A coalition of New York business owners explains here why the How Many Stops Act makes the city less safe and argues that Mayor Adams' veto of the bill must stand. The authors (starting near the right) are: Nick R. Lugo, president and president of the New York City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; Jackie Rowe Adams, founder of Harlem Mothers Save; Nelson Eusebio, former executive director of the National Supermarket Association and NSA government relations representative.
How do we want our tax dollars to be spent on paperwork and police work?
Ask any New Yorker on any street in your neighborhood and you'll likely get the same answer. That is police work, not paperwork.
And a key part of police work is building trusting relationships with community members. This work is done online and in person, one conversation at a time.
That's the fundamental problem with the “stop count law'' that the City Council recently passed. This bill would require the New York City Police Department to report on all interactions with the general public, including interactions marked Level 1, which are not targeted interactions but are the routine work of a dedicated and dedicated police officer. It is mandatory to submit the following information.
Workload nightmare
The current system focuses on reporting only the most serious encounters, those considered Level 3 and Level 4 on a four-point scale. The bill would also force the NYPD to report all Level 1 and Level 2 encounters, dramatically increasing the workload of officers and creating a strong disincentive for New Yorkers to engage with law enforcement. It becomes a factor.
Let's be clear: Our city has a history of over-policing that has led to a new era of increased surveillance and stronger protections for all New Yorkers, especially people of color. As advocates who have always fought for greater accountability for police officers, we support the vision of fairness and justice held out by the proponents of this bill.
But stop-and-frisk laws, however well-intentioned, have had huge ramifications for all aspects of law enforcement, with New York City struggling to keep New Yorkers safe despite budget cuts. At present, police overtime will incur staggering costs.
In addition to requiring everyone to report to be unrealistic, requiring police officers to report the race, ethnicity, gender, and age of everyone involved, as well as details of the circumstances surrounding the encounter, It will become more troublesome.
This raises serious privacy concerns and could have the unintended consequence of discouraging New Yorkers of all backgrounds from speaking with police officers, which would do more than make our communities safer. In fact, it will decline.
unintended consequences
We support all efforts to increase transparency, fairness, and accountability in law enforcement, including reforms that will reduce stop-and-frisk encounters by 98% from 2011 to 2022.
But this bill is a classic example of a law that causes more problems and creates more tension than it solves when it finally tries to move forward.
Police officers should be encouraged to speak honestly with community members and ask for their help in keeping our streets safe. Reducing every interaction between a police officer and a citizen to another set of input data points is the opposite of community policing.
This is not the outcome we want as we seek to protect New Yorkers. We want to make sure we're building community, not barriers. The best way to do that is not by adding more red tape, but by supporting quality community-based policing that respects all New Yorkers and gets real results.
