NYPD Blowing Off 'Right To Know' Laws, Advocates Say

NEW YORK — Not much has changed for New Yorkers who get stopped and searched by cops six months after landmark police-reform laws took effect, advocates say.

Cops are supposed to to give business cards to people they stop and ask for permission to perform certain searches under two city laws known as the Right to Know Act that took effect in mid-October.

But in reality, advocates say, officers don't bother to give out their cards and laugh at people who ask. And illegal searches are still taking place despite the new rules, reformers say.

"The NYPD is still conducting illegal searches, is still coercing community members into agreeing searches, is still intimidating our communities when they're stopping them on the street," Yul-san Liem, the co-director of the Justice Committee, said at a Monday news conference outside City Hall.

The City Council passed the contentious Right to Know Act in December 2017. While the law covers interactions between cops and civilians such as searches, frisks and sobriety checkpoints, it does not require officers to give out business cards when they are asking for identification or seeking basic information.

NYPD officials say they have worked hard to spread the word about the law's new requirements to the department's thousands of officers.

Cops asked 419 people for permisison to perform searches in the last three months of 2018, 368 of whom gave consent, said Oleg Chernyavsky, the NYPD's executive director of legislative affairs. The Police Department also printed and distributed more than 10 million business cards in its effort to implement the law, police officials said Monday.

But the Justice Committee has seen "dozens" of violations of the law, Liem said. They range from not giving out business cards when New Yorkers ask for them to coercively collecting DNA information from people, she added.

The NYPD also didn't put "adequate" instructions about getting permission to perform searches into its patrol guide, Liem said.

"It’s not a matter of a few bad apples, but something that is widespread," said Anthony Posada, the supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society's Community Justice Unit.

Victoria Davis — the sister of Delrawn Small, who was killed by an off-duty cop in a 2016 road-rage shooting — said she asked for a business card from a cop whom she saw standing by while an elderly woman bled out on the street in her community in February.

The officer gave her a blank business card and told Davis to fill it out after she asked him to do so himself, she said. Davis said she complained to the Civilian Complaint Review Board about the incident.

"There are other New Yorkers who are not as informed, and so an incident like the one that I've experienced can happen to someone else and nothing would be done about it," Davis said.

The NYPD is already planning to refine its implementation efforts, Chernyavsky said. For example, he said, the department will "more prominently highlight" the need for cops to follow translation guidelines when asking for permission to search someone who doesn't speak English well.

"As with all new initiatives ... there will come a point where we reassess and make necessary changes," Chernyavsky told City Council lawmakers Monday. "We are in the process of doing that now and there were several comments from community advocacy groups that make sense and will be included in future revisions."

But one Council member said the NYPD has to get its act together.

"The Right to Know Act is a law. It is a mandate. It’s not a discussion, It’s not a choice," said Councilman Antonio Reynoso (D-Brooklyn). "It must be done."