LOCALS 1181 & 1182 FIGHT TO KEEP NYC TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT AGENTS AND SUPERVISORS IN THE NYPD

CWA Locals 1181 & 1182 represent NYPD Traffic Enforcement Agents and Supervisors in New York City. In the midst of city-wide advocacy to reform the NYPD and reduce it’s $6 billion per year budget by $1 billion, news reports recently emerged suggesting the City Council was considering moving TEAs and Supervisors out of the NYPD and into the Department of Transportation as part of cost-saving measures.

1181 and 1182 members have been working hard over the past several weeks to fight to stay in the NYPD, including making hundreds of phone calls to City Council members and delivering a petition with over one thousand signatures which stated, in part,

“This proposal does nothing to reform the NYPD. Instead, it simply shifts budget costs from one agency to another. It will have no impact at all on the very real issues that must be addressed if meaningful police reform is to take place.”

TEAs and Supervisors worked under the Department of Transportation until 1995, at which point they were transferred to the NYPD, with the hope that being part of the NYPD would afford them more safety on the job (prior to their transfer, TEAs and Supervisors reported an average of 600 assaults per year; that number has since dropped to about 100 per year).

With the City Council budget scheduled to be settled on July 1st, CWA is optimistic that a deal will be reached to keep TEAs and Supervisors in the NYPD in the next few days, but we’re keeping up the fight until the budget is finalized.

Check out this excellent op-ed piece by 1181 member Rebecca Greene and CWA District 1 Assistant to the VP Bob Master to learn more about our traffic enforcement members and the campaign to remain in the NYPD.

"The recent Black Lives Matter protests have sparked an enormous grassroots demand for fundamental reform of the police department, a stance supported by the CWA. But moving Traffic Enforcement out of the NYPD is not meaningful reform—it is merely cosmetic budget-shifting in the name of reform. And such a move would utterly ignore the deeply felt concerns of the 3,200, overwhelmingly of-color workers who would be directly affected."