Three pending pieces of City Council legislation could bring to a head a looming battle in City Hall: whether policy changes quietly negotiated with New York Police Commissioner William Bratton, and not lawmaking, are a better way to transform the NYPD.
One bill, proposed following the death last year of Eric Garner, would make the use of chokeholds a crime. Another would compel officers to identify themselves to those they stop by name, rank and command. A third would require them to ask permission before conducting some searches.
The bills have enough votes to pass the City Council, according to their sponsors and an informal survey of lawmakers by The Wall Street Journal.
But all are opposed by Mr. Bratton and the city’s police unions. Mayor Bill de Blasio has threatened to veto the chokehold legislation, and he has expressed skepticism about the other two bills, known collectively as the Right to Know Act.
“The truth is that the police department under Bratton has de facto veto power over police reform legislation,” said Councilman Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat and co-sponsor of the Right to Know Act. “No police reform bills, despite their momentum from prior events, have been enacted over the objections of Commissioner Bratton.”
The liberal lawmakers behind the police legislation say they will push for a vote anyway, making potentially unavoidable a showdown with the liberal mayor.
“We now have a majority of council members on both the bills and if we need to push them to make it happen, that’s what we’re going to do,” said CouncilmanAntonio Reynoso, a Democrat and another co-sponsor of the Right to Know Act.
Such a confrontation could serve as a political minefield for Mr. de Blasio, who was elected by liberals and minorities after he promised to enact broad changes to policing, but is taking steps to heal a bitter rift with the city’s police unions and the 35,000 officers they represent.
Mr. Bratton said during a council hearing on the legislation in June that the bills represented “unprecedented intrusions” into the NYPD’s internal affairs.
He declined through a spokesman to be interviewed for this article.
Sgt. Edward Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said the bills would have a “chilling effect” on policing. He praised Mr. de Blasio for expressing opposition to the legislation and said his relationship with the mayor had improved in recent months.
“He’s made more of an effort and I really think it’s a sincere effort,” Mr. Mullins said. “His position on the city council legislation has helped greatly.”
Meanwhile, City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito typically has sought to make changes to policing through policy negotiations with Mr. Bratton instead of through legislation. For about a year, the liberal East Harlem Democrat has been in talks with the commissioner over a proposal she supports to ease penalties for low-level violations such as riding bicycles on the sidewalk and being in city parks after dark.
A spokesman for Ms. Mark-Viverito declined to give details on the state of those negotiations, as did a spokesman for Mr. Bratton.
Eric Koch, the spokesman for Ms. Mark-Viverito, said the speaker was interested in working with lawmakers and Messrs. Bratton and de Blasio to find creative approaches to the issues addressed in the Right to Know Act.
But some supporters of the police bills say internal policy changes by the NYPD aren’t acceptable substitutes for legislation.
Donna Lieberman, president of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said legislation was necessary because any negotiated policy change in the NYPD could change with a new mayor and police commissioner.
Joo-Hyun Kang, director of Communities United for Police Reform, a group that led the movement against stop-and-frisk and has been supportive of Mr. de Blasio, said “some kind of administrative solution by the NYPD is not acceptable.”
Mr. de Blasio has cited changes made to the NYPD in his administration, mostly the sharp decline in the use of the police tactic known as stop-and-frisk and the retraining of all police officers after Mr. Garner’s death.
Karen Hinton, a spokeswoman for the mayor, listed other policy changes the administration had made to the NYPD and the city’s criminal-justice system, including a body-camera pilot program and an easing of penalties for marijuana possession. Ms. Hinton noted that complaints against NYPD officers were down 22% compared with the first half of 2014.
As a candidate, Mr. de Blasio promised to change the way police interact with black and Latino New Yorkers. But some observers said the mayor’s tone on policing shifted after he was criticized by police-union leaders following the fatal shooting in December 2014 of two NYPD officers. Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said in an interview recently that it seemed as though the mayor’s approach to policing had evolved.
Gwen Carr, the mother of Mr. Garner, who was unarmed when he died last year after being placed in a chokehold by police during an arrest for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes, agreed. “He’s talking but he’s not saying much. I’m disappointed,” Ms. Carr said.
Mr. Mullins said the mayor’s approach to policing had changed.
“After the last year I think he understands that you can’t run a city without the support of the police and the job that they do,” he said. “That’s exactly what the mayor came to understand.”
Write to Mara Gay at mara.gay [at] wsj.com