The How Many Stops Act legislation in New York City is the beginning of the end for effective policing in New York City. In this episode, Dr. Travis Yates discusses the recently approved legislation that's sparking fierce debate and concern for the future of the NYPD and community safety. In a move that's seen as both an attempt at accountability and a hindrance to law enforcement, New York City's council has overridden Mayor Eric Adams’ veto to pass a bill requiring police to document the age, race, and gender of every civilian they encounter. Join as we discuss the reverberations of this decision, poised to ripple through the veins of a city already facing a staffing crisis within its police force and other escalating challenges.
We explore the layers of oversight already in place and the potential for this new legislation to stifle proactive policing and cast an unjust shadow of discrimination over the department. As we navigate the complex landscape of law enforcement reform, we also ponder whether the How Many Stops Act is part of a broader strategy that mimics the calls to defund the police—a strategy that could lead to New York City's unraveling. Tune in as we sound the clarion call for strong leadership and the unwavering support of national police organizations in these critical times.
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The How Many Stops Act legislation in New York City is the beginning of the end for effective policing in New York City. In this episode, Dr. Travis Yates discusses the recently approved legislation that's sparking fierce debate and concern for the future of the NYPD and community safety. In a move that's seen as both an attempt at accountability and a hindrance to law enforcement, New York City's council has overridden Mayor Eric Adams’ veto to pass a bill requiring police to document the age, race, and gender of every civilian they encounter. Join as we discuss the reverberations of this decision, poised to ripple through the veins of a city already facing a staffing crisis within its police force and other escalating challenges.
We explore the layers of oversight already in place and the potential for this new legislation to stifle proactive policing and cast an unjust shadow of discrimination over the department. As we navigate the complex landscape of law enforcement reform, we also ponder whether the How Many Stops Act is part of a broader strategy that mimics the calls to defund the police—a strategy that could lead to New York City's unraveling. Tune in as we sound the clarion call for strong leadership and the unwavering support of national police organizations in these critical times.
Join Our Tribe of Courageous Leaders:
Get The Book
Get Weekly Articles by Travis Yates
Join Us At Our Website
Get Our 'Courageous Leadership' Training
Join The Courageous Police Leadership Alliance
They told you they want to reimagine police, without telling you what that means, and for the most part, leadership in our profession stayed silent. There's no reason to stay silent anymore. We now know exactly what it means.
Travis Yates:Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yeats, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
Travis Yates:Welcome back to the show. I'm so honored that you're going to spend a few minutes with us here today. I did not intend to film another episode this week. We just released an episode with Dr Olivia Johnson Phenomenal episode. I highly recommend that you check that out. It's going to blow your mind the things that she said and it's very impactful.
Travis Yates:But tonight the City of New York City just came out with legislation that the mayor tried to stop. Let me explain what this is. This legislation would mandate it's, by the way, this legislation is called the How Many Stops Act. Don't get me going on how goofy the verbiage is on some of these law enforcement bills, but this is what they do. The How Many Stops Act will mandate, according to the New York Post, that virtually every citizen contact that law enforcement comes in contact with they will have to document age, race and gender, and I have to give Democratic Mayor Eric Adams a lot of credit because this was a democratic bill. He came out hard against this. I think because of his law enforcement background, he understood what this means, and what he understands is is this bill will destroy NYPD. This bill will effectively then destroy the City of New York City, and I'm going to explain why that is in a minute. The Mayor knows that. He has said that. Every leader within NYPD I'm proud of because they've all come out against this.
Travis Yates:We have seen far too often across this country of crazy politicians trying to do crazy things and our leaders just stay silent and they may talk after the bill passes or after the aftermath of that, of why this was wrong. And I have to give the leaders credit inside NYPD, including the Mayor, eric Adams. They told the public exactly what this would do. It will destroy NYPD and destroy the safety of a city. And you're going to ask yourself, by the way, the Mayor had no success in swaying the council. He vetoed this bill and then went back to the council and he had. He had to sway two counselors to keep this bill away from NYPD and he couldn't do it. This bill passed 42 to nine. So if you want to know how insane the leaders are in New York City, the politicians that should tell you all you need to know.
Travis Yates:Now I want to say NYPD for decades has been a beacon of professional law enforcement. They set the standard on how we reduce crime with the broken windows theory under Giuliani and all the things they did. Law enforcement across this country looked up to NYPD. We understand the difficult job they have and they do a phenomenal job. Many have already left. They are at some of their lowest staffing in history, and this and then the migrant crisis has cut additional funding in the conditional academy, so that, on top of this, it's over with in New York City. It may take a few years to actually see the effects of that, but it's pretty bad. Now it's going to get a lot worse, and let me explain to you why they did this. Because once again, it's about race.
Travis Yates:The politicians believe that this bill will stop racial profiling. Now, they know it won't, and I'm going to tell you why they're doing this, and I think inside NYPD they know why they're doing this. You cannot determine racial profiling by data like this. Law enforcement does not operate along the United States census lines. They just don't. But the politicians and the activists play this game to where, if they can get the data of your stops or arrest, they will then compare it to the US Census and then claim that you're racist. Obviously, that's insane and that's crazy, but this bill is designed to do so. What they're going to do with this bill is. They're going to take the data as this bill rolls out and as soon as the data jumps, jumps the shark on the census and it's more than the census or less than the census or its disparity compared to the census. They will then have their ammunition to claim racism.
Travis Yates:We know that's what's gonna happen and you're gonna ask, you're gonna ask me well, can that be avoided? The only way that can be avoided is if crime in New York City is along the US census lines. I've talked about this at length in our articles and here on the podcast, that active police activity does not fall along the US census. I wish we lived in Disneyland, but we don't. The truth is, in many cities Certain races commit more crimes than others and within the crimes, other races commit additional crimes, and so it's never along the US census lines. And New York City has had a disparity in criminals For many years. A whole bunch of reasons for that. It's not racist cops, and I don't have time to go into that, but just ask any sociologists out there what creates crime, and they're gonna talk about poverty, they're gonna talk about family structure, they're talking about fatherless homes, they're gonna talk about all these issues, that sort of drive people towards criminal activity, and if a certain race is is enduring some of those social, sociological impacts in society and it's impacting those communities or those communities of race, then there's gonna be a higher crime there and, by the way, there's also more victims of that same race, because most crime is interracial, and so this is going to be used as a tool to Further damage NYPD and call them all sort of names.
Travis Yates:Now, the reason the NYPD is done for is this is how law enforcement will react to this. First off, you talk about impacting Community policing. I mean, this is this goes against every fabric of Engaging with the community that you can think of, because what's gonna happen is officers are not going to community, they're not gonna engage with the community. Why would they? When they have to fill out reports and then ask Crazy questions like what's your race, age and gender to everybody they talk to, and if they don't ask, they're gonna have to try to guess, which is pretty insane. That's what's gonna happen. You're gonna see even a further pullback from officers, you're gonna see people not wanting to work in the agency that does this, because this is insane, and you're gonna see the staffing in New York City further decline. They are effectively Eliminating that agency and even though you may have an NYPD in the future, they will not be doing actual police work that stops crime or prevents crime. That's just the way it is.
Travis Yates:We told you this when they did Nobel, and it happened. We told you this may start legalizing drugs, and it happened. We told you this when they said shoplifting is fine, don't take him to jail and it happened. It creates havoc in communities, and everything I just mentioned Currently exist in New York City. Now this, so that is why it's the icing on the cake. It is over with Really something to see. We just recorded a podcast a few days ago Talking about the Tennessee bill, where they wanted to throw cops in prison For 15 years if they fell return on a body camera, and this is more of the same. This is going above and beyond.
Travis Yates:They're claiming this is accountability, but this is not accountability. You have to think about this. Nypd has body cameras. Everybody in New York City has cell phones. Nypd has a chain of command. There is more. They have a civilian review board. There is more accountability in NYPD than virtually any police department in the country. So to say that this is about accountability when stops are already filmed is pretty insane. So the intent here is not accountability, even though the politicians are say it.
Travis Yates:One politician in particular Was particularly weak. I don't I don't have his name in front of me, but he starts crying because he was going against Mayor Adams to vote for this, and what he said was he talked about the incident in Central Park where people were accused of a crime and they didn't commit the crime, and he claims that this bill would have stopped that, which is crazy. How does this bill stop that? It doesn't okay. And so this bill does nothing but place officers in a position, in a very awkward position, that everybody they contact, not just suspects. The New York Post says virtually everybody they contact, they have to do this, and the typical activists and politicians will say oh, you're saying this because you don't want accountability. No, no, I do want accountability. There's a lot of accountability. There's no other profession with more accountability.
Travis Yates:I don't want to see New York City be destroyed, and you've watched the Walking Dead. It's about to be real in New York and you didn't think it would get any worse. And it will. And I don't have a lot of skin in the game in New York City. I've been there several times. I've taught there. It's not my favorite place to go because the traffic is crazy and everything is expensive and everybody knows that. But I do care about the men and women that work there, very dedicated individuals that are doing a service, a very thankless service, in that city.
Travis Yates:And don't think this stops in New York City. Other cities will follow suit and I don't really have a leadership lesson here, because the leaders inside NYPD have been extremely vocal Tonight. They're being extremely vocal. They're telling everybody exactly what this is going to do. So the onus on this will be on the politicians that passed this not that they will ever admit to being wrong, but thankfully we stood up for this.
Travis Yates:So if you're an officer in New York City, I don't have to tell you what to do. You know what you're going to have to do. You'll have to limit your contacts with individuals, because this information is not only offensive but it's going to be used against you regardless, regardless of what the data says or the stats say. You can just see how complicated this could get right. Maybe you work in an area that's, you know, predominantly Hispanic or predominantly Asian or predominantly African American. New York City is very segregated, and those are the people you're coming in contact with. Well, they're going to take a look at that data and say, well, wait a minute, you're stopping too many blacks or too many Hispanics or too many Asians, even though you may work in an area where that's the population, or even maybe you work in an area where that's the crime being committed victims and suspects and so this didn't surprise me.
Travis Yates:I knew that the people running that city were crazy. I think many people living there know they're crazy, but I think, on the surface, most citizens that don't have time to dig into this, they probably look at this and go well, there's nothing wrong with that Other than the fact that they're not doing that at work. Nobody else does this, and they would, they would refuse to do this right, they would. No one else wears body cameras. No one else has to deal with civilians telling them what to do. That's outside their organization, like law enforcement does. And so I'm just sort of just mentioning this to you for the sheer reason that you need to understand the impact this is going to make on that city and what this is going to do, and give ideas to politicians, maybe in your city, and this is not about accountability. It's nothing than a gotcha moment. And the gotcha moment will be after a year this data comes in. These same politicians will use this data to blanket NYPD as racist. Of course, they've been doing that for years anyway, but that's going to trigger the Department of Justice and all this stuff. By the way, nypd has been under Consent Decree for like 40 years, I mean, so they've been under constraints forever and it's only getting worse.
Travis Yates:No-transcript, it is really something to see sort of in real time. I told somebody today that it's kind of the Best time to be alive and the craziest time to be alive at the same time. There is so much happening and so much going on in this profession and there's so many people coming at this profession with daggers, and it's interesting to see that when there's nothing to talk about no high-profile incidents you know Nothing really out there. You know millions and millions of contacts a day by American law enforcement and really what do they have right? Everything's being filmed, everything's being recorded, and when they don't have anything, it really shows you their true colors when they pass bills like this and Tennessee was a prime example that hadn't been passed yet, but that's a prime example, and you're gonna see more and more of this.
Travis Yates:So somebody told me the other day that the pendulum will swing back. No, it won't. The pendulum is broken. It's not swinging back unless we kick it back. And when you work in a city like New York City, with the environment therein, with the politicians, it's an impossible task. So all I can tell you is where you are, be watching for this stuff. Be aware of what this is about knowledge is power. We must Do more to protect the men and women behind the badge, and I'm gonna say what I have said time and time again when are our national police organizations? Where's the ICP? Where's the FOP? Where's Perth? They're not saying a word, and it's Very frustrating to me as somebody that spent 30 years in this profession, that thought that these organizations really were for us and, while they may do some good things, when we are under attack when people are attempting to destroy our profession.
Travis Yates:That's what they exist for, and they have been noticeably absent, so I just wanted to bring that to you. I want to talk about more positive things, but this stuff keeps happening and you need to know about it. Nypd I cannot emphasize enough how professional that agency is. I've known many people from there. I've been there with them many times and they are just I'm wonderful people and doing a job where the people they're working for oftentimes it's a thankless job and I feel horrible for them because I know if the people are still working in New York City under the current conditions, this is probably the last straw. More than likely, they will lose even more people this year and the following year. This doesn't go into effect, for I think the summertime is when it actually goes into effect, but there will be a mass exodus, as there has been for some time. Based on this and this alone.
Travis Yates:Keep in mind this was not about accountability. This is what the politicians told you they wanted to do in 2020. We want to reimagine you, we want to defund you, we want to get rid of you. That's what many of them said and, of course, they came off of that when the next election cycle they were. They've got many of them got voted out that said that because the citizens don't want that. And the citizens in New York City definitely don't want that, because they're doing it this way and Pretty evil plot, if you ask me. It's kind of a side door to do what they wanted to do anyway without people really knowing, and they won't know until the purge is happening in real time and then people will finally wake up, but then it will be too late. So pray for New York City, understand what this is really about. It's not about accountability, it's about destruction, and that is what New York City Will be going through in the months to come. Thanks for listening. Just remember, lead on and stay courageous.
Travis Yates:Thank you for listening to courageous leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www. Travis Yates. org.