release.

Currently, facilities for these kinds of training are scattered throughout the city.

Bloomberg’s justification for spending a billion dollars failed to stir the souls here. “All the successes our city has achieved are built on a solid foundation of public safety. As we invest in our city’s future, we must also strengthen this foundation,” he said.

Many people in New York would feel that having a decent roof over their heads and floor under their bodies would function better to supply a “solid foundation” for their lives. The rents in New York have been rising to new heights every year since Bloomberg was elected to his first term in 2002 and the production of new affordable housing has come to a virtual stop.

Real estate speculators a few months ago were able to buy Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village, a community of 13,000 apartments built with city help to supply middle-income New Yorkers with apartments they could afford. Starrett City, a more working-class complex with 8,000 apartments, is now “in play,” as the real estate interests put it.

Bloomberg approved both deals.

On March 31, 2003, during the first year of Bloomberg’s term, there were 265,702 families on the waiting lists for subsidized housing in the city, according to the NYC Housing Authority. On June 30, 2006—the date of the latest report—there were 239,549 families waiting, about a 10-percent drop.

While the Bloomberg administration enthusiastically congratulates itself over the “drop” in the waiting list, having 900,000 people in substandard housing instead of over a million is no cause for celebration.

Given the huge increase in rents, which has forced many of those waiting for publicly subsidized housing to double up with other families or move in with friends, situations which disrupt family life and increase the pressures on working people in New York City, spending one billion dollars on affordable housing or using the site in Queens to serve the housing needs of working and poor people makes a great deal of sense.

New York City devotes far more money and resources to its police than many countries whose populations approximate New York’s. The NYCPD is the largest in North America and one of the largest in the world, when you discount the countries where the cops are part of the army.

According to the city comptroller’s report, it is planning to spend $3.8 billion in fiscal year 2007 on the 37,038 officers it had on the payroll in January 2007, including the transit and housing police units.

Compare this with Austria, for example, which has about 7.9 million people. According to a report for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Austria has about 20,000 cops to cover the whole country, which covers a much larger area than New York City. It also has about 3,000 correction officers. According to the CIA Factbook, it spends about $2.2 billion on its security forces—nearly $1.5 billion less than New York.

Consider the figures for Haiti, Austria, Burundi, Benin and Switzerland, whose population estimates range from 8.3 to 7.7 million. These countries have far fewer people in their armies than New York City has in its police force. (See the CIA Factbook and www.nationmaster.com)

This comparison makes it clear that if the City of New York did not maintain such a large body of armed people, it would have far more resources to devote to the needs of its people.