New York Central Park Five exoneree stopped by police without any explanation, calls for transparency bill

A New York City Council member who was one of the wrongly convicted Central Park Five says he was pulled over by a police officer for no apparent reason.

The police stop in New York City on Friday, Jan. 26, 2024 casts a renewed light on the How Many Stops Act, a police transparency bill that sparked a fight between City Council members and Mayor Eric Adams after the mayor, a former police captain, vetoed the legislation. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)(AP)

The incident, which happened on Friday evening, has drawn attention to a bill that aims to make police stops more transparent and accountable.

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What the bill says

The bill, known as the How Many Stops Act, would force officers to report every time they stop someone, even for minor reasons. The city council is expected to vote on Tuesday to override a veto by Mayor Eric Adams, who opposes the bill.

The council member, Yusef Salaam, was driving in his car when an officer asked him to lower his rear windows. Salaam, who had a council placard on his dashboard, asked the officer if there was a problem. The officer then backed off without giving any explanation.

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The NYPD later claimed that Salaam was stopped because his windows had an illegal tint. They said the officer acted professionally and respectfully, and let Salaam go to attend to his official duties.

‘The importance of transparency for all police’

Salaam, a Democrat who represents a district in central Harlem, said the stop showed why the bill was necessary.

“This experience only amplified the importance of transparency for all police investigative stops, because the lack of transparency allows racial profiling and unconstitutional stops of all types to occur and often go underreported,” he said in a statement.

Salaam was one of five Black or Latino teenagers who were falsely accused and convicted of raping and assaulting a white woman in Central Park in 1989. He was 15 years old when he was arrested and spent nearly seven years in prison. His conviction, along with the others, was overturned in 2002 after DNA evidence proved their innocence.

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He was elected to the city council in November, becoming the first member of the Central Park Five to hold public office.

The city council speaker, Adrienne Adams, said the bill was needed to address the racial disparities and complaints of misconduct in police stops.

“At a time when Black and Latino New Yorkers continue to be disproportionately subjected to unconstitutional stops that go underreported, and civilian complaints of misconduct are at their highest level in over a decade, the need for basic transparency is clear,” she said in a statement on Friday, before Salaam’s encounter with the police.