The New York City Council is debating a measure that, despite the objections of Mayor Eric Adams, would force the police to report every time they stop a citizen on the street, an issue that caused controversy in recent days when police They stopped a black councilor without giving him any reason.
The “How Many Stops” law was headed to a final vote Tuesday. Adams vetoed the bill last month, but council members believe they have enough votes to override the veto and get the measure passed.
The law would give a major victory to police reform activists, forcing the country’s largest police department and its 36,000 officers to document all investigative encounters in a city where officers previously could search people for weapons, a practice that disproportionately affected communities of color.
The law would also require police officers to record the race, gender and apparent age of every person they stop in low-level encounters, that is, people who are not necessarily suspected of committing a crime.
Officers would also have to report the reason for the interaction and the circumstances that led them to stop that particular person. The data would be recorded on the department’s internet portal.
“The only thing the law says is that when the New York City Police Department engages in an official investigative encounter, it has to document it,” explained Michael Sisitzky of the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
But the mayor, a Democrat, has said that reporting every low-level encounter would take up a lot of police time, forcing them to fill out a form every time they speak to someone, instead of focusing on solving a crime.
“When you talk about a single incident, no, it doesn’t take up that much time. But the cumulative effect of many long-term incidents does affect the officer who is doing his job. The extra hours that have to be paid accumulate. He becomes redundant,” stated Adams, a former police captain, in an interview with WNYC.
The city already requires officers to document every instance in which they ask someone an “accusatory” question as part of an investigation, or when they stop, search or arrest someone.
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams, who sponsored the proposal, says expanding those requirements to cover other types of encounters wouldn’t take up as much time. An officer can do it on his smartphone in less than a minute and the public would be better informed about how police protect the community, Williams said.
“This does not interrupt police work, but it is police work,” Williams said Monday.
In 2013, a federal judge ruled that the city’s police department had violated the civil rights of black and Hispanic people with its practice of stopping and searching people, the purpose of which was to combat the proliferation of drugs and guns. Since then, those interactions have greatly diminished, although an ACLU report found that Blacks and Hispanics were targeted by the vast majority of police stops in 2022.
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2024-01-30 17:54:00
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