Press Statements
January 30, 2024
CONTACT: Mariah McGough, mariah@vocal-ny.org
VOCAL-NY APPLAUDS OVERRIDE OF MAYOR ADAMS VETOES ON THE HOW MANY STOPS ACT AND BAN ON SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
NEW YORK — Today, the New York City Council voted to override Mayor Adams’ undemocratic vetoes of the How Many Stops Act and legislation to ban solitary confinement. In response, VOCAL-NY released the following statement, attributable to Dwayne Horsley, a leader with VOCAL-NY’s Civil Rights Union:
“We’re grateful to the City Council for fighting for these bills and overturning Mayor Adams vetoes. These bills protect the people – not the police and prisons.
When you’re in solitary you feel like you’re confined in another type of incarceration. It messes with your mind. Some people, if they have to fight, they take it to the extreme because you’re not just confined from society, but the general population too. It’s a very lonely feeling and it messes with your head. And once we finally get back into our neighborhoods, the police are searching for a reason to lock up a person, to put them in jail. And it’s only the poor neighborhoods.”
BACKGROUND:
The How Many Stops Act and police transparency is an essential measure for holding NYPD accountable for discriminatory and abusive policing practices that criminalize and harm New Yorkers, in particular Black, Latinx and other New Yorkers of color, and make all New Yorkers less safe. Ensuring greater NYPD transparency and accountability is fundamental to building a safer city for all New Yorkers.
By overriding the Mayor’s ill-conceived veto, Intro. No. 549A, the City Council has voted to end solitary confinement and prevent new forms of solitary, including by providing definitions for basic terms like “cell” and “out-of-cell”. At the same time, it will authorize alternative forms of separation – without isolation – that have been proven to be more effective at enhancing safety, health, and well-being by utilizing full days of out of cell congregate programming and activities that actually take place outside of a cell and with other people.
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