Mayor vetoes pair of criminal justice reform bills

Mayor Eric Adams invited police brass, business representatives and civic leaders to City Hall for his veto of a bill aimed at increasing transparency within the NYPD on Friday, Jan. 19, 2024. He also rejected a bill aimed at banning solitary confinement in the city’s jails on Friday. Photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office

By Jacob Kaye

After spending the past week drumming up support for his cause, Mayor Eric Adams on Friday vetoed a pair of recently passed City Council bills, setting up an imminent showdown with the legislature that the mayor is likely to lose.

The mayor’s rejection of what are known as the How Many Stops Act and the Ban Solitary Confinement Act will likely only end up being symbolic – the bills, which were both introduced by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, were passed by the City Council in December by a veto-proof margin.

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams immediately on Friday vowed to override the mayor’s veto of the bills, scolding him for pushing a “false narrative” about the bills’ potential effects.

The mayor had spent the past several weeks publicly bashing the bills, taking nearly every opportunity he was given to denounce them.

He decried the How Many Stops Act during an appearance at a bar mitzvah in Queens and during a press conference about the arrest of a serial stabber. Speaking to the Department of Correction’s newest graduating class of officers, the mayor warned that there were elected officials aiming to make the new officers’ lives more difficult through laws like the ban on solitary confinement.

The pair of Council bills, though different in content, have been linked since the day they were both passed in late December. The legislature has touted the bills as necessary reforms to the city’s criminal justice system, while the mayor has warned that both will make the city less safe.

Despite the connection between the bills, the mayor’s veto of the How Many Stops Act and the ban on solitary confinement looked very different on Friday.

The mayor packed police brass, business representatives and civic leaders into City Hall on Friday morning to announce his rejection of the How Many Stops Act, which would require the NYPD to report on all levels of street stops and interactions they have with members of the public while conducting an investigation – reports of the stops will include details like demographic information on the person who was stopped, the reason for the interaction and whether or not the encounter led to use of force or enforcement actions.

“The How Many Stops Act compromises our public safety,” the mayor said on Friday. “The desire of the bill is misguided and we want to make sure we get the right type of language that would not hurt law enforcement.”

Adams has claimed the bill would make the city less safe by bogging police officers down with paperwork, a claim that has been vehemently been disputed by the public advocate, Council leadership, public defender groups, advocates and others. The mayor also has warned that the bill, while good intentioned, will erode trust between police and communities who may be perturbed by police officers asking for their demographic and other information.

“The practical implementation [of the bill] is challenging,” the mayor said. “Every minute [during an investigation] counts, every second counts.”

Speaking at City Hall on Friday, the mayor was the recipient of cheers and applause that broke out several times as he discussed his veto of the bill. At one point, a Brooklyn bishop said that he and other faith leaders present at City Hall were praying that Adams veto the How Many Stops Act.

“God answers prayers because I’m going to veto this law,” the mayor said in response.

His rejection of the bill was bashed by Williams, as well as advocates and public defense attorneys, who had pushed for the bill’s passage.

“Police stops are at their highest level in nearly a decade, with the overwhelming majority of reported stops impacting Black and Latinx New Yorkers,” said Jennvine Wong, a staff attorney with the Cop Accountability Project at The Legal Aid Society. “Current laws allowing NYPD officers to interrogate and search any New Yorker without reporting the encounter have allowed these inequalities to flourish, and City Hall must take action to protect their vulnerable constituents and hold the NYPD to a higher standard of accountability.”

“We are grateful to Speaker Adams for bringing this legislation forward and to the supermajority who voted for its passage,” Wong added. “We condemn Mayor Adams’ veto of this critical, common-sense legislation and urge the City Council to hold an immediate override vote to ensure that this Act, which will keep all New Yorkers safer and more informed, becomes law.”

Adams’ veto of the bill to ban solitary confinement was far less ceremonious.

After delivering his remarks on the How Many Stops Act on Friday, the mayor was asked about his expected rejection of the solitary confinement bill and declined to specify whether or not he’d veto it before the end of the day, when it otherwise would have passed into law with or without the mayor’s signature.

But several hours after he vetoed the first bill, the mayor’s office announced through a press release Adams’ veto of the second bill.

Despite the quieter announcement, Adams’ has been vocal about his opposition to the ban on solitary confinement.

“While you try to protect the people that are inside our jails, people are trying to take away your power and authority to do the job right,” Adams said at a DOC graduation ceremony earlier this month. “That's what we're fighting against.”

The bill to ban solitary confinement would prevent incarcerated individuals from being held in an isolated cell for more than two hours per day within a 24-hour period and for more than eight hours at night directly after an alleged offense occurred – the confinement would be referred to as a “de-escalation” period. Should corrections officials determine that further confinement is required to de-escalate a situation, an incarcerated person could be held for up to four hours total in a 24-hour period.

The bill would also require that staff meet with the incarcerated person at least once an hour to attempt to de-escalate the situation.

Adams’ argument against the bill begins with its wording. The city claims that it no longer uses solitary confinement, a practice that the U.N. considers a form of torture. Instead, the city uses “punitive segregation.” The difference between the two is largely semantic, advocates, lawmakers, public defenders, detainees and at least one academic study claim.

The mayor has also claimed that the legislation would put officers and detainees at risk by not separating for long enough detainees accused of committing violence while incarcerated.

In his response to the mayor’s veto, Williams said that Adams’ reasons for rejecting the bill were contradictory.

"The administration needs to get its stories straight before it decides to deceive New Yorkers about our bills, otherwise they’ll continue to contradict themselves and deliberately confuse the issues,” Williams said. “Which is it – that solitary confinement doesn't exist, or that they don’t want to ban it?”

Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, the recently-appointed DOC commissioner, has made similar arguments against the bill. She wrote to the court-appointed federal monitor charged with overseeing conditions on Rikers Island to ask for his opinion on the recently-passed bill earlier in the week.

In response, Steve J. Martin, the federal monitor, suggested the City Council make “significant revisions” to the ban on solitary confinement, adding “that the various operational requirements and constraints that accompany the elimination of solitary confinement…will likely exacerbate the already dangerous conditions in the jails, intensify the risk of harm to both persons in custody and department staff, and would seriously impede the city’s and department’s ability to achieve compliance with the requirements of the Nunez Court Orders.”

Adams, who has repeatedly questioned the authority of the monitor over the past year as an attempt to have the city’s control over Rikers Island taken away and handed to a court-appointed receiver, has spent the past week touting the monitor’s assessment of the bill.

“Vetoing this bill will keep those in our custody and our correction officers safer,” the mayor said in a statement on Friday. “[D]espite the [bill’s] misleading nickname, had it taken effect, the Department of Correction would no longer be able to protect people in custody, or the union workers charged with their safety, from violent individuals.”

“I implore the City Council to work with our administration and follow the federal monitor’s guidance to abandon this misguided bill,” he added.

Despite the analysis from the monitor – who also lauded the Council for attempting to ban solitary confinement – it seems unlikely the legislative body do anything but override the mayor’s veto.

“The Council passed Intro. 549-A to ban solitary confinement with more than a veto-proof majority because it is imperative to make the city’s jails safer for those who are detained and staff alike,” the speaker and newly-named Chair of the Committee on Criminal Justice Sandy Nurse said in a joint statement. “We cannot allow the human rights and safety crisis on Rikers to continue by maintaining the status quo of failed policies and practices.”

“The Council stands by its passage of this legislation and will take the steps to enact this law over the mayor’s veto to address the catastrophic conditions that are taking the lives of people in our city’s custody,” they added.

While the mayor claimed that his rejection of the bills was in no way an “anti-Council veto or anti-speaker veto,” Speaker Adams appeared to feel differently.

“At this point, the separate legislative branch’s process must be respected from a good government perspective,” she said. “We urge the mayor’s administration to begin addressing the Council as a co-equal branch of government by coming to legislative negotiations with the competence and good faith that has too often been lacking to best serve our city.”