City Council Votes to Approve Three Bills to Record Excessive Use of Force by Police

The New York City Council voted Thursday, 40-to-4, in favor of three bills relating to the recording and publishing of excessive force by the NYPD in the wake of public outrage at several high-profile cases of officers exerting unjustifiable violence on people of color.

The bills now await Mayor Bill de Blasio's signature.

The first law, 539-A, will require a quarterly report from the NYPD on the use of any "force incidents," or any type of violence at the hands of a police officer. The legislation requires the NYPD to label the type of force used, the officer who used the force and whether she or he was on or off duty. It also requires the NYPD to report on any injuries or the severity of injuries that happen at the hands of police.

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The second law, 606-B, will require the NYPD to issue a quarterly record of use of force, organized by the offense between an officer and person and the reason it occurred. The first quarterly report is required to be issued within 30 days of June 30, 2017.

The third law, 824-A, will require the NYPD to publish an annual report of the total number and percentage of officers in each precinct who have either two or more substantiated complaints from the Citizen Complaint Review Board in the last three years. It records the officers who have been suspended in the last five years, used excessive force in the past three years, or been arrested for police-related behavior in the past 10 years.

The pieces of legislation have been at least a year in the making and are what Vanessa Gibson, chair of the Committee on Public Safety, called "baby steps" toward working with police officers to understand the patterns and reasoning behind why and how they use excessive force.

"We've seen so many cases across the city where officers have been using force, or what we deem as excessive force," Gibson told Patch. "I think it's important to understand a little bit of the story behind that force, why an officer thought it was necessary to use force. We're not trying to be antagonists towards the department, we're trying to support and complement the work they're doing."

The laws build on the NYPD's new guidelines introduced in October 2015 for recording and investigation use of force by officers. The NYPD said it supports the laws being voted on Tuesday, while the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the city's largest police union, said it was against them.

"We support these bills and worked closely with the speaker and Council on them," an NYPD official told Patch Tuesday.

Image by Jason Lawrence/Flickr/CC by 2.0