Cop-stop bill is ‘paperwork over justice’ in crime fight
Three Big Apple mothers whose children were killed in senseless bursts of gun violence have begged the City Council not to override Mayor Adams’ veto of the controversial cop-stops bill that critics say would drown the NYPD in paperwork and slow investigations.
Heartbroken moms Eva Hendricks, Yanely Henriquez and Yahisha Gomez — who each lost a child in stray-bullet shootings — wrote to Council Speaker Adrienne Adams detailing why the How Many Stops Act would have derailed the NYPD’s pursuit of their kids’ alleged killers.
“I’m not sure if you have ever felt the pain that my family has in the aftermath of this unspeakable tragedy, but the thought of officers having to slow down or waste time filling out paperwork, while this individual is out there potentially committing more crime, makes me sick to my stomach,” wrote Hendricks, whose son, Brendon Hendricks, 17, was shot dead in The Bronx in June 2020.
“Is the idea to prioritize paperwork over justice?” the distraught mom asked in the letter, obtained by The Post.
The legislation, which demands that cops record demographic information about nearly everyone they speak to — would have uselessly delayed the urgent investigation into who was responsible for the promising Bronx hoops star’s death, she wrote.
“If those officers had to stop and complete paperwork after each time that they spoke to one of the hundreds of people they encountered during their time trying to find the perpetrator, wasting those precious moments, we may have never found the person responsible, and they could still be out on the street to this day tearing apart other families like he did ours,” Hendricks wrote in her emotional treatise.
The council will likely vote to override Adams’ veto Tuesday, brushing aside his concerns that the bill will mire cops in a torrent of paperwork when they should be out solving crimes.
City Hall showdown
It’s not clear if the letters — each dated Jan. 29 — will dissuade the speaker from pursuing the override vote, the fight over which has often devolved into a petty battle between City Hall and the Democratic-led council.
But the three missives could tug at even the most hardened politician’s heartstrings — such as when Gomez lamented how the bill could deny justice for families like hers, which endured the killing of Bronx 11-year-old Kyara Tay by mopedborne gunmen in May 2022.
“We don’t need [police] wasting time documenting that this individual who didn’t have any information to provide was a black male, or a stylish female, or their age, or ethnicity,” she wrote.
“That is not going to help deliver justice for my family,” she said. “But continuing to get helpful information during the precious seconds and minutes immediately following an incident can — and in my case, did.”
Henriquez — whose 16-year-old daughter Angellyh Yambo was killed in April 2022 after getting caught in gunfight crossfire near her South Bronx high school — expressed similar sentiments.
“The police officers who spent every second they could to deliver justice for my family had the perpetrator in handcuffs by 10:00 p.m. the following night,” the mom wrote.
“When I think about this legislation, I just imagine all the people that those cops had encountered and asked for the information needed to find the person responsible for this heinous act — it was a LOT of people.
“We’re talking about hundreds of people, hundreds of conversations, all in a matter of a few hours,” Henriquez noted.
“I know in my heart that this bill would have slowed the process down and potentially denied justice to my family,” she said.
Mayor Adams has railed against the bill in recent weeks for similar reasons, but Speaker Adams appears firmly entrenched in her determination to override Hizzoner’s veto.
Her office didn’t comment on the letters.