Council overrides mayor’s vetoes of criminal justice bills
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City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams led the Council in its override of the mayor’s veto of two criminal justice bills on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024. Photo by John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit
By Jacob Kaye
The City Council on Tuesday voted to override the mayor’s veto of a bill aimed at increasing transparency in the NYPD and a bill to ban solitary confinement in the city’s jails, putting to an end a weeks-long public debate riddled with accusations from both councilmembers, Mayor Eric Adams and his allies that the other side purposely were spreading half-truths or outright lies.
Ending the power struggle between the city’s executive and its legislature, the Council voted 42 to nine to override the mayor’s veto of what’s known as the How Many Stops Act and the Ban Solitary Confinement bill. The vote essentially fell along party lines, with each of the Council’s Republican members and its Democratic members who more often than not side with the GOP – including Queens City Councilmember Robert Holden – voting to uphold the mayor’s veto, and its Democratic members voting to overturn it.
Both pieces of legislation were passed by the Council in December with a veto-proof majority. However, the mayor, who vocally opposed the bills prior to their passage, vetoed both bills a little less than two weeks ago.
In the days after issuing the vetoes, the mayor went on a public campaign in an attempt to convince not only New Yorkers, but a small number of councilmembers that the bills would make policing more difficult and the city’s jails more dangerous, respectively.
Similarly, the Council, led by Speaker Adrienne Adams and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who sponsored both bills, ran a campaign of their own in defense of the bills that now, withstanding any potential legal challenges, will become law.
The dueling campaigns continued throughout Tuesday in the lead up to the Council’s afternoon vote. At times, the debate got contentious and led to several tense exchanges on the Council’s floor.
Speaking with reporters during his weekly “off-topic” press conference, the mayor spent much of the presser bashing the legislation he said was well-intentioned but not reflective of either policing methods or correctional procedures. Earlier on Tuesday, the mayor appeared on a number of local television morning shows to make one final appeal to the public.
During an appearance on NY1, Mayor Adams appeared to accept that the Council would ultimately overturn his vetoes and urged lawmakers to make changes to the bills before they go into effect over the summer.
“I’m hoping if this [veto] is overrode by the City Council, that before we execute it, let’s correct the parts of it that are going too burdensome to catching people who are dangerous in our city,” the mayor said of the How Many Stops Act.
Mayor Eric Adams’ veto of the How Many Stops Act and the Ban Solitary Confinement bill were overturned by the City Council on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024. Photo by Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
But later in the morning, Speaker Adams said that the time for making changes to the bills, both of which have been kicking around the legislature for years, had passed.
“We are not looking to amend this legislation,” the speaker said.
Though the bill to ban solitary confinement was equally contentious, a majority of the debate on Tuesday was over the How Many Stops Act.
The bill 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 goal of the bill is to begin to paint a picture of who is stopped by the NYPD, which primarily stopped Black and brown New Yorkers during its implementation of stop and frisk, a policy that was found to be unconstitutional around a decade ago. The practice of stop and frisk – and its racial breakdown – has largely continued through the work of the NYPD’s anti-crime units, according to the NYPD’s federal monitor.
Last year, the monitor found that 97 percent of those stopped by the NYPD’s neighborhood safety units, which were created by Mayor Adams, were Black or brown New Yorkers. Nearly 25 percent of the stops conducted by the units were unconstitutional.
The mayor has said his primary issue with the bill is that it would require police officers to document the lowest level of stops, known as a Level 1 stop. Level 1 stops can be made by a cop regardless of criminal suspicion and could include instances where officers are looking for a missing child or pet and asking New Yorkers on the street if they have any information in regards to their search.
Under current NYPD rules, officers are only required to document Level 3 stops, which are made when someone is under reasonable suspicion of committing a crime.
The mayor, NYPD and Republican members of the City Council have argued that the documentation of Level 1 stops will prove over-burdensome on police officers and could take away from investigative work or responding to an emergency.
“You have to look at the operationalization of that concept,” the mayor said. “And that is what I believe will change hearts and hopefully will change votes.”
But Williams, the speaker and a majority of the Council argued that by documenting Level 1 stops, the NYPD could begin to document any possible racial biases in their work and potentially prevent incidents where a Level 1 stop escalates and potentially becomes fatal.
During the Council’s vote, Republican Queens Councilmember Vickie Paladino, who voted against overturning the mayor’s vetoes, claimed that the debate over the How Many Stops Act should not be one focused on race. In an attempt to prove her point, Paladino, a white woman, said that her brother has had his own run-ins with law enforcement over the course of his life, serving time in prison for stealing a car.
Queens City Councilmember Vickie Paladino voted to uphold the mayor’s veto of two criminal justice bills on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024. At several points during the day, Paladino got into tense exchanges with her fellow councilmembers. Photo by Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit
Immediately after giving her remarks, Bronx Councilmember Kevin Riley said that Paladino’s story when compared to his own experiences highlights the racial biases in policing.
Riley said that shortly after graduating from college, he drove to the Upper West Side where he worked, and while looking for parking, was arrested and brought to a holding cell within a police precinct.
“They thought I was casing houses,” Riley said. “This is something that we deal with on a daily basis. So, when you all say, ‘This is not a racial thing,’ have you ever stepped in our shoes?”
The overriding of the mayor’s vetoes serves as a major win for the Council and Speaker Adams, who managed to increase the number of councilmembers voting in support of the legislation on Tuesday.
Despite taking a number of councilmembers on ride-alongs with the NYPD over the weekend, the mayor did not convince any lawmakers to change their vote on overriding his veto. In fact, several councilmembers who previously abstained from voting on the How Many Stops Act, voted to pass it into law on Tuesday.
One of those members was Queens City Councilmember Francisco Moya, a staunch ally of the mayor. While explaining his vote on Tuesday, the Western Queens lawmaker said that he hoped the bill would be amended before its implementation later this year.
“Today's vote is not one that I take lightly,” Moya said. “It is not often that the legislation that we pass in the Council is vetoed by the mayor and even more rare that it is that this body overrides that veto.”
“I will be voting in support of the override but I hope that conversations continue over the next month before implementation to address the very real concerns over safety,” he added.
Eastern Queens Councilmember Linda Lee, who like Moya, abstained from the original vote on the How Many Stops Act but voted to override the mayor’s veto on Tuesday, made similar remarks following her vote.
But if the bills will even be implemented remains to be seen.
Last year, the Council overrode the mayor’s veto of a bill that would expand eligibility for the CityFHEPS housing voucher program. Though it is now city law, the Adams administration has yet to implement it.
When asked if he would respond to the Council’s override of the bills on Tuesday as he did to the CityFHEPS bill, the mayor said that he would “follow the law” once both the How Many Stops Act and the ban on solitary confinement go into effect.
Beyond the Adams administration’s willingness to implement the laws, at least one could potentially face a legal challenge.
The council’s ban on solitary confinement has been called into question by federal monitor Steve J. Martin, who was appointed by a federal judge nearly a decade ago to track conditions in the city’s jails.
The legislation banning 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.
The mayor – who denies the city uses solitary confinement but also argued that banning the practice would make the city’s jails less safe – touted Martin’s assessment of the bill, which was submitted in writing to federal Judge Laura Swain earlier this month. Swain is the judge overseeing the ongoing civil rights case known as Nunez v. the City of New York and is currently weighing whether or not the city should be stripped of its control over Rikers Island.
Suggesting the City Council make “significant revisions” to the ban on solitary confinement, Martin said that “that the various operational requirements and constraints that accompany the elimination of solitary confinement in Council Bill 549-A 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.”
But councilmembers bucked the monitor’s assessment of the bill just before its passage on Tuesday.
Queens City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán, a former public defender, voted to override the mayor’s veto of the How Many Stops Act and the Ban Solitary Confinement bill on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024. Photo by Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit
“The entire Council has considered and weighed all of the sometimes competing information from various stakeholders, including people who have lived through solitary, family members, other national experts, people working in the jails, the [Department of Correction] commissioner, the federal monitor, and we have decided that the provisions of [the bill] are the proper way forward and are urgent and necessary to stop harm, reduce violence and save lives,” Western Queens City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán said.
“The entire Council has fully considered all of the information and concern shared by the monitor and after considering the competing information, including that shared by other national experts on solitary and violence prevention, we believe that the current retried and renamed policies have led to endless cycles of abuse violence and death,” she added. “[Our bill] provides an opportunity for a new approach.”
