NYC prepares to bury police under a mountain of paperwork

The New York City Council has clearly recognized that there are problems on the streets of Gotham these days. In addition to the homeless camps, the migrants, and the drug addicts, crime rates remain unacceptably high. Property crimes and assaults remain the norm in too much of the city. So now the Council is finally swooping into action. They are going to “help” the NYPD by making them fill out literally millions more pieces of paperwork documenting each and every interaction they have with anyone out on the streets. These meaningless reports would supposedly allow them to amass a more robust body of data allowing them to keep track of what the cops have been up to. And they’re also going to demand that the police immediately turn over all of their body cam videos after any encounter. That should just fix everything, right? (NY Post)

The City Council is preparing to pass a sweeping package of bills that would force the NYPD to file millions of reports on even the most minor encounters with New Yorkers, The Post has learned.

The measures also would mandate cops speedily turn over officers’ body-worn camera recordings to state investigators, and that the department disclose more information about traffic stops and internal operations.

Members of the Council’s Democratic Majority Conference discussed the list of seven proposals impacting the NYPD on June 28, and the bills could be approved at the next public safety committee meeting, and then by the full body.

I really don’t have a big problem with having the police be more diligent about turning over body camera footage promptly. That’s why we had the police start using body cameras in the first place. But that only applies if there is actually something of interest to see and if there is nothing in the footage that would violate the privacy of innocent individuals. And the cops don’t appear to have too much of a problem with it either.

But if you go through and read the details of all of these new “reports” that are supposed to be filed, it’s beyond ridiculous. The Council is demanding reports from virtually every interaction an officer has with anyone. Even if they simply stop to assist someone who is ill or injured they would need to file a report. The same goes for cases where they are just questioning potential witnesses near a crime scene, whether they saw anything or not.

The cops would be spending so much of their day filling out paperwork that they probably won’t be able to investigate any actual crimes. Of course, given the history of the City Council, that’s probably exactly what they would like to see in the first place. These types of minor interactions where nobody is arrested, frisked, or even detained are described as “Level 1” encounters under police procedures. They do not need to be documented.

When you make it increasingly hard for the police to do their jobs and treat them with suspicion as if they’re the bad guys, they will be less likely to get out of their squad cars and do the work. Perhaps that’s what the City Council wants or perhaps it isn’t. We can’t be entirely sure. But the end result will be the same either way. Less police work will get done and more officers will wind up leaving the force. And the city is too much of a mess to allow either of those things to happen. New Yorkers need to start electing better and more serious people.