CPR Testifies At City Council Hearing: NYPD Is Still Falling Short On Transparency

By Communities United for Police Reform Photos: Communities United for Police Reform\YouTube Screenshots New York, NY New York, NY – Tuesday, the New York City Council held a public safety committee hearing on the NYPD’s unconstitutional use of stop and frisk and other illegal investigative encounters. The hearing also featured discussion on the implementation of the How Many Stops Act (HMSA). HMSA is a police transparency bill enacted in 2024 that requires the NYPD to collect and publicly release data on all NYPD street stops, investigative encounters and consent searches. HMSA is the law of the land, yet – at the close of this first reporting period (July-September 2024) – a preliminary analysis of the data shows alarming racial disparities and raises questions about the nature of individual police-civilian encounters that may be obscured because of NYPD’s aggregate data reporting. “Thanks to the How Many Stops Act, we know that – in spite of Black and Latine New Yorkers making up about 73% of the population in Washington Heights – they made up 85% of those targeted for level 1 stops and 97% of those targeted for level 2 stops last quarter. Some think these so-called low-level stops are just...