BP Adams unveils innovative capital budget investments advancing public safety and community-police relations

November 3, 2016 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Joined by community advocates, police officers, local youth and neighborhood leaders, Adams made the announcement in front of the NYPD’s 90th Precinct Stationhouse in Williamsburg, which will benefit from $37,000 in funding from Adams to outfit a multimedia learning center for use by NYC Together. Photo: Stefan Ringel/Brooklyn BP’s Office

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Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams on Tuesday unveiled more than half a million dollars in new investments from Brooklyn Borough Hall’s Fiscal Year 2017 (FY17) budget to advance public safety and community-police relations in the borough. He made the announcement at the NYPD’s 90th Precinct Stationhouse in Williamsburg, home to an innovative partnership that offers an alternative to suspension for local students facing school disciplinary action through mentorship and tutoring from police officers.

This program, NYC Together, will benefit from $37,000 in funding from Adams to outfit a multimedia learning center for use inside the precinct. Adams, a 22-year veteran of the NYPD, also highlighted his continued investment in safeguarding neighborhoods across Brooklyn from crime, highlighting partnerships to expand security camera deployment and enhance building safety measures at several sites in the borough.

“Public safety is a prerequisite to prosperity,” said Adams. “This capital budget and investments I have previously undertaken are a testament to our top priority: making Brooklyn a safer place to raise healthy children and families. I am particularly excited about our partnership with NYC Together and the 90th Precinct. This is what policing is about in the 21st century.”

NYC Together works with the Grand Street Campus, Frances Perkins Academy and the NYPD’s 90th Precinct to implement a comprehensive alternative-to-suspension program for students facing school disciplinary action. In lieu of traditional disciplinary measures, students participate in skill-building sessions and community service projects, led by NYC Together staff and local police officers.

“Because of Borough President Adams’ commitment to forward-thinking programming that engages the community and tackles problems that others deem too tough — like disengagement from school and the achievement gap — NYC Together is implementing state-of-the-art technology to bolster its alternative-to-suspension intervention,” said Dana Rachlin, founder of NYC Together. “Coupled with our unique collaboration with the NYPD in Brooklyn, there is no other precinct in the city that will have a program like this or technology integrated in this manner, and we firmly believe that this should be the model for the rest of the city.”

Also in Williamsburg, Adams allocated $250,000 to support a call for neighborhood security cameras made by the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn in response to hate crimes in the area. This grant adds to his ongoing commitment to expanding security camera coverage across Brooklyn, including his successful advocacy for increasing the number of security cameras in the borough’s NYCHA properties and the $100,000 for security cameras in Bensonhurst that he awarded in FY17, in partnership with Councilmember David G. Greenfield, as part of his first-ever cycle of participatory budgeting.

Additionally, security cameras have proven effective through Operation Safe Shopper, Adams’ initiative to fund local business improvement districts and civic organizations for the purchase of low-cost security cameras to be used by local police precincts to improve safety along commercial corridors. Operation Safe Shopper assisted the NYPD in arresting a suspect connected with a series of robberies in Crown Heights this summer.

Adams also awarded $250,000 to the Sephardic Community Center in Gravesend in order to support building security upgrades, including an access control system for the early childhood center and the reconfiguration of the lobby to decrease the vulnerability of guests, members and staff to outside threats. He expressed this allocation as an extension of his continued focus on better safeguarding so-called “soft targets,” such as community centers and entertainment venues, with investments in better infrastructure, as well as security partnerships with the NYPD SHIELD program.

Joined by beneficiaries of his capital grants, including local youth, police officers, community leaders and NYPD leadership, Adams presented giant checks symbolic of his investment in public safety.

—Information from BP Adams’ office