Unneeded oversight overburdens cops: Be wary of the How Many Stops Act

The civilian oversight of police is a core component of police accountability. It is a difficult task often requiring a delicate balance between ensuring adequate controls, without overburdening police officers with reporting requirements that add little to effective oversight and run the risk discouraging police officers from precisely the community engaged policing that should be the hallmark of modern police agencies.

This balance should be applied to a proposal before the City Council which is considering requiring police self-reporting of the lowest level of police interactions with members of the public so-called Level 1 encounters; interactions where the individual is not suspected of a crime, whose help is being sought or whom the officer is seeking to help. This effort by the Council should be carefully considered. 

Far too often it is police conduct itself that triggers oversight. New York City is a case in point. The excessive stop and frisk policies of the NYPD where stops of mostly young men of color soared to more than 680,000 stops by 2011 predicated a series of outcomes. A predictable result of this misguided policy was to drive a wedge between the police and the communities police serve. Moreover, corrective measures and additional oversight were developed to address past excess. 

In 2008, a federal constitutional challenge, Floyd vs. City of New York, to the NYPD practice of stop and frisk was filed. In its 2013 decision, the court ruled that the NYPD was engaged in racial profiling and a pattern of unconstitutional stops and frisks. Among other remedies, the court ordered court supervised monitoring of NYPD reforms to stop and frisk. That monitoring continues to this day. 

It is understandable that the City Council would want to expand the scope of police activity that is subject to monitoring to include where police are investigating a person for a crime — so-called Level 2 stops. But we should not want additional requirements to stifle desirable police low-level interactions with the public, and that’s precisely the danger we face if the reporting requirement is extended to the lowest level of interactions — Level 1 encounters. 

Level 1 encounters are the bread and butter of everyday policing; an officer goes into a store and checks in with the store owner asking if there are any issues or problems or concerns.

Officers looking for a missing child in a park, working quickly to ask people if they have seen the missing child; detectives investigating a murder who ask people in the area if they know anything about the incident; police officers, who are encouraged to ride the subway, get a report of an emotionally disturbed person and ask numerous riders if they have seen the individual.

All of these interactions with the public would be considered Level 1 stops and, under the proposal, would require that a separate report be filed each time an officer makes an inquiry. This is neither practical nor necessary and can be harmful, sending a message to officers that they are not to be trusted with even the most fundamental aspects of their profession. 

Effective community policing is based on the premise that police should be encouraged to interact with the public in a manner that is respectful, supportive, builds trust and is seen as service. Community policing is not a geographic term but rather an ethos that guides police officers in understanding that they serve the public and that the public is a welcomed partner in the joint effort to improve public safety.

Effective partnerships are based on trust. Requiring individual reporting on Level 1 interactions would send the opposite message to officers imposing an unnecessary counter-productive requirement. 

The federal court that is supervising NYPD compliance with the Floyd case, already requires that police officers activate their body cams when they engage in a Level 1 encounter but importantly, rejected an effort to require officers to complete additional paperwork. 

The bill before the City Council, Intro 586, would impose requirements that the court found unnecessary, requiring police officers to report on the race, ethnicity, gender, and age of every person involved, and detailing the circumstances surrounding each Level 1 encounter.

This new mandate is not only highly impractical (imagine while searching for a missing child you have to stop and write down specific information about each person you ask about the child) but would impose additional administrative burdens on an already overstretched NYPD, under severe budget constraints, in logging all of these Level 1.

That the Council is charged with effective oversight of the NYPD is beyond question. In this case, restraint would be prudent. 

Aborn is the president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York.