Members of the New York City Council were expected to press top NYPD brass on Monday on the department’s implementation of a law that is meant to increase transparency around police stops of civilians and was passed over Mayor Eric Adams’ veto earlier this year.
The Council’s public safety committee, chaired by Yusef Salaam of Upper Manhattan, was slated to hold a hearing on the How Many Stops Act on Monday at 10 a.m. Top NYPD leaders, including Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey and Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters Michael Gerber, were slated to testify, according to the Council.
Councilmembers initially passed the law last December, over intense objections from Adams and the NYPD. It requires police to report demographic and other data on all civilian stops, including so-called low-level stops where officers ask people for their ID or where they’re going — not just stops where officers detain, frisk or arrest people.
Adams vetoed the measure in January, setting up a faceoff with the Council after some last-minute horse-trading and lobbying around the bill. The Council then overrode Adams’ veto later that month, forcing the law to take effect and dealing a major blow to the mayor, a former NYPD officer who ran for office on public safety pledges.
According to data shared by the Council on Sunday, the NYPD reported more than 562,000 investigative encounters with civilians in the third quarter of this year, including more than 14,800 enforcement actions. Of those encounters, the vast majority were considered the lowest “level 1,” compared to over 4,200 considered “level 2” and nearly 6,500 considered “level 3.”
“At each level, NYPD officers’ investigative encounters disproportionately impacted Black people,” the Council said in a release. “The Committee will examine the NYPD’s efforts to implement court-mandated reforms of its use of stop-and-frisk, seek to evaluate the implementation of the HMSA, and question the NYPD’s policing and enforcement strategies.”
Critics of the bill said it would create burdensome reporting requirements for police officers and hinder crime solving. Adams and the NYPD campaigned publicly against the legislation, releasing videos on social media that argued it would make the city less safe.
This is a developing story and may be updated.