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In a recent landmark decision, the City Council of New York City has passed the How Many Stops Act, defying a veto from Mayor Eric Adams and objections from the law enforcement community.
The act mandates that police officers track the race of individuals they stop for questioning during low-level investigative encounters.
This move, according to supporters, aims to address and potentially curb racial disparities in policing, setting a precedent that could influence police departments nationwide.
Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, the first Black person to lead the City Council, said the act will help shed light on the disproportionate impact of unconstitutional stops on Black and Latino New Yorkers.
“These stops can no longer happen in the shadows,” Speaker Adams said.
Under the new law, officers are required to document details of investigative stops, including the race, gender, age and ethnicity of the individuals stopped, as well as the circumstances that led to the stop and its outcome.
Previously, officers only had to log stops if they had probable cause for an arrest or reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, similar to the criteria used in the controversial “stop and frisk” policy.
Experts and advocates argue that collecting data on these lower-level stops will provide crucial insights into racial disparities in policing and could lead to meaningful reforms.
Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, said that data was crucial to implementing policing reforms.
“Data is really the only way that you can even start a conversation about reforms in so many situations,” Bonds stated.
While many law enforcement agencies already collect data on certain types of stops, the new law aims to fill the gap by requiring documentation of investigative stops where officers ask individuals about known crimes or suspected criminal activities.
However, the act is not supported across the board, especially among the policing community.
Critics of the law, including Mayor Eric Adams, expressed concern about its potential impact on police work, citing increased paperwork for officers and the possibility of inaccuracies in data collection.
“Police officers are forced to fill out additional paperwork rather than focus on helping New Yorkers and strengthening community bonds,” the mayor said.
The mayor, whose veto of the act was overridden by the council, previously told council members that the move could impair public safety.
“If you talk to the victim of a crime or law enforcement professional, they will tell you: in public safety, seconds matter,” Adams said at City Hall.
Jillian Snider, a former NYPD officer who works as an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College, enumerated several drawbacks to the policy.
For one, Snider believes if officers are forced to document their conversations with the public, they may be less likely to engage in conversation in general, which could hamper investigations and community engagement.
In addition, Snider raised concerns about inaccurate data collection, noting that police across more than 50 towns and cities in the state marked a majority of men with Hispanic surnames as white on traffic tickets.
“I assume most people are not going to be forthcoming with that information, so you’re gonna have a lot of cops doing a lot of guessing on what people’s demographics and ethnicity are,” Snider said. “Or on the complete opposite end, you might just have cops not talking to people, period, unless they have reasonable suspicion to do so.”
The impact of the policy could be far-reaching, with Snider pointing out that it could signal changes to other departments across the country.
“In cities and localities that have council members that are of the ideological persuasion of those in the New York City Council, I do think that this could start a trend,” she said.
Regarding Adams’ and Snider’s concerns, advocates argued that the benefits of increased transparency and accountability outweigh these concerns.
The new law is set to go into effect immediately, with officers mandated to release the first data in the fall.
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