Mayor Adams is set for defeat over two criminal justice bills

The New York City Council is expected to override Mayor Eric Adams' veto of two criminal justice bills on Tuesday, which would mark a major defeat for Mr. Adams and his administration's emphasis on strengthening the law enforcement efforts.

The bills, which would force police officers to document more of their interactions with the public and end solitary confinement in city jails, have opened a bitter rift between Mr. Adams and Democratic leaders on the City Council.

Mr. Adams, a Democrat who ran for office on a public safety message, has warned that the bills would make the city and its prisons more dangerous. He vowed to fight the override until the last minute and encouraged moderate council members to support him.

“Crime has declined and New York remains the safest big city in America,” Adams said in a statement, adding that the bill to document police stops “would undermine that progress and make our city less safe.”

City Council President Adrienne Adams said Monday she was “very confident” she had the votes to override his veto. The two measures, which were adopted in December by a two-thirds majority of the 51-member organization, are aimed at drawing attention to discriminatory police controls and making prisons more humane following the deaths of several people held in solitary confinement.

Veto overrides in New York City are becoming increasingly rare: aside from a housing bill last summer, the last time the Council took this step was in early 2014, when it six vetoes overridden which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had released at the end of his third and final term.

Mayor Adams has argued that a law banning solitary confinement, the practice of holding inmates alone for long periods of time, is unnecessary because the city has already effectively banned it by switching to punitive segregation, a less strict form of discipline. On Monday, Ms. Adams defended the bill.

“Isolation causes psychological damage to people – that is a proven fact,” Ms Adams said in an interview on NY1. “This bill will ensure that there is no isolation, whatever we call it.”

The solitary confinement bill would ban the practice after a four-hour “de-escalation” period during emergencies and would require all inmates to spend at least 14 hours outside of cells every day. The bill has drawn attention to a national debate over whether solitary confinement is torture or a legitimate form of punishment for detainees who grossly violate codes of conduct.

The police accountability law would require police officers to record basic information about investigative stops of members of the public, including their race. Council leaders have said the bill would help reduce abuses of stop-and-frisk policing.

Both Mr. Adams, the city's second black mayor, and Ms. Adams, the first black council president, are moderate Democrats. (They are unrelated.) But Ms. Adams has taken a position to the mayor's left on several key issues, including her insistence on closing the Rikers Island jail complex by 2027.

Debate over the bills intensified this weekend after Yusef Salaam, a newly elected councilor who was wrongly convicted in 1990 as a member of the Central Park Five, was stopped by a police officer while driving with his family. Mr Salaam said the officer had not given him a reason for the stop and that the episode showed why the accountability law was needed.

The police responded by releasing them body camera footage of the stop and said Mr Salaam had been arrested for illegally tinting windows. So does Mayor Adams defended the stop as a “perfect example” of a courteous police response.

Mr. Salaam said in an interview that he would vote to override the mayor's veto of both bills.

“I think the question is to provide more transparency,” he said.

Mr. Adams, a former police commissioner, fought vigorously to stop the bills. He organized a police ride-along with council members on Saturday to show them how requiring officers to submit documentation would slow them down. Regarding the solitary confinement law, he has expressed concern that corrections officers would not be able to restrain inmates while they are transported on buses, and argued that segregating violent inmates is necessary.

The bill “would prevent us from protecting our staff and those in our care from violent individuals,” the mayor said at a news conference this month.

In a charged moment, Mr. Adams' staff attempted to undermine Council leaders by attempting to remove chairs during their press conference in the City Hall rotunda in support of the bills. On Friday, Ms Adams said the debate over the bills had been 'needlessly toxic' and that the mayor and his team had 'recklessly misled the public'.

Tension between the mayor and the city council is expected to continue in the coming months as they negotiate the next city budget, due at the end of June. Council leaders have pledged to fight the mayor's unpopular cuts to libraries and schools.

Jeffery C Mays reporting contributed.