Dear Police Reform Project Subscribers, Happy New Year! On December 30, 2025 the Law Enforcement Misconduct Investigative Office (LEMIO) of the New York Attorney General’s Office issued its Annual Report. LEMIO is charged with helping to prevent police misconduct, with the statutory goals of “enhancing the effectiveness of law enforcement, increasing public safety, protecting civil liberties and civil rights, ensuring compliance with constitutional protections, and local, state and federal laws, and increasing the public’s confidence in law enforcement.” This year’s report includes several recommendations that would be addressed by passage of the SAFTE Act, S3662A/A6631. The LEMIO report cites our 2023 report. In the Annual Report’s legislative recommendations, LEMIO makes the case for reduction of pretext stops, barring racial profiling, and requiring data collection and transparency, all components of the SAFTE Act. LEMIO Annual Report, page 21. Section B of the Report, titled “Pass legislation that increases transparency and bans profiling,” notes, The data that is available, both in New York state and across the country, suggests that enforcement often disproportionately falls on people of color. There is a growing movement towards transparency, with nearly half of U.S. states now requiring data collection when an individual is stopped by law enforcement and most states prohibiting bias-based profiling. New York should join these states by mandating uniform statewide data collection and by banning bias-based profiling by law enforcement. One important component of such legislation would be to prohibit agencies from relying on race and other protected characteristics in initiating or determining the scope of law enforcement action, including pedestrian and traffic stops, searches, and arrests. This prohibition not only would bring New York in line with most other states, but also would permit New York to access a federal funding program to help support the collection and analysis of police traffic stop data as a means of reducing profiling. To provide just a few examples, states like California, Connecticut, and Kansas have all banned bias-based profiling in this manner. In addition, law enforcement agencies should track and report a standardized set of data on traffic and pedestrian stops including the duration and location of each encounter, the reason the encounter was initiated and its result, the perceived race, gender, and age of the person stopped, and actions taken by the officer during the encounter such as ordering a person out of a vehicle, handcuffing, searching people and vehicles, seizing property, making arrests, and using force. LEMIO Annual Report, page 17 (footnotes omitted). Section D, titled “Limit pretextual traffic stops and unnecessary risky pursuits” reviews the harms of pretextual traffic stops, the law permitting them, and the racial disparities that result from them. In its discussion of pretext stops, the report states, The racial disparities are significant. Black drivers are far more likely to be pulled over than white drivers. While most New York agencies do not track searches and their outcomes, analyses from other states that do track data show that while drivers of color are more likely to be searched, the likelihood of officers finding contraband from those searches is much lower than for white drivers who are searched. And, tragically, some of the high-profile deaths of individuals at the hands of police over the past decade originated from simple traffic stops that escalated into violence or high-speed pursuits… Jurisdictions that have banned police stops for low-level equipment violations include states such as Virginia and Oregon, localities such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Memphis, and various local police departments across the country. These jurisdictions have had successes: in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, evidence suggested that officers were able to focus on serious public safety issues and get more guns off the street when they could divert time and resources away from low-level violations that fail to make the roadways safer. Similarly, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, after police stopped conducting stops for certain low-level equipment violations, car accidents decreased and crime was unaffected, while racial disparities in traffic stops were reduced. Components of such legislation include prohibiting police officers from initiating traffic stops for specified low-level equipment and traffic violations, rendering inadmissible in criminal actions any evidence derived from a traffic stop initiated on prohibited grounds, and requiring robust data collection on traffic stop encounters. LEMIO Annual Report, pages 20-21 (footnotes omitted). The report continues by reviewing laws in other jurisdictions that have banned police stops for low-level equipment violations, noting the success of these policies in enhancing public and road safety. Section F of the report, titled “Require the use of body-worn cameras,” emphasizes the importance of requiring all police and sheriff’s department deploy and use body-worn cameras and dashboard cameras in all encounters with members of the public. This would include stops and searches resulting from pretext stops as required by the SAFTE Act. With this report, the New York State Attorney General’s Office, a law enforcement entity, recognizes the harms caused by our current system and recommends many of the changes we have urged. We encourage you to read this report and cite it when speaking to others about the need for passage of the SAFTE Act. Sincerely, Jill Paperno Katie Blum |
