The alarm bells around a police transparency bill started ringing almost a year ago at the highest levels of the NYPD.
City Hall staffers involved in the negotiations said top police brass, including Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, were pushing back against the bill, which would require police to report demographic information on all investigative encounters with civilians. The mayor’s legislative team was going back and forth with Council staffers, as police officials argued the inclusion of the lowest-level stops would impose an onerous burden on beat cops.
But throughout those roughly 10 months, one person was conspicuously absent from the negotiations, according to two city officials familiar with the process: Mayor Eric Adams, the former police officer who has staked his mayoralty on improving public safety and prides himself on being intimately involved in policing matters.
It was not until mid-December, one week left before the vote on the bill, when Adams finally called council members most involved with the bill. By then, the Council’s longstanding legislative process didn’t allow for text changes. And Adams’ team had been unwilling to offer any counter proposals to reach a compromise.
The heavily Democratic Council went on to pass the bill, along with another one banning solitary confinement, by a wide margin. After the mayor vetoed both bills, city lawmakers overrode his vetoes last week by an even wider one.
Adams’ latest defeat, the second veto override of his two-year tenure, is part of a pattern in an administration that has been caught flat-footed on multiple policy matters and failed to cultivate relationships with key Democrats, according to six current and former city officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity either to discuss private conversations or out of fear of retribution from the mayor’s office.
Charles Lutvak, a spokesperson for Adams, declined to comment on the record about the criticisms. Instead, he referred back…
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