Adi Talwar
Crime is down under Mayor de Blasio, and so are police-civilian encounters of every sort. But both right and left have taken issue with what the mayor's delivered.
‘By personally intervening in discipline decisions as the mood strikes him, Adams will not only undermine the purpose of these rules and standards, he will defeat them, making murky the clear line of accountability that is supposed to adhere between a citizen and a police officer.’
‘The public needs to be informed of all disciplinary actions, not just major infractions…The “minor rule violations” provision defeats the purpose of repealing Section 50-a.’
‘Repealing Section 50-a is the easy part; the hard part will be in creating a new system that ensures police officer discipline is transparent to the public.’
The de Blasio administration is hedging on reform to 50-a, the state statute that cloaks police discipline in secrecy. But an experiment 20 years ago that threw NYPD hearings into public view did not lead to any of the problems the city says it is concerned about.