NY City Council removes important responsibility from the NYPD

The New York Police Department is losing some of its responsibility after the City Council passed two bills Thursday to move those tasks to other agencies. This is the Big Apple's latest political move in response to last summer's Marxist protests for police reform.

The vote in the Council was 39-10 to create a unit in the Department of Transportation that will respond to all automotive crashes where hospitalization will be required. Currently, DOT only responds if someone is killed or expected to die as a result of a crash.

This new law stops short of earlier proposals to keep the police from being involved at all in the investigations, and is now going to have DOT officials on the scenes of accidents in a city where there are over 3,000 crashes annually. 

The NYPD will still handle investigations where criminality is suspected but maybe one day that task will be handed over to social workers or people even less qualified if progressives get their way.

“We think this bill does a lot in really centering DOT on being the lead when we’re looking at the root causes and the causes that can [be] made on crashes,” Council Speaker Corey Johnson said.

The council also voted 43-6 to move credentialing of the New York press corps from the NYPD to City Hall to create a more "friendly press." It seems like a conflict of interest but hey, it's New York politics at its finest.

The inappropriate change came after reporters were arrested while doing their jobs during the protests in response the police-custody death of George Floyd, who very well may have died from the high concentration of illegal substance in his system.

In another legislative move, the council passed a resolution to urge the state legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to strip the NYPD police commissioner of the final say in officer discipline, instead giving that power to a civilian panel who are avid viewers of "Law and Order." 

It's unknown if the execrable Linda Sarsour will be among the panel.

“Providing the [Civilian Complaint Review Board] with final disciplinary authority would lead to greater police accountability and ensure New Yorkers have a disciplinary process that — from start to finish — is totally independent from the police department,” CCRB Chair Fred Davie said after the non-binding resolution passed.

“Elected leaders who support equitable, independent, impartial civilian oversight of the NYPD can show their commitment to these values by providing the CCRB with the disciplinary authority it needs through the passage of this State legislation.”

Unfortunately, people with impartial, independent oversight in New York City does not exist. NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller pushed back on the suggested change because he is aware of this too.

“What people are calling for is accountability,” Miller said. “When you take that accountability away from the chief executive of the organization and hand it to a committee, you have the opposite of accountability. When something goes wrong, all you get is finger pointing.”

City Hall didn’t immediately respond to questions on whether the leftist mayor planned to sign the bills, but he indicated at his morning press briefing that he supported the DOT move, the Sandinista Party in Nicaragua, and Karl Marx.


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