How Many Stops Act

About the #HowManyStopsAct

The How Many Stops Act will bring critical and urgent transparency to the NYPD’s daily activities in New York City communities. It consists of two common sense, good government bills that will require a comprehensive accounting of all NYPD street stops, investigative encounters, and consent searches - including for the purposes of DNA collection - and ensure that the hard won Right to Know Act is protected. The data collected via these two bills is crucial for completing the picture of what policing really looks like in our City. 

Intro. 586: Reporting on All NYPD Stops and Investigative Encounters, sponsored by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Councilmember Alexa Aviles, will require the NYPD to report on all levels of police street stops and investigative encounters, including where they happen, demographic information on the person stopped, the reason for the encounter, and whether the encounter leads to any use of force or enforcement action.

Intro 538: Reporting on all police consent searches, sponsored by Councilmember Crystal Hudson, will provide New Yorkers will a full picture of the NYPD’s use of consent searches in our communities and shed light on whether or not the NYPD is adhering to Right to Know Act requirements by:

  • Guaranteeing that the NYPD cannot go back on its promise to report on declined searches by explicitly codifying a requirement for the NYPD to report data on all requests for consent to search, including all requests for consent that are refused and all consent searches that actually take place.
  • Requiring the NYPD to report on officers’ use of consent searches to collect DNA information from New Yorkers.
  • Requiring the NYPD to report on its officers’ use of interpretation services when seeking consent to search from people with limited English proficiency

Police transparency is an essential measure for holding NYPD accountable for discriminatory and abusive policing practices that criminalize and harm New Yorkers, in particular Black, Latinx and other New Yorkers of color, and make all New Yorkers less safe. The City Council must pass the How Many Stops Act! Ensuring greater NYPD transparency and accountability is fundamental to building a safer city for all New Yorkers. 

Download CPR's full How Many Stops Act Fact Sheet that further details the history and impact of the How Many Stops Act. 

How Many Stops Act News

Adams Fought the Lawmakers and the Lawmakers Won

01/31/2024
Hell Gate
On Tuesday morning, City Hall was abuzz, as the biggest political conflict of the new year came to a head. City Council had scheduled a vote to override two bills vetoed by Mayor Eric Adams. One bill required City jails to end the practice of holding people in protracted isolation. (The council had already banned solitary confinement nearly a decade earlier, but studies suggested that the Department of Correction has simply continued the practice under other names.)

New York City’s pro-cop mayor loses high-profile fight over policing legislation

Eric Adams adamantly opposed bills ending solitary confinement and requiring more reporting from police officers. The City Council passed them anyway.
01/30/2024
Politico
New York City Mayor Eric Adams — a former police officer focused on combating crime — found himself in a feud Tuesday with the more progressive City Council over two criminal justice reform bills. And in this rare instance, Adams lost. Led by a relatively moderate Democrat aligned with the body’s progressive members, the Council delivered a striking rebuke to Adams by overriding two of his vetoes by an overwhelming margin. The votes capped weeks of lobbying and media appearances from officials on both sides of the debate — a flurry of activity exacerbated over the weekend when police pulled over a Council member who’d spent seven years in jail after being wrongly convicted as part of the “Central Park Five.”