Mayor Adams stands firm on veto, calls for council members to ride along
NEW YORK - Ride with a police officer for a day—that’s what Mayor Eric Adams is asking council members who support the "How Many Stops Act".
He vetoed the bill this week, claiming it would only take officers off the streets, and behind a mountain of paperwork.
According to Adams, collecting information on every single person an officer interacts with is not realistic.
The Mayor spent Sunday digging into why he disagrees with the legislation that would require police officers to collect the age, race, gender, and reason why they approach every person they interact with.
The mayor pointed to the arrest of the accused serial stabber in Queens, when police officers scoured the streets and subways, asking resident and business owners what they knew about his whereabouts.
The mayor says each one of those hundreds of interactions would all require paperwork, taking police from patrolling the streets, putting them in the office, and costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars for overtime that even doesn't translate into more public safety.
NYC Mayor Adams accused of 'getting his Trump on' by vetoing council bill to track every police stop
New York City Mayor Eric Adams vetoed a controversial city council bill that would require police officers to document every "investigative encounter" with the public.
The bill's advocates argue the act is about transparency.
"Part of the job of a police officer is to fill out essential paperwork," said Attorney Jennvine Wong of The Legal Aid Society. "So, what we're doing here with this act is not burdening police officers, we're just asking them to do their job."
So far only Harlem Councilmember and Public Safety Chair Yusef Salaam has agreed to go on a ride along. But he wrote in a joint statement with Council Speaker Adrienne Adams on Friday:
"It is deeply disappointing that the Mayor is sending the message that Black and Latino communities do not deserve transparency regarding interruptions to their daily lives from investigative police stops.....These actions only raise questions about why this administration fears sharing data with New Yorkers about the use of their tax dollars."
The Mayor says the bill needs to specify getting this information only when investigating "criminal suspicious activity." He says its currently so broad it covers even asking someone if they are alright.