Central Park Five member Yusef Salaam’s traffic stunt jeopardizes public safety
Will New York let its long-professed collective guilt over 🌱th🐭e Central Park jogger case dictate public safety?
We’ll see if the City Council lets a perfectly proper police stop of onetime𝓀 Central Park Five defe🌱ndant Yusef Salaam, now a Harlem councilman, determine the future✅ of policing.
In 1989, Manhattan prosecutors charged Salaam, then 15, in 𝐆that spring’s rape and near-killing of the Central Park🍸 jogger.
He spent nearly seven years in prison.
In 2002, after a killer rapist confessed to the crime, a judge vaca꧅ted the five ❀defendants’ convictions.
The de Blasio administration later&n꧅bsp;paid the five a $41 million🔴 settlement.
Last year, ♍Salaam ran on hi🧸s biography — and only that — to win a Harlem council seat.
Salaam hadn’t eve🐻n lived 🍰;in New York for six years and had no notion of running until Harlem Democrats recruited him.
With his advisers attuned to the polls — and aware Harlem voters aren’t “Defund the police” supporters — he ran as a moderate.
Now he’s revealing his enduring anger at police.
He wasn’t yet a sitting councilman in December to force police to make a detailed record of every engagement they initiate with the public — even if it’s just to ask a woman wa🔜🎃lking alone at night if she’s alright.
But by last week, maybe feeling left out, he wanted the world to know he s✱upports the How Many Stops Act.
He said he would vote to override the mayor’s recent veto of the bill — his mind so made up that he’d rejected the mayor’s call for council members to ride along with police on patrol to get a feel 🅰for thei💦r job.
Still, he wasn’t the center of attention.
Saturday 🌳morning, he got the spotlight, releasing a bombshell statement: The night before, “while driving with my wife and children and listening in to a call with my Council colleagues on speakerphone, I 🌊was pulled over” in Harlem.
“Iಞ introduced myself as Councilman Yusef Salaam” and “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.”
Salaam said this stopღ is reason to o꧒verride the mayor: “The fact that the officer did not provide a rationale . . . highlights the need for greater transparency” to prevent “racial profiling.”
He also said this purportedly “unconstitutional” stop is why he wouldn’t ride along with the police that night, apparently forgetting his earlier rejection of such a ride-a♌long anyway.
Saﷺlaam seemed to think the police would cower and a🎶pologize.
Instead, they released their rationale for the stop🦩 🎃— and the video.
P🧸olice stopped Salaa𒁃m because his car’s windows are illegally tinted.
Dark tint is illegal because it’s dangerous.
Pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers can’t see whether the🅷 driver 🍷can see them — and police can’t see whether the driver is doing something dangerous, like texting.
(Nor can they see the driver’s race — meaning they’re no🍌t racially profiling.)
And Salaam’s BMW has a Georgia plate (notwithstanding the councilman’s New York reside🐼ncy): Police saw an out-of-state driver unfamiliar with our state’s safe-driving laws.
What wasn’t justified was the cop iܫmmediately walking awayﷺ when Salaam IDed himself as an elected official.
Cops are used to this “Don’t you know who I am?” stance, and they know they’ll get in trouble if t♔hey ticket important folk.
If the council wants to ��fi🦩x something, this low-grade corruption is a good candidate.
But they w🍸on’t because it benefits them.&nb꧋sp;
Salaam wants to use his prominence — prominence entirely due to 🦹a nearly four-decade-old injustice — to saddle cops with moꦰre paperwork.
But he also wants cops to cease making traffic stops for illegal behavio🐲r — when traffic stops are already🍃 down.
Last year, police made fewer thanꦅ 690,000 traffic stops, far below 2019’s 986,000.
Surprise: Traffic deaths are up.
Last year🌠, New Yoꦦrk had 258 traffic deaths, up from a near-record low 220 in 2019.
Pedestrians aren’t dying in greater numbers — street redesigns have helped — 🦩but motorists and passengers are.
Last year, 110 m൩otor-vehicle occupants died, up from 68 in 2019.
Who’s dying? Young men and their female passengers — like the donut-making Bronx driver this month who allegedly killed two passengers, including a 15-year-old girl.
With𒉰out police traffic stops — yes, disproportionate stops of young men, who are the most reckless drivers — deaths will persist.
Salaam wants to embarr💫ass the police into ﷺstopping no one — on foot or in cars.
Let’s hope other council members, in considering this week’s o𝓰verride of the mayor, don’t fall for this stunt.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.