While crime is on voters’ minds as New Yorkers head to the polls, a push for “equity” initiatives in New York City could make it harder to tackle lawlessness.

Three proposed revisions to the city charter, offered as questions on ballots, could result in the weakening of the city’s police and corrections departments. One public safety scholar tells the Sun the measures were designed to undermine New York’s police department.

The proposed revisions come from the New York City Racial Justice Commission — appointed by Mayor de Blasio in 2021 in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.

The proposal to create a citywide Office of Racial Equity — the second of the three ballot questions — is raising concern about its potential impact on crime fighting and criminal justice in the city.  

The proposed office would have broad bureaucratic oversight of all city departments in implementing a so-called racial equity plan. 

Such a plan would set benchmarks in an attempt to even out service and outcomes among different groups of New Yorkers. The goal, advocates say, is to direct resources to underserved communities during the budgeting process.

Yet critics contend the plan will be misused to advance liberal causes. “I think one of the goals of the second ballot initiative will be to harass the NYPD,” a crime researcher at the Manhattan Institute, Charles Lehman, tells the Sun. 

Although the NYPD is not named in the ballot measure, policing and criminal justice play a significant role in what the Office of Racial Equity is expected to do.

Describing the office’s “anti-marginalization” mandate, the final report of the Racial Justice Commission recommends that the Office of Racial Equity work with other departments to limit the role played by the police in city life. 

It encourages the office “to identify alternatives to criminal legal system involvement and otherwise punitive enforcement methods.”

Mr. Lehman of the Manhattan Institute suggests an anti-incarceration and anti-policing agenda was present from the commission’s inception.

“Taking advantage of the summer George Floyd protests, the de Blasio administration empaneled a group of activists to reach a certain set of conclusions,” Mr. Lehman said. “And the goal of these referenda is to make sure that the city governments can be compelled to agree with these conclusions.” 

While the referendums are largely symbolic, they would empower opponents of policing and incarceration in City Hall, he says.

The two other ballot measures include adding a “statement of values” to the city charter that outlines the city’s commitment to remedying “past and continuing harms,” as well as the institution of a regular accounting of a “true cost of living index” for New Yorkers.

The commission believes these measures will address what it sees as “patterns of inequity” that plague the city. The commission criticized city policy for contributing to what it sees as over-policing and over-incarceration.

Proponents of the ballot measures say the proposals from the Racial Justice Commission will go a long way in the fight for equality.

Council Member Nantasha Williams has said that the measures would “make real progress toward creating a society where all voices are heard,” Gotham Gazette reported.

The measures could even provide fiscal value for New Yorkers, the chairwoman of the commission, Jennifer Jones Austin, suggested.

“There have been studies done in recent years that demonstrate that by continually upholding inequitable structures and laws, America has actually lost more revenues in gross domestic product than they put out in terms of support,” Ms. Austin told Mother Jones.

Meanwhile, the New York Post’s editorial board warned that the ballot initiatives would “give license to radicals” to “impose steps such as scrapping merit admissions at top city schools, socking landlords harder or even paying reparations to favored groups.” None of these policy items are addressed in the proposals.

A conservative Democrat on the City Council has also spoken out against the ballot measures.

Citing inflation and crime, Council Member Robert Holden in a statement last month called the proposals “out-of-touch with the realities of what New Yorkers need the government to do.”

Meanwhile, questions are being raised about whether the proposals “reflect the beliefs of most residents, or those of a small cadre of progressive elites,” as noted in City Journal. The questions were prompted, in part, by a Manhattan Institute poll showing that the majority of Black and Hispanic New Yorkers support empowering police officers rather than diminishing their presence in neighborhoods.

A Quinnipiac poll last month found that voters across the state ranked crime as the top issue facing the Empire State. The city has seen higher rates of rape, robbery, assault, and burglary since the pandemic began two years ago, according to New York Police Department data.

Conventional wisdom has it that the crime wave has worked against Governor Hochul in this year’s elections, and in favor of the Republican candidate, Congressman Lee Zeldin, who has made his tough-on-crime stance the centerpiece of his campaign.

On Friday, an MSNBC anchor, Stephanie Ruhle, accosted the governor over crime in New York City.

“Here’s the problem: We don’t feel safe,” Ms. Ruhle told Ms. Hochul. “You might be working closely with Mayor Adams, you may have spent a whole lot of money — but I walk into my pharmacy and everything is on lockdown because of shoplifters.”

“I’m not going in the subway,” Ms. Ruhle continued. “People don’t feel safe in this town. So you may have done these things, but right now we’re not feeling good. We’re worried we could be San Francisco.”