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City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is rushing to build one last piece of her legacy of … accelerating the exodus from the NYPD.
Yes, she’s determined to pass a bill that will give the Civilian Complaint Review Board direct access to the servers storing police bodycam footage because … why, exactly?
She says the aim is to speed up investigations into alleged police misconduct and brutality claims, but her bill doesn’t even give the CCRB added resources to wade through the vast database.
Plus, of course, the NYPD is easily the most professional big-city police force in the country, quite possibly in the world, with extremely low rates of using force, let alone drawing a gun.
And city cops are overseen not just by the CCRB but by various court-appointed monitors, Internal Affairs and (if it comes to that) state and federal prosecutors.
So where is the need for instant CCRB access to the footage?
If Adams is peeved at how long the department takes to comply with the board’s requests (the department says it averages just eight days), maybe she should see about adding some NYPD funding to speed things up: The simple fact is that sorting through mountains of video data files and then vetting the footage to comply with a host of privacy laws takes time.
Indeed, the legal issues alone (this is a first-in-the-nation initiative) will likely tie up Adams’ “legacy” measure for months or years, not to mention the time to train CCRB staff in accessing the data.
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And why would the CCRB need real-time access to all officers’ footage, anyway? It’s only supposed to open investigations in response to actual misconduct complaints, not go on fishing expeditions.
The impact on police morale is obvious (at least, to anyone who isn’t a council progressive): As PBA President Patrick Hendry put it: “Who wants to work in a system where people who don’t value or understand your work are given direct, real-time access to second-guess your every move?”
This isn’t Adams’ first anti-policing rodeo: Back in 2023, she rammed through the How Many Stops Act into law (over Mayor Eric Adams’ veto), dumping hours of mindless paperwork on every officer who dares to actually talk to the public in the course of his or her duties.
The department has only recently gotten recruitment to exceed the pace of cop retirements and resignations, and the advent of the Mamdani mayoralty is already likely to push more officers out the door — a loss of irreplaceable experience.
Adrienne Adams’ legacy, in short, will be a Police Department less able to do its job of keeping New Yorkers safe; a very strange source of pride, indeed.