REMARKS
Council Member Dinowitz Explains His Vote to Override the Mayor's Vetoes
1:00:43
·
145 sec
Council Member Eric Dinowitz outlines his initial concerns about the administrative burdens of the bill on NYPD officers, sharing his findings from reading the bill and the NYPD patrol guide, speaking with officers, and participating in a mayor's ride along.
Dinowitz acknowledges the work officers already do that aligns with the bill's requirements, expressing empathy for their administrative load while emphasizing the importance of public safety and the need to streamline police paperwork.
Speaker 2
1:00:43
Denowitz.
Speaker 8
1:00:46
Permission to explain my vote.
Speaker 1
1:00:48
Permission granted.
Speaker 8
1:00:49
Thank you, madam, majority leader.
1:00:51
You know, our job as council members is to provide oversight of all of our city agencies, and that includes concludes the NYPD, and transparency is one of the tools we have to do that.
1:01:04
I'll be honest when I when I first heard about this bill, I was very concerned about administrative burdens, that I read the bill, and then I read the NYPD patrol guy and I spoke with our officers.
1:01:16
Our officers right now without the bill are already going back to their stations, after their tours, docking their body worn camera footage and tagging level 1 and 2 encounters, and in many cases, they are logging the apparent race and gender of the people they encounter.
1:01:33
This work is already being done.
1:01:35
But for reasons you heard earlier, it is critical that we get this information.
1:01:39
And for the most part, this bill asks for information that is already being recorded.
1:01:47
But I am sympathetic to any concerns about administrative burden.
1:01:50
I was I won in the mayor's ride along this Saturday night, and the officers were sharing with us all of the paperwork they had to do.
1:01:57
And one of the officers said, you know, in some instances, we felt 2 3 documents for a single incident.
1:02:04
And in those documents are duplicative information.
1:02:07
In some instances, they're writing by hand information than going back to the station and transcribing those handwritten notes to a computer.
1:02:16
One officer shared to me that as recently as 2012, He was using a typewriter.
1:02:23
And for those of you who don't know what a typewriter is, just Google it.
1:02:27
And the point is, I think all of us or myself especially wanna make sure our officers are on the street doing the work that they signed up to do and that is to keep us safe to prevent crime, to fight crime, to solve crime, not back at the station doing paperwork.
1:02:44
This bill does not significantly add to their administrative tasks, but if we wanna take that seriously, if the administration took seriously the administrative tasks, They should conduct an audit, and we should all, as a counsel, take take that seriously and work together, this bill or any of the other paperwork they do, to ensure it's as streamlined as possible so that they're on the streets keeping us safe.
1:03:07
I vote I on both bills.