Christine C. Quinn (Stefan Jeremiah)
The NYPD would be saddled with an oversight agency empowered to help shape police policies, under an election-season deal proudly trumpeted yesterday by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
The move by the Democratic mayoral front-runner was immediately slammed as a politically motivated power play that could hamper the department’s successful crime-fighting formula by putting critics like the ACLU in charge of police policy.
The new agency would be able to subpoena documents and, when reviewing NYPD practices and procedures such as stop-and-frisk and Muslim-group surveillance, even interview witnesses. It would recommend “corrective action” to the mayor and the council.
Quinn’s measure to create the Inspector General’s Office comes amid a federal trial challenging the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy.
Quinn, the favorite to follow Mayor Bloomberg at City Hall, is trying to appeal to left-leaning primary voters — many of whom oppose stop-and-frisk.
State Sen. Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn), a former NYPD cop, blasted the measure as “pathetic” and “sad” and called it “a setback for the city and safety of the children.”
Quinn has the votes in the council to pass the measure and likely override a mayoral veto.
Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson said Bloomberg would veto the bill.
The Post first reported Monday that Quinn was moving to back an IG bill for cops after failing to take a stand on an earlier version of the proposal made by council members last fall.
Quinn’s bill would create the NYPD’s IG unit within the city Department of Investigation, which probes all other city agencies.
Individual cases of misconduct would continue to be handled by NYPD’s Internal Affairs and the Civilian Complaint Review Board.
A spokesman for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly — whom Quinn has praised and even suggested keeping on as commissioner if she wins the mayoralty — said an IG is completely unnecessary.
“No police department in America has more oversight than the NYPD,” said Kelly spokesman Paul Browne, citing federal monitoring of intelligence operations as well as five DAs, two US attorneys and the state attorney general.
The move drew immediate praise from the NYCLU and Communities United for Police Reform.
Quinn crafted the bill with Brooklyn council members Jumaane Williams and Brad Lander, to “increase the public’s confidence in the police force.”
And she defended it during a mayoral debate last night.
“If you have a lot of entities and they’re not getting the job done, then more is needed,” Quinn said at First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica.
But GOP candidate Joe Lhota shot back, “Building another bureaucracy is not the answer.”
Manhattan Institute researcher Heather MacDonald said the proposal would handcuff the NYPD and “opens the window” for Lhota to run as the pro-cop candidate.
The candidates also clashed on the stop-and-frisk policy.
Democrat Bill Thompson issued an emotional and heated rebuke when Comptroller John Liu asked him to join in calling for an end to stop-and-frisk.
Thompson, talking about his 15-year-old son, said, “I’m worried also about my son being shot by someone who’s a member of a gang in the street.”
Quinn, Thompson and Liu also said they would add thousands of new cops if elected.
Additional reporting by David Seifman