Members of the City Council are going to sock it to the NYPD again by introducing a bill that would force cops to get written or audio permission from a suspect before they could conduct a search, The Post has learned.
Under legislation being introduced Thursday, police officers would have to get consent for searches when they don’t have a warrant, aren’t making an arrest or don’t have probable cause.
Only two states — West Virginia and Colorado — have laws with similarly stringent requirements.
Suspects currently have the right to reject a search — but police have no obligation to notify them of that right and certainly don’t need written permission.
Police union leaders immediately blasted the measure as a free pass for potential criminals.
“This is the exact kind of poorly conceived idea from this City Council that starts with the belief that aggressively fighting crime to keep communities safe is a bad thing,” said Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch.
“This kind of proposal makes it appear that the council is more interested in protecting criminals than keeping communities safe.”
Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, called the bill “total insanity.”
The proposed law is a rehash of legislation introduced by the council in 2012 as part of the four-bill Community Safety Act — which sought to stem the rampant use of the “stop, question and frisk” policing tactic.
Only two of the four measures — establishing an independent inspector general to oversee the NYPD and a bid to ban racial profiling by cops — were put to a vote and passed, over the vetoes of then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
None of the bill’s 21 current sponsors was willing to provide The Post with a copy of the new bill, with some saying they didn’t want to preempt a planned press conference.
The measure would need at least 26 votes to pass before heading to Mayor de Blasio’s desk for approval or veto.
Sources said the language of the new bill was essentially the same as in the prior version, which sought to compel cops to issue the equivalent of a Miranda warning to people they want to search.
At an October 2012 hearing on the prior legislation, Bloomberg legal counsel Michael Best warned that the proposal would prevent police from searching suspects even when “officers have reason to fear for their own safety or the safety of the public.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union argued at the time the bill was needed because people were unwittingly consenting to searches.
Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito’s spokesman said she’s reviewing the proposal.
The mayor is also planning to review the legislation, according to a spokesman.
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