Mayor Adams is inviting City Council members and other elected officials to go on ride-alongs with cops, part of a last-ditch effort to squash a bill requiring NYPD officers to document every investigative encounter they have with civilians.
With the Council poised to override his Friday veto of the legislation, which is intended to increase transparency around police stops, Adams announced the offer on Sunday, apparently hoping to chip away at the bill’s strong support.
“This bill will force these officers to spend far too much time filling out paperwork,” the mayor said at a City Hall press conference, repeating his main criticism of the “How Many Stops Act.”
“We want them to ride with a police officer, go listen to these calls and these jobs that are coming over the radio, see what it is to respond to these jobs,” he said of Council members and citywide elected officials. “This is a moment when we must be on the ground and see the realization of any form of legislation that’s coming out of our city government.”
The “How Many Stops Act,” which passed the Council last month, lays out three levels of police encounters for which cops would have to document their interactions with the public. Supporters said the law would prevent the return of the kind of biased law enforcement the city saw during the Bloomberg-era peak of stop-question-and-frisk policing.
Council leaders vowed Friday to quickly override the mayor, who vetoed both the “How Many Stops” bill and a ban on solitary confinement in city jails.
In a Sunday invite sent to lawmakers, the Adams administration said pols who take him up on his offer to go on police ride-alongs would receive bulletproof vests for the four-hour-long sessions. At the end of the day, they’ll be invited to half-hour conversations at Police Headquarters, an “opportunity to reflect on their experience on the front lines with the NYPD,” the invite said.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, co-sponsor of the “How Many Stops” legislation, slammed Adams’ press conference as “grotesque.”
“Mayor Adams is threatening the long-term safety of our city every time he speaks about the imaginary legislation he opposes,” Williams, a Democrat, said in a statement.
“Today’s press conference was a grotesque example of the mayor hiding behind the pain and fears of people he misinforms and manipulates. The weakness and shamelessness on display is astonishing,” he added.
At the Sunday press conference, Adams said the “only part” of the “How Many Stops” bill he objected to was language about the lowest level of stops, “level one,” which he says would necessitate more documentation than supporters of the legislation have indicated.
Williams and Council spokesman Mandela Jones rejected the criticism.
“Nearly all of their feedback and suggested language changes were accepted, except for their repeated attempts to entirely exempt Level 1 encounters,” Jones said in a statement.
“We repeatedly told them we would not completely exempt Level 1 investigative encounters, but were open to considering specific exemptions and encouraged them to offer ones. They never did,” the spokesman added.
Adams, a Dem who won office on a tough-on-crime platform, also doubled down on his opposition to the solitary-confinement ban, insisting that the practice does not take place in city jails and noting a federal monitor overseeing the jails previously came out against the legislation.
Supporters of the ban say Adams’ claims about the use of solitary are false. Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) promised last week to override the mayoral veto on that bill, too.
With Chris Sommerfeldt
