The pissing match between the City Council and the NYPD is coming to a head.
City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito threatened to wield the council’s “aggressive oversight” power over One Police Plaza if Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton don’t fall in line with her proposal to decriminalize six low-level offenses, including public urination.
“We are very committed to continuing . . . to demand from our commissioner and our mayor that our police have to improve the way they interact within our community,” Mark-Viverito declared Saturday morning at an event in Harlem hosted by Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.
“And we will support them . . . if that’s the direction that they are heading in. But if they are not, we obviously will continue to have the oversight,” she told the cheering crowd.
She called out Bratton, who on Friday slammed the council blueprint to gut his “broken-windows” policing philosophy.
“Already, we’re starting to hear some of the dialogue, and some of the push-back that is coming from our police commissioner,” the liberal firebrand continued as Sharpton sat at her side.
Last week, Mark-Viverito unveiled plans to make six low-level crimes civil rather than criminal offenses: public urination, biking on the sidewalk, public consumption of alcohol, being in a park after dark, failure to obey a park sign and jumping subway turnstiles.
A defiant Bratton a day earlier had said, “Under no circumstances will I . . . support anything that weakens the ability of my officers to police and keep this city safe.
“Our position is that none of these violations should be decriminalized,” said the commissioner, noting cops would lose the ability to demand a person’s ID, run a records check and uncover and act upon any outstanding warrants.
While the speaker ratcheted up the rhetoric Saturday, she did not say how she and the council would implement a system that would replace low-level arrests with desk-appearance tickets, especially given the NYPD’s and mayor’s reluctance.
“I think the council’s proposals are certainly worthy of discussion, but I want to emphasize my vision of quality-of-life policing and my vision related to the broken-windows strategy is the same as Commissioner Bratton’s,” de Blasio said Wednesday. “We’re very much unified on this point.”
Mark-Viverito first raised the possibility of reclassifying the crimes in February during her State of the City speech.
In the last few weeks, she has met with the NYPD and the mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. Her office said she is pursuing the changes “administratively” rather than legislatively.
“It’s very, very early in the process,” said her spokesman, Eric Koch.
However, the possibility of legislation remains if the speaker doesn’t get what she wants.
“I don’t know that the council is not pursuing legislation,” said Rory Lancman (D-Queens), a key supporter of the speaker’s reform plan.
Two-thirds of the City Council would be needed to overturn a mayoral veto.