The NYPD arrested a city council member. Now both are under fire.

Yusef Salaam, the newly elected New York City Councilman who was wrongly convicted in 1990 as a member of the Central Park Five, was in Harlem on Friday evening, on his way downtown to have dinner with his wife and four of his children, when the flashing lights of a police car appeared behind him.

He stopt. An officer walked to his car and asked him to roll down the tinted windows. When the officer reached the driver's side, Mr Salaam identified himself as a council member. The officer asked Mr Salaam if he was working; Mr Salaam replied that he was and asked why he had been arrested.

The officer did not answer, but sent Mr Salaam on his way. “Be careful, sir,” the officer said.

The stop quickly sparked outrage, with Mr. Salaam, who represents Harlem and was recently appointed chairman of the Council's Public Safety Committee, and his allies saying it showed the importance of police transparency in stopping New Yorkers. Other elected officials saw it as an example of a city council member relying on his position in an attempt to avoid a ticket.

The police quickly let go body camera footage of the stopas well as a rack which stated that Mr Salaam had been arrested because his car had illegally tinted windows. The affidavit also noted that the car had a Georgia license plate. Mayor Eric Adams defended the stop as “a perfect example” of a professional and courteous police response.

But Mr. Salaam, one of five black and Latino teenagers convicted in 1989 of raping a jogger in Central Park and acquitted decades later, said in an interview on Sunday that the officer had not been sufficiently transparent because he failed to make a statement. reason for the stop. Officers are not required to give a reason, but Mr Salaam said police should have done so voluntarily.

“We know the danger exists every time a black man in particular gets behind the wheel of a car,” Mr Salaam said.

Neither the officer's identity nor race have been released.

The stop came at a time when tensions between Mr Adams and the council have escalated. Council members, including Mr. Salaam, are preparing to override the mayor's veto on Tuesday of a bill that aims to document what lawmakers say are discriminatory stops by police.

After the meeting, Mr. Salaam said he would not participate in a ride-along with officers on Saturday evening, which the mayor had invited him to — part of the Adams administration's efforts to argue that the bill would be a burden on police and the public. Police. harm public safety.

“The sad thing is you take an incident where someone gives you a break, does the right thing by you, and then misrepresents the truth to get them in trouble,” he said.

Traffic stops can often be deadly, and black drivers are overrepresented among those killed during stops. Several cities have taken action to prevent officers from arresting people for minor violations, including tinted windows and broken taillights. Black and Latino drivers in New York City do disproportionately stopped and searched by the police.

In an interview, Mr. Salaam denied using his title to avoid a ticket. He said he was in the process of transferring his vehicle's Georgia registration to New York. Mr. Salaam, who returned to New York in December 2022, still owns a home in Georgia and has family there.

He said he was not aware that his tinted windows, which are legal in Georgia, were illegal in New York City, adding that if he had received a ticket or a warning, he would have taken action to fix them to have it replaced.

“Now I know why I was stopped,” Mr. Salaam said, “and now I can correct the problem so I won't be stopped in the future.”

When he was stopped, Mr. Salaam said, he was talking over the loudspeaker with City Council colleagues, including Sandy Nurse, who represents Bushwick and other parts of North Brooklyn. She said she heard Mr Salaam ask why he was being stopped and they discussed it afterwards. Because there was no explanation from the officer, she said, she assumed Mr. Salaam had been stopped for “driving while black.”

Ms Nurse said she understood why Mr Salaam identified himself as a councillor, as traffic stops can escalate into violence.

“He is a dark-skinned black man who experienced something very traumatic as a child,” she said. “I think it would only make sense for him to reveal himself, as someone who has lived his experience, to an officer – why wouldn't he make that clear?”

Jordan Wright, Mr. Salaam's chief of staff, and Mandela Jones, the deputy chief of staff for communications to City Council President Adrienne Adams, were also both on the phone and said they heard Mr. Salaam ask why he had moved over.

On Tuesday, the City Council is expected to override Mr. Adams' veto of two bills passed by the council in December: a bill that would require police officers to record basic information about investigative stops of members of the public, including their race, and a bill that would end solitary confinement in city jails. The bill would not apply to stops like Mr. Salaam's; all traffic stops must already be documented.

Supporters of the bill say this is necessary because they believe the police underreport and misrepresent the arrests of citizens. The controversy surrounding this practice dates back to the increasing use of stop-and-frisk under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. In 2013, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that police used stop-and-frisk tactics to racially profile black and Latino men. The use of stop-and-frisk declined under Mayor Bill de Blasio, but has started to rise again under Mr. Adams.

The battle over the bills was unusually tense. Mr. Adams, a Democrat entering his third year as president, has urged lawmakers to support his veto. His office released a statement saying the bill would undermine his progress in tackling crime and “make our city less safe.”

Ms. Adams, the Council President, released her own fiery statement Friday announcing the veto override decision, arguing that the mayor and his team had “recklessly misled the public” in their criticism of the bills.

“The Council has no interest in prolonging a conversation that has been made unnecessarily toxic by the spread of fear and misinformation,” she said.