source: The Intercept

published: 18 January 2024

Image Credit: Simon Howden at www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Mayor Eric Adams publicly opposed City Council bills passed last month to beef up police accountability and ban solitary confinement.

A small group of organizers rallied outside of New York City Hall on Wednesday to call on Mayor Eric Adams not to veto a series of bills that would ban the use of solitary confinement in city jails and increase oversight over police stops and searches.

The push by grassroots reform groups to ban solitary confinement comes in response to a surge in recent years of deaths in city jails, including several cases of people who had been detained in solitary confinement. Families of people killed as a result of stops by New York Police Department officers have also urged the mayor to sign the policing measures into law.

Advocates and officials working on the reforms expect Adams, who has publicly opposed the bills, to veto at least two of the measures this week. He has until Friday to do so, or the measures will pass into law. 

The battle pits a pro-police mayor, an NYPD veteran himself, against a progressive City Council, which approved the three bills last month by large margins during its last meeting of 2023. The fight is the latest in a well-trod pattern of centrist Democrats or Republicans fighting back against popular and democratically enacted welfare reforms. In New York, City Council leaders and members said they have the votes to override the mayor’s veto.

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