The controversial cop bill at the center of Mayor Eric Adams’ upcoming veto battle with the City Council could lengthen officers’ already long days — and likely end up yielding “useless” data, according to police sources and experts.
Much of the uproar surrounding the “How Many Stops Act” stems from its requirement that cops must guess at the “apparent” race, ethnicity, gender and age of the person to whom they are speaking, then record it, during even the most mundane conversations.
This foundational flaw in data collection means that whatever statistics the police accumulate as a result of the bill will be “pretty useless,” according to Christopher Hermann, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan and a former NYPD crime analyst.
“It’s horrible data,” Hermann told The Post on Sunday. “[The cops] know that whatever they’re going to put down is very subjective, and they’re not able to confirm it.”
“It’s the garbage-in, garbage-out concept,” he continued. “I’m just going to give you crap that looks nice — but it’s still crap. You’re building this house on a foundation of sand.”
Right now, cops only have to check off an acknowledgment that they did a so-called level one encounter, the most common investigative interaction in which an officer approaches someone and asks general, non-accusatory questions.
The NYPD already captures the majority of the information for more serious inquiries — known as “level 2” or “level 3” stops — with its body-worn camera reports.
Under the bill — which Adams vetoed on Friday, setting up a potential override vote by the Council — cops will have to check boxes recording the demographic information for each “level 1” stop, something critics argue will take cops off the street for too long and add to the NYPD’s overtime costs, which came in at $2.22 billion in the 2022 fiscal year.
The low-level talks happen when a cop is, say, questioning a potential witness.
Each cop has, on average, roughly two dozen “level 1” calls on each shift, which could require documentation for 50 to 60 interactions with different people, according to police sources.
The sources said the new requirements could tack on about a half hour to the end of every tour.
“I handle over two dozen 911 calls per shift,” one Brooklyn cop told The Post. “A lot of those calls are already several hours old by the time I get them, and that means the citizens of New York have already waited hours to report crimes like a burglary or stolen car for me to take a report.
“Now they will wait even longer.”
For instance, the officer said they’d have to do an individual report for every person sitting in a car during a traffic stop.
“Cops will definitely talk to less people, and, in some cases, even avoid people,” the officer continued. “The bottom line is cops will be less efficient and the community will suffer.”
Herrmann, the professor, said he wonders what the city will do with the flawed information it compiles.
“Is this eventually going to dictate department policy? Because that would be really stupid,” Herrmann said. “Is it going to dictate public policy? Because that would be eve more stupid.”
“Is it going to help the officers, or be used for training purposes and to make officers better cops? Probably not,” he continued. “So to me, why are we doing it? What’s the benefit of this? What’s the tail-end perk of all this work?”
“I just don’t see it,” Herrmann said. “I don’t understand it myself.”
