No Need To Know ‘How Many Stops,’ Mayor Says In NYPD Reform Veto

NEW YORK CITY — Having NYPD cops log the age, gender and race of New Yorkers they talk with is a time-consuming risk to public safety, said Mayor Eric Adams before he vetoed a bill requiring just that.

Adams' long-expected veto of the "How Many Stops Act" unfolded Friday during a news conference in which he, police officials and other allies decried what they deemed the legislation's onerous asks of cops.

"It is a pro-public safety veto that I am doing today," Adams said.

The mayor also quietly vetoed a ban on solitary confinement in the city's jails, arguing that a federal monitor found it would undermine safety behind bars.

The twin move set up a confrontation with City Council members, who passed both pieces of legislation with a veto-proof majorities.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and newly installed Public Safety Chair Yusef Salaam, who is one of the exonerated "Central Park 5," quickly pledged to lead an override of the police reporting bill.

The mayor is sending a message that Black and Latino communities do not deserve transparency about the interruptions to their daily lives by police stops, the City Council duo said.

"At a time when one out of every four stops made by the Mayor's new police unit has been found to be unconstitutional, and civilian complaints are at their highest level in more than a decade, the Mayor is choosing to fight to conceal information from the public," Adrienne Adams and Salaam said in a joint statement.

Eric Adams' news conference was the culmination of a pressure campaign — one that many officials have charged as riddled with misinformation — to try to swing Council members against overriding his veto on the police reform.

The bill requires NYPD officers to record basic "apparent" demographic information of members of the public during low-level investigative interactions — a common sense transparency measure for tracking which New Yorkers police interact with, supporters maintain.

While the mayor himself acknowledged those basic reports would take only a few minutes, he argued that the time would add up to burdensome paperwork for cops.

"The volume of doing that with every person is the problem," Adams said.

Adams and police officials also argued that asking people such basic questions will deter them from wanting to talk to cops. (The bill only requires cops record peoples' "apparent" race or ethnicity, gender and age.)

But the mayor's stance struck many elected officials and advocates as disconnected from reality, and part of a dangerous misinformation campaign.

They noted that police can easily log such information in seconds using an app on their phones.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who pushed for the bill and has increasingly sparred with Adams over it, said the bill doesn't prevent police work, but rather "is police work."

"Either he is vetoing the bill without reading it, or he has been deliberately deceiving people to scare New Yorkers and justify his dangerous choice," Williams said in a statement. "I'm angered by his selfishness."

Williams went further in a news conference shortly after Adams' own, tweeted Politico reporter Jeff Coltin.

The public advocate compared Adams' truthfulness to that of former President Donald Trump, Coltin reported.

"What I'm struggling with is the simplicity of this bill versus the amount of Trumpian lies that the mayor is telling about this bill," Williams said, according to Coltin. "His hero complex, which is similar to Trump, is overriding what the city needs right now."

Advocates with The Legal Aid Society argued the bill will protect New Yorkers who interact with the NYPD the most.

"Police stops are at their highest level in nearly a decade, with the overwhelming majority of reported stops impacting Black and Latinx New Yorkers," said Jennvine Wong, staff attorney with the Cop Accountability Project at The Legal Aid Society, in a statement.

"Current laws allowing NYPD officers to interrogate and search any New Yorker without reporting the encounter have allowed these inequalities to flourish, and City Hall must take action to protect their vulnerable constituents and hold the NYPD to a higher standard of accountability."

Loyda Colón, executive director with the Justice Committee, urged Council members to override the mayor's veto.

"The mayor's veto of the How Many Stops Act - on top of the misinformation campaign he has been waging against it in concert with the NYPD and police unions - is an utter betrayal of NYC’s Black, Latinx, and other communities of color, families who have lost loved ones to the NYPD, and all New Yorkers," they said in a statement.

A similar wave of condemnations followed Adams' veto of the solitary confinement ban.

Adrienne Adams and Council Member Sandy Nurse, who chairs the body's criminal justice committee, vowed to enact the law over the mayor's veto.

"To state it simply: The Mayor’s veto is a choice to perpetuate cruelty," tweeted Nurse. "It dismisses the anguished cries from the families of Layleen Polanco, Brandon Rodriguez, Elijah Muhammad, Erick Tavira, and others who unjustly lost their lives in solitary confinement on Rikers Island."