Metro

Councilman calls for new traffic summonses to reflect race

The NYPD would have to revamp its traffic summonses so motorists pulled over by cops could be tracked by race under a bill being considered in the City Council, The Post has learned.

The bill, which was quietly introduced at Tuesday’s council meeting by longtime police critic Councilman Jumaane Williams, calls on the Police Department to provide reports from “each patrol precinct, housing police service area and highway division,” as well as statistics on race and ethnicity from every traffic stop.

“The lunatics are completely running the asylum,” fumed Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, when he learned of the bill.

“This is becoming a presumption that the police are racist, when they should be talking about why we have all this crime in neighborhoods of color.”

The bill comes less than two weeks after another council proposal that would require that cops get written permission before searching suspects.

Williams defended his bill by saying the openness it promotes would ultimately alleviate tensions between cops and communities of color.

“Policing is done differently depending on where you live and oftentimes on how you look,” he said. “We’ve been able to back that up already with data from the Police Department.”

He cited a 2008 study that showed bicyclists in Bedford-Stuyvesant were far more likely to be slapped with tickets than those in predominantly white Park Slope.

Williams shrugged off criticism by police unions, noting they have been vocal lately because they’re now engaged in contract talks with the city.

If passed, the latest bill would force cops to ask motorists to identify themselves by race and require the city to create new tickets to accommodate the data, said one source.

It’s unclear whether the tickets would allow people to identify themselves as being of mixed heritage, as proposed in yet another bill introduced this week.

Mullins suggested that police stop writing tickets to protest the bill if it becomes law.

“We should let them have it. The NYPD should just stop issuing motor-vehicle summonses,” Mullins said. “The city will suffer revenue loss, and then they’ll complain the police aren’t issuing enough summonses, and they’ll introduce [ticket] quotas.”