STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A pair of controversial public safety bills will move forward after the City Council overrode two vetoes from Mayor Eric Adams Tuesday.
Speaker Adrienne Adams closed Tuesday’s meeting of the city’s legislative body to applause after the Council voted 42-9 to override Mayor Adams’ vetoes of a ban on solitary confinement in city jails and the How Many Stops Act impacting NYPD investigative stops.
Mayor Adams and his allies had been on the offensive against the bills since their passage late last year, raising a series of concerns about their impact, but Speaker Adams said during a press conference ahead of the Council’s vote that those concerns should have been raised before the bills’ passage.
“We didn’t have to get here. We had a lot of time to talk about this legislation,” Speaker Adams said. “[These bills] have been in talks for a long time, so we really didn’t have to get to this point at all. In my humble opinion, all of the questions should have been handled way before we voted on the legislation and there should have been a complete understanding of what we were doing.”
Votes from Staten Island’s City Council members broke down as expected with City Councilman Joseph Borelli (R-South Shore) and Councilman David Carr (R-Mid-Island) voting against the override while Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks (D-North Shore) voted in favor.
On the Council floor, Hanks, a resident of Stapleton, explained her vote on the police stops bill citing concerns about law enforcement’s impact on communities of color, but left an opportunity for possible future reforms. The NYPD has consistently been rebuked for its disproportionate stopping of members of the city’s Black and Latino communities.
Hanks was one of a host of council members who joined the NYPD on ride-alongs over the weekend as Mayor Adams attempted to lobby against the veto overrides.
The North Shore councilwoman said that ride-along offered additional perspective about the…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply