* Updated - How Many Stops Act Veto Overridden & Was the Mayor Justified in Vetoing the How Many Stops Act Bill [586-A]?

And Did Corporate TV News Inform or Distort the Issue by Televising the Yusef Salaam Stop?

Updated February 1, 2024 from 1.30.24 / NYC Neighborhoods / NYC Law Enforcement / News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz NYC.

The NYC Council voted to override Mayor Adams veto of the How Many Stops Act - Bill 586-A by a margin of 42 to override the veto and 9 in support of it, with 0 abstentions. The City Council also revoked the use of solitary confinement at Rikers. A number of the councilmembers stated an interest in working with Mayor Adams on implementation of the changes, to ensure there's no degradation of law enforcement effectiveness because of the change.

Some council members shared negative experiences of their own and their constituents, of being stopped by the police. Many NYC Council members also commended NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams for drafting and pushing the legislation through the council.

The photo at right was taken at City Hall in December of 2023, when the Mayor met with members of the ethnic and community media, to discuss past, present and future issues and efforts.

CLICK here to read our report about why we think the Mayor was right in vetoing the Too Many Stops Act.

* Updated - How Many Stops Act Veto Overridden & Was the Mayor Justified in Vetoing the How Many Stops Act Bill [586-A]?

And Did Corporate TV News Inform or Distort the Issue by Televising the Yusef Salaam Stop?

Updated February 1, 2024 from 1.30.24 / NYC Neighborhoods / NYC Law Enforcement / News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz NYC. Continued.

This is broked into two sections - the update, which is about the NYC Council vote to override the Mayor's veto, followed by why we thought the Too Many Stops Act was legislation that wasn't well thought out and therefore never should have been passed into law.

This Bill Appears Cumbersome, Demotivating & Impractical

But, I have one last question to those who voted for this bill, because I think it's not only cumbersome and distracting, but also unenforceable. The question is, how would the NYC Council members feel if the NYPD unions managed to push though a referendum, requiring NYC Council members to log all of their interactions in calls, meetings and emails in the same fashion as they are asking the members of the NYPD to do? It would provide voters with greater transparency, and that's good isn't it?

Would those who voted for the How Many Stops Act support the same sort of transparency bill for NYC Council members, as they have just passed for members of the NYPD? In closing the voting session yesterday, Adrienne Adams said that transparency is what the How Many Stops Act bill was all about. She rhetorically asked what are those who oppose the bill so afraid of. So if a bill were floated requiring the same transparency of NYC Council members, by requiring them to document all of their business related interactions every day, could not one rightfully ask those NYC Council members who oppose such a bill, what are they afraid of?

Or would the members of the NYC Council find such a requirement to be burdensome, distracting and ultimately counterproductive to their work? As the NYPD will certainly find under the How Many Stops Act going forward. As I stated previously, I think the NYC Council's efforts would have been better spent making the existing agencies function more effectively, than by adding another ineffective layer of ineffective bureaucracy.

The Facts - Bad Stops, Bad Actors & Why Not Improve Existing Assets?

According to the federal monitor in 2022, about 3,750 stops weren't sufficiently justified / constitutional. That's 10 unjustified stops per day by a police force of 36,000. On an annual basis that means that if everyone of those stops were done by a different officer, maximally ten percent of the NYPD officers aren't acting properly.

I would hypothesize that multiple inadequately justified stops were done by the same police officers. So the NYC Council's efforts would be more effectively spent by identifying the bad actors and then either rooting them out or rehabilitating them. I suspect a lot of the data needed to identify these bad actors is already in the hands of the four bureaucracies charged with addressing / correcting racism in the NYPD, which include 1) the Civilian Complaint Review Board, 2) NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau, 3) the NYPD Office of Inspector General and 4) the NYS Attorney General's Office. Adding another layer of bureaucracy likely isn't going to help nearly as much as making one or more of the above agencies work better.

Was this Bill an Act of Punishment for the NYPD?

Making the bureaucracies above work more effectively would be less disruptive, less alienating of the NYPD, and a more effective way forward than the How Many Stops Act, which punishes the remaining 90% of the NYPD [good actors] with what seems to me a well intentioned bill, but one that seems operationally unenforceable. The How Many Stops Act is likely to demoralize, demotivate and disempower the NYPD, at a time when we need them to stay focused on fighting crime and maintaining the peace and law and order for which they've generally been doing a fair job.

Given the range of personal accounts of negative interactions with the NYPD, told during the voting session to override the Mayor's veto, it's worth asking whether the How Many Stops Act is a punishment or a step forward. Yes, obtaining the data could be informative - but also possibly disinformative - as it appears the data isn't easily verifiable and could readily be manipulated by bad actors. More importantly, the collateral damage to the morale and the authority of the NYPD, will be insidious, and very hard to measure.

I hope the NYC Council will work with the Mayor to mitigate the potential damage to the NYPD this could wreak, or better yet, strike it down before it starts. And then set about to make those agencies currently in existence to address racism and other law enforcement wrongs, more responsive the New Yorkers' complaints about those policepersons who don't treat the public as respectfully as each situation warrants.

Lastly, it's going to continue to take more time, for all of us as a society to work through / heal the societal rifts caused by slavery and racism. It's worth noting that there are millions of white Americans whose ancestry had nothing to do with slavery, and many who have ancestors who fought to end it, many of whom were killed doing so. So, we must all try to listen, be patient, and respect one another - even when we disagree on how to move forward. Over time, both the right - and the wrong - paths generally become too obvious to ignore.

Does the How Many Stops Act Bill Make Sense?

Was the Mayor's Veto Justified & did Corporate TV Inform or Distract?

January 29, 2024 / NYC Neighborhoods / NYC Law Enforcement / News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz NYC.

Does the How Many Stops Act, Bill 586-A, Make Sense?

The How Many Stops Act [Bill 586-A] would require the NYPD to document interactions with civilians when conducting an investigation. The City Council passed the bill on December 20, 2023. The Mayor vetoed it on January 19, 2024. Here's a link to the bill which you may cut & paste to review - https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=5725293&GUID=C4781093-1108-4E04-848D- 473B2E47BD2E&Options=ID%7CText%7C&Search=level+1+and+2+encounters

In a Word - No

We support the Mayor and believe the How Many Stops Act [586-A] goes too far in burdening the NYPD with bureaucratic paperwork, which could serve to discourage police officers from fully interacting with the community. This effort appears overzealous in the same fashion as efforts to the defund the police were.  Why?

Why the Veto was Justified & the How Many Stops Act Doesn't Make Sense

It adds another level of bureaucracy to policing efforts, without really addressing the problem which is essentially about racial profiling / discrimination. Resources and energy would be better spent making the safeguards already in place, work more effectively.

NYPD police officers are already required to wear bodycams.  

There are also multiple agencies set up to deal with any allegations vis-a-vis discriminatory policing, such as: 1) the Civilian Complaint Review Board,2) the NYS Attorney General's Office, 3) NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau and 4) the NYPD Office of Inspector General. It's worth pointing out that ALL of the top people in each of these organizations is a Hispanic or African American - members of the minority groups believed to be the target of NYPD police bias / discrimination.

In October 2022 the Civilian Complaint Review Board [aka CCRB] was given new powers to conduct their own investigations of NYPD bias and racial profiling claims. Prior to this change - which should help make the CCRB operate more effectively - the CCRB could only recommend that the NYPD investigate. This was a nice enhancement, and is a good example of how the NYC Council ought to spend its efforts to improve NYPD operations in this area.

The 2022 Data: 15,000 NYPD Stops, 80% of Suspects & Arrests were Hispanic & Black

In 2022, there were about 15,000 NYPD civilian stops. This is significantly below the 686,000 done in 2011 [NYT 11.9.23], at the height of former Mayor Bloomberg's Stop N' Frisk campaign. An estimated 75% of the stops were deemed constitutional by a federal monitor [Spectrum 6.6.23]. That leaves about 3,750 inadequately justified stops in the year or about 10 per day.

The stops are predominantly of minorities, an estimated 97%, but it should be pointed out that in the 2022 NYPD report on race, approximately 80% of the suspects and arrestees are either African American or Hispanic. Cut and paste this link for details - https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/year-end-2022-enforcement-report.pdf. This would seem to explain why the NYPD stops, disproportionately affect minorities.

Root Causes of Crime - Lack of Income, Opportunities & Advancement

This does not mean that all of the people suspected and arrested were guilty. Nor that any ethnicity is more criminal than another. What it usually points to, is the socioeconomic class of the people who commit crimes. A March 31, 2023 statement by InsideTime.org succinctly goes to the heart of the issue - "... Though poverty does not directly cause crime, there is a strong correlation between poverty and criminal activity. The cost of being unable to afford necessities, combined with the lack of opportunity for social and economic advancement, creates a breeding ground for criminal activity ..".

The Adams Administration has been Working Hard to Address The Root Issues

Mayor Adams, a former police officer and civil rights activist, understands this and seems to be making every effort to holistically address these issues. Click here to read our report on the Adams Administration's efforts to move through the food chain to address crime and click here to read our report where we uncovered that Eric Adams has been a civil rights activist since he was a teenager.

The Corporate TV Media Fails the Public, by Relentlessly Sensationalizing Events in Search of Ratings Revenue, Instead of Seeking, Contextualizing & Publicizing the Facts

All the TV hype about the traffic stop of City Councilmember Yusef Salaam, failed to point out to their audiences that he was stopped because he was driving a car with Georgia plates [Georgia is one of the 'Iron Pipeline' gun toting states] and the officer believed the tinted windows violated NYC law [too dark].  It wasn't an act of racial profiling, because the officer couldn't see the color or gender of the driver through the tinted windows. This could very easily be justified as a reasonable stop because Georgia is an Iron Pipeline state and the too dark tinted windows is a violation of NYC law.

Go Local - The Broken Corporate TV Media Make the Mayor's Job More Challenging

This is just one of many failures of the corporate broadcast media's failure to accurately inform the public. They appear to favor sensationalizing people and events, particularly crime and accidents, in order to generate ratings. In the February 29, 2016 edition of the Hollywood Reporter then Chairman & CEO of CBS, Leslie Moonves, declared "... [Trump] may not be good for America, but [he's] it's damned good for CBS ...". The corporate TV moguls, like Moonves, too often appear focused on ratings and revenue, while ignoring the collateral damage that their feckless reporting does to the community.

In 2015 we started documenting media reality distortions of Rupert Murdoch who controls Fox News, the NY Post and the Wall Street Journal. And since then, have discovered that - although to a far lesser extent [to date] - these sorts of reality distortions, omissions, distractions and practices have also infected the top TV networks. In their quest for ratings revenue, the corporate TV stations seem to endlessly hype crime, distract with celebrity and sports 'news' and gossip [which are essentially TV infommercials for the programming in their other TV dayparts], and throw in some generic national news - instead of researching, contextualizing and publicizing the facts associated with city and state level issues. They would have to actually invest in hiring real newspeople, instead of hiring telegenic teleprompter readers who 'model' the news by regurgitating and publicizing what they found on social media that day.

The net effect is that this corporate media failure has made the Mayor's job even more challenging, as the city faces multiple, difficult issues. The Mayor needs an informed electorate, as only an informed electorate can make intelligent, fact-based decisions. See a reprint of a press release issued by the Mayor's Office providing insights as to why he vetoed the Too Many Stops Act / Bill 586-A on January 19, 2024 and why many community leaders and groups support his veto, which we published on 1.29.24. 

In Conclusion - The How Many Stops Act is Unverifiable and therefore Unenforceable

I was disappointed to see the NYC Council override the Mayor's veto because the law they passed is unverifiable since the NYPD is not charged with obtaining names and addresses of those they stop. And because it's unverifiable, it's also unenforceable, so it makes a mockery of the legislative body that passed it, and of course those who voted for it.

At the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division courthouse in Midtown Manhattan, just off Madison Square Park, there's a statue with the inscription that says "Every law not based on wisdom is a menace to the state."

For these reasons, I think the How Many Stops Act should be repealed.