REMARKS
Council Member Althea Stevens Explains Her Vote to Override the Mayor's Vetoes
1:46:10
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109 sec
Council Member Althea Stevens explains her affirmative vote.
Speaker 2
1:46:10
Stevens.
Speaker 40
1:46:13
Permission to explain my vote?
Speaker 1
1:46:14
Permission granted.
Speaker 40
1:46:15
Well, the beautiful thing is when your name starts with s, you have all your colleagues to say a lot of things that already needed to be said.
1:46:21
So I do wanna be associated with the remarks of my good friend and colleague, Kevin Riley, who, as people were saying the remarks, really got emotional because the things that are being said sometimes his home.
1:46:33
Like myself, I want to reiterate, racism does exist.
1:46:37
We can pretend that it doesn't, but it's easier when it's not you who are being victimized.
1:46:41
It's easy to say those things when your community isn't the one that's been being brutalized and victimized and continuously having to see the struggles.
1:46:50
So today, I'm happy to rely on all of these bills because it is not going to fix any of things that we had to endure and probably won't fix a lot of the things moving forward.
1:46:59
But it is sending a signal that we as a council hear those struggles that often don't get hurt.
1:47:06
We hear the people who often are not the ones that we are legislating for.
1:47:10
It's just a signal that we understand our communities.
1:47:15
It sends a signal to the police department that this is not against you or to the corrections.
1:47:20
This is not against you.
1:47:21
This is about making sure everyone is safe.
1:47:25
It's about making sure that we all feel safe.
1:47:29
And transparency and accountability is part of that.
1:47:32
And I'm really concerned that they're going so hard to not have transparency.
1:47:38
That's what we should be thinking about.
1:47:40
Why is it that they don't want these numbers recorded?
1:47:44
Because the reality is If after the stop and frisk and they warrant underreporting level threes, we wouldn't need to go down to 1.
1:47:54
So I believe I don't know.
Speaker 2
1:47:59
I believe I don't know.