Dear Friends:
We are reaching out to request support for PROP's work. As it's been for more than a decade, it's critical work, unique & important to the effectiveness of the police reform movement in our great and troubled city.
We say troubled because our Police Department continues its biased and abusive tactics, still targeting low income New Yorkers of color mainly for minor offenses that have virtually been decriminalized in White areas. And perhaps not surprisingly, given Eric Adams' policy priorities, policing under our new mayor has grown more aggressive, with numbers, as our reports have documented, showing escalating arrests especially of Black and Brown people. We refer to these practices as part of casual everyday brutality of our so-called justice system
Providing the only independent source of information on the NYPD's discriminatory arrest practices, our Court Monitoring Project is central to our agenda/goals to promote fundamental reforms, to expose and end broken windows strategies, to reduce the department's payroll, and to strip the NYPD of many of its current duties better carried out by other public agencies or local community-based organizations.
We have more interns and volunteers monitoring the courts than at any time since our founding in 2011. And they are observing and and recording more arraignments than ever -- for example, for a recent 3 week period, they visited arraignments in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn and reported on 146 cases, 134 ( 91.8%) involving New Yorkers of color.
In another effort to educate the public, and politicians, and to advance our agenda, we have written & recently published a report that presents in all its facets and documents -- with over 200 footnotes -- the violent and corrupt history of the New York City Police Department. Entitled The Notorious and True History of NYC's Finest , it may very well be our most controversial, and important, report to date. We hope it will greatly enhance the public's awareness of the extensive harm that the NYPD has inflicted on the City's people, especially by its victimization of New Yorkers of color, throughout its long history from the 19th century to the present day. You can read the report HERE .
PROP has been able to maintain its work on a (very) modest budget -- under $50,000 annually -- mainly because, as referenced earlier, interns and volunteers carry out so much of that work. Also true is that since our activities are so aggressive and severely critical of the ordinarily sacrosanct NYPD, we depend entirely on financial support from concerned individuals like you.
PROP will carry on no matter the level of outside support. Simply put, however: with sufficient funding, we will not only do more work, we will do more effective work.
Please feel free to be in touch with us with questions and/or comments about our work or policy goals..
Many thanks for your past generosity and your consideration now.
