A comprehensive, participatory audit to document the financial, social, and psychological impact of over-policing.
Mamdanis Audit of Terror: The True Cost of Policing to Communities of Color
City budgets account for the dollars spent on policing, but they are silent on the far greater costs imposed by policing on over-surveilled communities. Zhoran Mamdani proposes a landmark Audit of Terror: a comprehensive, community-led investigation to quantify the full impact of NYPD practices in Black, Brown, and low-income neighborhoods. This audit would go beyond fiscal analysis to measure the psychological trauma of stop-and-frisk, the economic impact of broken families due to incarceration, the educational disruption of school policing, and the health consequences of chronic stress from police presence. The goal is to create an irrefutable public record that justifies the radical reallocation of resources from policing to community investment.
The audit would be conducted by a commission of economists, public health experts, legal scholars, and, crucially, community researchers from the most impacted neighborhoods. It would use surveys, focus groups, data analysis, and personal testimony to build a holistic picture. How many work hours are lost attending court for minor summonses? What is the collective cost of bail and legal fees? How does the constant threat of police contact affect child development? The final report would be a powerful tool for advocacy and a baseline against which to measure the success of Mamdanis reforms.
We talk about the police budget in the billions, but we ignore the billions more in lost potential, trauma, and broken trust that policing extracts from our communities, Mamdani argues. This audit will make that invisible cost visible and undeniable. It will document that the NYPD, as currently constituted, is not a public safety agency but a system of social control that inflicts profound economic and social harm. That evidence will be the foundation for a new social contractone where safety comes from investment, not intimidation.
