By Kevin Deutsch
[email protected]
More than 90 percent of suspects arrested by the NYPD on coronavirus-related criminal charges are people of color, police said Tuesday.
Between March 16 – the start of the city’s COVID-19 lockdown – and May 10, police arrested 125 people on charges related to the outbreak. Of those charged, 83 are black and 30 Latino, according to NYPD data.
The alleged crimes, which police investigated after responding to coronavirus-related calls, included domestic violence, weapon possession, and a bank robbery, during which the suspect claimed to be infected with COVID-19, police said.
Over the same period of time, police said they also issued 374 COVID-19 related summonses—mostly for illegally-sized social gatherings.
The department said 52 percent of those summonses went to black New Yorkers, and another 30 percent to Latinos.
Police released the arrest data following criticism the NYPD was not being transparent about enforcement of social distancing in communities of color.
But Corey Stoughton, an attorney at the Legal Aid Society, said the data “sheds no light on the critical question of how the NYPD can explain and begin to address its pattern of racially discriminatory enforcement of social distancing requirements…”