Councilmember Yusef Salaam says NYPD stopped him without giving a reason — footage is inconclusive

City Councilmember Yusef Salaam said he was stopped by police on Friday while driving in Harlem and, after a brief verbal exchange with an officer, said he was never told why he was pulled over.

The incident and the NYPD’s response comes amid a fight between the Council and mayor’s office over transparency around police stops. Salaam, who was wrongfully imprisoned for nearly a decade as one of the Exonerated Central Park Five, said in a statement that police never told him the reason for the stop.

Footage of the incident that police shared publicly shows an officer approaching Salaam’s car and asking him to roll down the rear window, but quickly withdrawing after learning he was a city official.

Salaam can be heard in the video identifying himself as a councilmember.

“Oh, councilmember? OK, have a good one,” the officer then responds.

The officer then walks away but Salaam can be heard asking, “Is everything OK?”

The officer then replies, “Yep, you’re working, right?”

What Salaam says next is inaudible. The officer replies, “Take care, sir.”

“Last night, while driving with my wife and children and listening in to a call with my Council colleagues on speakerphone, I was pulled over by an NYPD officer," Salaam said in a statement Saturday before the footage was released.

"I introduced myself as Councilman Yusef Salaam, and subsequently asked the officer why I was pulled over. Instead of answering my question, the officer stated, ‘We’re done here,’ and proceeded to walk away," the statement reads.

The NYPD issued a statement saying, “As the video shows, throughout the interaction, the officer conducted himself professionally and respectfully.”

NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Information Tarik Sheppard said he did not know if Salaam asked the officer why he was being stopped. According to NYPD officials, Salaam was stopped for having illegally tinted windows and an out-of-state license plate on his sedan.

“But he gives him a break, he doesn’t write him a summons,” said Sheppard. “The officer was so pleasant to him.”

The NYPD’s statement did not address Salaam’s critical assertion that the officer did not explain why he was pulled over.

“The fact that the officer did not provide a rationale for the stop ... calls into question how the NYPD justifies its stops of New Yorkers and highlights the need for greater transparency to ensure they are constitutional,” Salaam said in his statement.

Three people, including Councilmember Sandy Nurse, told Gothamist they were on a conference call with Salaam at the time and overheard the entire exchange with the police officer.

“He didn’t answer his question about why he was being stopped,” Nurse said in a phone interview. “We definitely heard him ask because we talked about it for many minutes afterwards.”

She said at least five councilmembers joined her on the call.

Michael Sisitzky, an assistant policy director at the New York Civil Liberties Union, and Mandela Jones, a deputy chief of staff for Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, were also on the call.

They said they distinctly heard Salaam ask why he was being stopped, and that he didn’t receive an answer.

“We explicitly talked about it on the call afterwards,” Jones said.

Police officers are not legally required to tell citizens why they are being stopped, but Sisitzky says there has been a history of debate in New York City as to whether they should be.

“Officers should be able to provide a rationale anytime they are forcibly stopping a New Yorker,” he said. “These are all encounters that require officers to meet some kind of legal standard in order for these encounters to be lawful.”

Sisitzky said the incident with Salaam underscored why the Council’s latest legislation was important.

“We need more data on all levels of investigative encounters,” he said.

Salaam only took office in January, but has spoken in support of a police stops bill, which the mayor vetoed last week.

Speaker Adams announced Friday that her members plan to override the mayor's veto on two criminal justice bills Tuesday, unleashing a thinly-veiled rebuke of the mayor in a statement citing “exaggerated distortions that manufacture conflict” around the issues.

Council officials said the vote was originally scheduled for Thursday of next week. Bumping it to Tuesday suggests the speaker has the 34 votes she needs to override the mayor’s vetoes of the police stops bill and legislation banning solitary confinement from city jails.

If the override is successful it will be the second time the mayor’s been bested by the Council in nearly two years. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio never vetoed a bill during his eight-year stint, but was ideologically more aligned with the Council at the time. The more conservative Adams, meanwhile, enters the second half of his term in a near-perpetual state of war with the city’s legislature.

The mayor cast the police reporting bill, Intro 586, as an added paperwork burden on officers that could jeopardize public safety. It requires police to record demographic information and reasons for nearly all types of stops, as opposed to just those where criminality is suspected.

The mayor also cited safety concerns for corrections officers and incarcerated people in his rejection of the solitary confinement bill, Intro 549, while saying the practice was already effectively outlawed in city jails.

“The public dialogue fostered by officials at the highest levels of city government over the past several weeks has recklessly misled the public and sought to exploit fear in a way that is disappointing and unfortunate,” Speaker Adams said on Friday.

The mayor has lobbied hard against both bills in recent weeks. His spokesperson Charles Lutvak, responding to the override vote, touted the drop in crime the mayor has overseen, which police statistics corroborate.

“Today, crime is down, and New York remains the safest big city in America,” Lutvak said in an emailed statement. “If implemented, [the police stops bill] would undermine that progress and make our city less safe. We share the Council’s goal of increasing transparency in government and tried to work with them to achieve that — the answer is not to compromise public safety or justice but to work together to craft real solutions. We urge councilmembers to uphold the mayor’s veto.”

The mayor's office said Salaam's stop was at least a "level 3," meaning officers had reasonable suspicion that a state law had been broken. That would mean that the stop would be subject to reporting requirements.

But supporters of the council’s bill say that police often misclassify stops, and argue that is why the law should mandate the reporting of all stops.

Salaam had previously agreed to participate in a ride-along with Adams and police officers on Saturday evening amid mounting tensions between the mayor and Council, but announced he would no longer be participating in a statement on Saturday afternoon.

“We appreciate Councilmember Salaam, the new public safety chair of the City Council, for bringing this stop to our attention,” the mayor said in a statement. “We also appreciate and commend the NYPD for following all proper police procedures and being respectful during last night’s interaction, as the video and vehicle stop report show.”

Salaam was wrongly arrested at 15 and later imprisoned along with four other Black and Latino teenagers for the 1989 rape and assault of a white woman in Central Park. They were exonerated in 2002 after Salaam had served nearly seven years behind bars. He surprised the local political establishment by winning the Democratic primary for Council in his Harlem district last year.

This story has been updated with additional information.