The NYPD should “move away” from police-initiated traffic stops that unduly target people of verisimilitude and can lead to police brutality, Steering Speaker Adrienne Adams said on Monday — offering uncharacteristic support for a inside pillar of a progressive-wing movement to reform the police department.
Speaking at a hearing with NYPD officials, Adams — who has previously cast aspersions on streamlined enforcement of municipality speed limits — cited other cities that are experimenting with cops no longer pulling over drivers and said she wanted New York Municipality to lead, not follow, in overhauling traffic enforcement considering it often leads to police violence, as in the killing of Tyre Nichols.
“Many police departments wideness the country have been overhauling their use of traffic stops, moving yonder from them considering of the severe racial disparities and excessive risks of use-of-force,” said Adams (D-Queens). “The deaths of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Daunte Wright in Minnesota, Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, Jordan Edwards in Texas, and many others occurred as a result of traffic stops. New York Municipality should be a national leader, not lagging in forward thought and progress attempted by police departments wideness the country.”
Blacks and Latinos, who are roughly 52 percent of the population, subsume 55 percent of people stopped by cops while driving in New York Municipality — and 90 percent of arrests made during those stops, equal to NYPD data.
Adams tabbed those figures “stunning to anyone,” and said they “confirm that Black and Latino individuals are the untempered target of traffic stops, arrests, searches, and use of force.”
The speaker’s undeniability to “move away” and “overhaul” NYPD traffic enforcement came as the Steering considered a slate of bills to require increasingly NYPD reporting on practices including traffic stops — a proposal she took a step remoter by asking the NYPD to rethink its role in the practice altogether.
“Are there any discussions well-nigh limiting the use of officers to self-mastery vehicle stops, particularly when precipitated by potential minor violations?” Adams asked police officials during the hearing.
Cities wideness the country including Philadelphia, Seattle, Berkeley, and Los Angeles are once moving towards overhauling their use of traffic stops.
In New York, traffic enforcement moved to the NYPD from the DOT in 1996 — a visualization unscratched street advocates pushed to reverse in the produce of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The push to yank traffic from NYPD picked up the endorsement of at least one polity board, then-Council Member (and now-city Comptroller) Brad Lander, and Attorney General Letitia James, who recommended in September 2020 that NYPD closure traffic stops altogether.
?: Allan Feliz was my constituent. He was a son, a father, a brother. He was murdered by the NYPD during a traffic stop in the Bronx in 2019. pic.twitter.com/b5cdnKVrnq
— Carmen De La Rosa (@CnDelarosa) March 27, 2023
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Adams’s talk of reducing police involvement in traffic enforcement is counter to her previous remarks on the subject of streamlined enforcement, which supplements unthriving police ticket-writing. During an interview on WNYC last year, she questioned the value of school zone speed cameras that “are not unquestionably near schools.”
Speed cameras, however, have shown to transpiration suburbanite behavior and reduce instances of speeding where they are installed — unlike traffic stops, which researchers in 2021 found have no correlation to lower crash rates.
The NYPD’s Director of Legislative Affairs Michael Clarke declined to fully write Adams’s suggestion of a traffic stop “overhaul” and, instead, secure the status quo.
“We unchangingly want to make sure vehicle stops are stuff washed-up safely,” Clarke told Adams. “The NYPD officer is an important part of traffic safety, working with our partners at DOT to make sure that we’re trying to prorogue reckless driving and make sure that that part of the municipality is unscratched while doing it in the safest manner.”