NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Chirlane McCray, the wife of Mayor Bill de Blasio, said in an interview that a policeless society would be “like a nirvana,” but noted that “we are nowhere close to getting to” that point.
“That would be like a nirvana, a utopia that we are nowhere close to getting to,” McCray said in a virtual interview with Time magazine on Tuesday.
Practically speaking, however, McCray said the “ideal would just be a mix.”
“It’s good policing, it’s not no policing. It’s having a different kind of culture than what we have now, that is not so punitive, and harsh, and abusive,” she said. “The kind of police force that we’ve been working for these last years, where police are seen as part of the communities where they work.”
“Ideally, they come out of those communities, so they know people, they know the customs and traditions, and they have regular conversations with each other, to be able to identify what the problems are together,” she added.
De Blasio, who also took part in the virtual interview, said he agreed with McCray.
“It is fair to say, could the human race evolve to a point where no guardians, no structure is needed? I guess in theory, but I don’t see that in the future we’re going to live the next few generations,” he said, adding that neighborhood policing is the ideal model.
“Neighborhood policing… means that (New Yorkers) know an officer that they trust, that they believe is listening to them, respecting them, they’re in regular communication, everyone knows each other’s first name, they actually have a sense of common cause,” he said. “If that became the norm, we’d be having a very different conversation.”
“The culture of police has to change, the union dynamics have to change, the discipline and the transparency has to change, and there are some things that police do now that they should no longer do,” he added.