New York City police officers will be required to record the apparent race, gender, and ages of most people they stop for questioning under a law passed Tuesday by the City Council, which overrode a veto by Mayor Eric Adams. The law gives police reform advocates a major win in requiring the nation’s largest police department and its 36,000 officers to document all investigative encounters in a city that once had officers routinely stop and frisk huge numbers of men for weapons, a strategy that took a heavy toll on communities of color. The new law requires officers to document basic information in low-level encounters, where police ask for information from people who aren’t necessarily suspected of a crime, according to the Associated Press. Officers also will have to report the circumstances that led to stopping a particular person. The data would be made public on the police department’s website.
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who sponsored the bill, said that reporting the encounters could be done in less than a minute on an officer’s smartphone through the system already in place. “This is not about preventing police work,” Williams said. “This is police work.” The mayor, a Democrat and former police captain, on Tuesday argued that in police work, minutes and seconds could be the difference between life and death. “These bills will make New Yorkers less safe on the streets, while police officers are forced to fill out additional paperwork rather than focus on helping New Yorkers and strengthening community bonds,” he said in a statement after the vote, in which the council cleared the bar of two-thirds support needed to override the veto with 42 in favor and 9 against. Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, a Democrat who is not related to the mayor, said police and other opponents were exaggerating how much of a burden the new requirements would be. The law doesn’t require officers to document casual conversations, such as providing directions, which are explicitly exempt under the requirements, she stressed.