MSNBC’s Harris-Perry: Outcome of NYPD Slowdown Might Be Good Thing

The NYPD has been engaging in a work slowdown to send a message to Mayor Bill de Blasio. Commissioner Bill Bratton said it’s ending, but on MSNBC this morning, host Melissa Harris-Perry wondered if there might be some good in the slowdown after all.

Harris-Perry observed, “The idea of discretion being used to not engage in these ways with communities also feels like precisely what these communities were asking for.”

She and NYC councilman Ritchie Torres agreed that it’s not a terribly good sign that the police are acting in defiance of civilian leadership, but Harris-Perry brought up a New Republic piece on New Yorkers celebrating the slowdown to suggest while the means is not ideal, “this outcome is not bad.”

The Nation writer Mychal Denzel Smith was a little baffled at how “discretionary arrest versus necessary arrest” is a thing in the first place. Harris-Perry and the panel used all this as a jumping-off point to wonder if the slowdown will get people to rethink the broken windows theory of policing.

Watch the video below, via MSNBC:

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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