As Mayor Adams urges his fellow Democrats on the New York City Council to sustain his veto of the “How Many Stops Act,” the chief of patrol, John Chell, is backing him. Instead of making the streets safer, the two argue, the paperwork required by the legislation will harm public safety.

Supporters of the Act claim to seek greater transparency by requiring officers to keep more detailed records of their interaction with the public. It’s a battle between the old complaint, “There’s never a cop around when you need one,” and concerns nationwide that when police are around, they aren’t respecting the civil rights of citizens.

The City Council, which has 51 members, passed the Act with 35 Democratic votes and two Democrats joining seven Republicans in opposition. Three members, all Democrats, abstained. Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds majority, meaning Mr. Adams needs to flip two votes.

If the law stands, it will require police to record information such as age, gender, and race for all interactions with the public. Right now, reports are only submitted for stops with “reasonable suspicion,” ones where officers have legal authority to detain and search.

Mr. Adams, a former NYPD captain, invited council members on a ride-along Saturday to build support, but none joined him. He agrees that longer paper trails for high-level interactions are beneficial but opposes adding a burden for things as basic as asking a resident if they’ve seen suspicious activity.

Appearing on John Catsimatidis’ 77 WABC Radio program, “The Cats Roundtable” last week, Mr. Chell said the Act would be counterproductive. He foresees officers spending more time behind desks, unavailable for walking the beat where they can prevent and respond to crime. 

Mr. Chell heads the NYPD’s largest bureau, overseeing the majority of uniformed officers. From this on-the-ground perspective, Mr. Chell said the How Many Stops Act’s name is “wrong,” giving a false impression to the public.

“We’re not stopping people,” Mr. Chell said. “We’re asking people for help. If you don’t want to stop and you want to keep walking, that’s your prerogative.” However, the Act will treat all “investigative interactions” as stops and require officers to collect 11 enumerated details from each resident they encounter. 

Mr. Chell used the example of the NYPD’s “dragnet” during a stabbing spree earlier this month. “We talked to thousands of people that day,” he said, “and it was an urgent situation to take this person off the street. Could you imagine having to stop and take your phone out and input this information?”

According to the NYPD, they have “at least 8.5 million interactions with potential witnesses and victims a year.” They estimate the new law will require “85 million minutes,” or about 162 years of additional work. In his veto message, Mr. Adams said the extra time would cost taxpayers “tens of millions of dollars” a year.

“We could appreciate the council trying to keep us transparent and keep the community safe,” Mr. Chell said, “but all we’re asking is let’s be practical about it. Let’s make some changes. It’s just going to slow us down. It’s going to interrupt our operations versus doing paperwork and we just don’t agree with it.”

Mr. Catsimatidis, the 2013 Republican candidate for mayor and chief executive of the Gristedes supermarket chain, said in the WABC interview that the requirements would “force the police to do paperwork while other crimes are being committed.” Whatever the intentions, he said, the strategy “doesn’t make any sense.”

Mr. Chell described the NYPD as a “dynamic agency” that does “a lot,” and “things like this just slow us down and take away from the mission of keeping this city safe.” The City Council, he said, “is trying to do the right thing, but we’d like to sit down and negotiate what this How Many Stops Act is and how we can make it better.”

Better policing is a goal proponents and opponents of the Act profess to share, offering the hope for common ground and successful reform that departments across the nation can follow. The City Council, Mr. Adams, and the NYPD are seeking a path to ensuring that cops who respect civil rights are around when citizens need them, not stuck behind their desks when criminals strike.