Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and the rest of the anti-cop left down at City Hall have a new scheme to reduce the NYPD’s effectiveness: Bury cops under endless and useless paperwork to record in detail every interaction with civilians.
What a way to kill community policing.
City Council Intro. 586-A would order cops to report on all stops and indeed most interactions with civilians, with racial/demographic info on who they talked to, the reasons for the encounter and the results if it involved any enforcement action.
It’s about transparency, Williams claims. No, it’s “detrimental to building community and police relations, as it disincentivizes officers from approaching people who might need their help,” explains Michael Clarke, the NYPD’s legislative director.
And never mind that the NYPD uses force less often than any other major-city department, nor that even the federal monitor overseeing the NYPD’s revamp of stop-and-frisk said that rules like these go too far.
Mayor Eric Adams, a former cop, surely knows just how onerous and counterproductive this idea is; expect him to veto it if the council somehow passes it.
Which Williams has to realize.
Has not showing up to work just left Jumaane bored?
That might explain his other proposals for NYPD make-work, like ordering police bodycam video turned over to the Department of Investigation even when it’s not part of any DOI investigation.
That’s insane: Releasing that footage requires hours of work for redaction to protect civilians’ privacy.
The rule would keep cops trapped inside the precinct.
Williams is trapped in the past, before city crime started soaring and extreme ideas for handcuffing cops seemed risk-free.
No more: Notably, the surprise winner in Harlem’s Democratic City Council primary, Yusef Salaam, recognizes that communities “need police to do the work that they’re doing” and want “smarter policing” backed by a “robust” budget.
That should be a warning to every council member thinking of backing Williams’ bills: The pendulum has turned; reflexive cop-bashing is a political loser once again.
