Mayor Adams vetoes City Council bill making NYPD cops document more interactions with public
New York City Mayor Eric Adams vetoed a City Council bill Friday that would have made NYPD officers document more interactions with the public. Credit: AP/Peter K. Afriyie
A defiant Mayor Eric Adams vetoed a controversial City Council measure Friday that he said would make the city less safe by burdening cops with the need to fill out reports about many low level interactions with the public.
In vetoing the measure, known as “How Many Stops,” Adams said in a statement he was protecting public safety by stopping a law that “would handcuff our police by drowning officers in unnecessary paperwork that will saddle taxpayers with tens of millions of dollars in additional NYPD overtime each year.”
The measure, championed by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams as a way to ensure transparency and guard against abuse of stop and frisk, passed the City Council last year with a majority of 34 votes. The bill requires cops to document the so-called Level 1 encounters with members of the public, which are generally requests for information during an investigation. But critics contend it would require officers to document even innocuous interactions with the public.
Williams said in a statement Friday that the measure was designed to prevent the biased action seen in the past with stop and frisk. He accused Adams, a former NYPD captain, of trying to unnecessarily scare New Yorkers. Williams further explained that the reporting requirement would simply be included in a drop down menu on police smartphones.
But Adams, NYPD commissioner Edward Caban, police union and some city officials argue that the reporting mandate would create burdens, particularly in cases where police are involved in extensive dragnets or canvases for video evidence. On Thursday, Adams and Caban noted that the arrest of a former Wheatley Heights man for five unprovoked stabbings would have been hobbled if detectives slowed down to document encounters they had to secure video surveillance tapes and interact with over a 1,000 citizens.
A federal lawsuit in 2013 led to a ruling that the NYPD was unconstitutionally doing stop and frisks in a way that violated the rights of minorities. As a result of a settlement, a federal monitor has been reviewing police stop-and-frisk tactics and training. Stop-and-frisk encounters have fallen in recent years but the percentage of minorities stopped generally has remained about 80% of the totals.
Williams said he believed there were enough votes to override Adams’s veto.
Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.
