Central Park 5 exoneree and council member says police stopped him without giving a reason

By the Associated Press in connection with NBCBLK

Police later said Yusef Salaam was stopped because of the especially dark tinting on his car’s windows.

New York City Council Member Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated group of men known as the Central Park Five, says he was stopped and pulled over by police without being given an explanation.

The police stop in New York City on Friday casts a renewed light on a police transparency bill, called the How Many Stops Act, that City Council members are set to vote on Tuesday to override Mayor Eric Adams’ veto. It would require officers to publicly report on all investigative stops, including relatively low-level encounters with civilians. The mayor said logging this information would create too much of a burden on police.

In the encounter with Salaam, which lasted less than a minute at 6:20 p.m., a police officer — heard in body camera footage provided Saturday by the New York Police Department — asks Salaam to roll down the back windows of his car.

But after Salaam identifies himself as a council member and asks if everything is OK, the officer quickly withdraws without providing further explanation for the stop. What Salaam says next is inaudible.

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