THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALTUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2020 N A23WASHINGTON — President
Trump’s Environmental Protec-
tion Agency was rushing to com-
plete one of its last regulatory pri-
orities, aiming to obstruct the cre-
ation of air- and water-pollution
controls far into the future, when a
senior career scientist moved to
hobble it.
Thomas Sinks directed the
E.P.A.’s science advisory office
and later managed the agency’s
rules and data around research
that involved people. Before his
retirement in September, he de-
cided to issue a blistering official
opinion that the pending rule —
which would require the agency to
ignore or downgrade any medical
research that does not expose its
raw data — will compromise
American public health.
“If this rule were to be finalized
it would create chaos,” Dr. Sinks
said in an interview in which he
acknowledged writing the opinion
that had been obtained by The
New York Times. “I thought this
was going to lead to a train crash
and that I needed to speak up.”
With two months left of the
Trump administration, career
E.P.A. employees find themselves
where they began, in a bureau-
cratic battle with the agency’s po-
litical leaders. But now, with the
Biden administration on the hori-
zon, they are emboldened to
stymie Mr. Trump’s goals and to
do so more openly.
The filing of a “dissenting scien-
tific opinion” is an unusual move;
it signals that Andrew Wheeler,
the administrator of the E.P.A.,
and his politically appointed depu-
ties did not listen to the objections
of career scientists in developing
the regulation. More critically, by
entering the critique as part of the
official Trump administration
record on the new rule, Dr. Sinks’s
dissent will offer Joseph R. Biden
Jr.’s E.P.A. administrator a power-
ful weapon to repeal the so-called
“secret science” policy.
E.P.A. career employees this
month also quietly emailed out the
results of a new study concluding
that the owners of half a million
diesel pickup trucks had illegally
removed their emissions control
technology, leading to huge in-
creases in air pollution. And some
senior E.P.A. staff members have
engaged in back-channel conver-
sations with the president-elect’s
transition team as they waited for
Mr. Trump to formally approve
the official start of the presidential
transition, two agency employees
acknowledged.
Current and former E.P.A. staff
and advisers close to the transi-
tion said Mr. Biden’s team has fo-
cused on preparing a rapid assault
on the Trump administration’s
deregulatory legacy and re-estab-
lishing air and water protections
and methane emissions controls.
“They are focused like a laser
on what I call the ‘Humpty
Dumpty approach,’ which is
putting the agency back together
again,” said Judith Enck, a former
E.P.A. regional administrator who
served in the Obama administra-
tion.
The transition team is particu-
larly focused on renewing efforts
to tackle climate change, which
had been crushed by the Trump
administration and mocked by
Mr. Wheeler as little more than
“virtue signaling" to foreign coun-
tries. There also are plans to re-
vamp scientific advisory boards
that Mr. Wheeler and his prede-
cessor, Scott Pruitt, had stacked
with allies of private industry and
purged of many academic scien-
tists.
“They seem hyper-focused on
what it’s going to take to get things
back on track,” said Chris Zarba,
former director of the E.P.A.’s sci-
ence advisory board, adding, “I
think they’re going to do a full re-
set.”
Racing against those efforts is
Mr. Wheeler, who has a long list of
priorities that aides and confi-
dants said he is determined to
complete before Inauguration
Day on Jan. 20. He has also ma-
neuvered legally to erect time-
consuming hurdles that Mr. Biden
will have to clear to unwind some
Trump administration policies.
At the top of Mr. Wheeler’s to-do
list is finalizing the science rule,
officially called “Strengthening
Transparency in Regulatory Sci-
ence.”
Under it, the agency would
have to dismiss or give less weight
to scientific studies that fail to re-
lease all their raw data to the pub-
lic. Mr. Wheeler says the rule’s op-
ponents prefer that regulatory de-
cisions be made in “a back room, a
proverbial smoke filled room.”
But thousands of medical and
scientific organizations say the
plan would cripple the E.P.A.’s
ability to create new air and water
protections because people who
participate in epidemiological orlong-term health studies that ex-
amine exposure to toxins typical-
ly take part only if their personal
health information is kept private.
The E.P.A. under Mr. Wheeler
has argued that it can create data
protections to secure personal in-
formation like home addresses
and medical records. But Dr.
Sinks, who was the only agency
scientist who worked to establish
that data security, said the agency
lacks the technical expertise and
funding to succeed.
“Human subjects research is
the most predictive data for estab-
lishing the human health impact
from environmental exposures,”
Dr. Sinks wrote, adding, “Any rule
or guidance that diminishes or re-
moves high quality research from
consideration in rule making re-
sults in poorly developed rules.”
Thomas A. Burke, a professor at
the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health who
served as E.P.A. science adviser inthe Obama administration, ex-
pressed amazement at Dr. Sinks’s
dissent.
“It speaks volumes about the
failure of the process and the fail-
ure of the administration to listen
not just to this one person but to
the broader scientific leadership
in the United States,” he said. Mr.
Burke called the rule “a very
thinly veiled dream rule for pollut-
ers.”
James Hewitt, a spokesman for
the E.P.A., said in a statement that
Dr. Sinks’s objections were “irrele-
vant.” He accused Dr. Sinks, with-
out presenting evidence, of failing
to follow agency “protocol for rais-
ing concerns” and also said Dr.
Sinks did not read the most recent
draft of the rule before filing his
dissent. Mr. Hewitt also did not ex-
plain why such a high-ranking ca-
reer scientist was not provided
the final draft of the rule.
“The purpose of the science
transparency rule is to codify in-
ternal procedural requirements
for how the E.P.A. will consider
the availability of data that it re-
lies upon in developing its final
significant regulatory actions and
influential scientific information,”
Mr. Hewitt said.
Mr. Wheeler in these final
months also sidestepped a prom-
ise he made to the E.P.A. inspector
general to address accusations
from more than 250 employees
about political interference with
science under the Trump adminis-
tration.
Mr. Wheeler had agreed to de-
termine the reasons for the con-
cerns about a culture of disregard
for scientific integrity and “tone at
the top” of the agency by Sept. 30.
He did not.
Instead he issued a memo in
November affirming the agency’s
support for its 2012 scientific in-
tegrity policy. But even that docu-
ment was watered down. The final
version eliminated language that
assured science would occur
“without political interference, co-
ercion of scientists or regard to
risk management implications,”
according to a document of
tracked changes reviewed by The
New York Times.
Mr. Hewitt in a statement saidthat memo did not affect the un-
derlying scientific integrity policy.
Of Mr. Wheeler’s broader
agenda over the next two months,
he said, “E.P.A. continues to ad-
vance this administration’s com-
mitment to meaningful envi-
ronmental progress while moving
forward with our regulatory re-
form agenda.”
The E.P.A. also is expected to fi-
nalize in the coming weeks a rule
on industrial soot pollution, which
is linked to respiratory diseases,
including those caused by the co-
ronavirus. The rule is expected to
leave in place a 2012 standard on
fine soot from smokestacks and
tailpipes, known as PM 2.5, ignor-
ing the E.P.A.’s own scientists,
who wrote last year that the exist-
ing rule contributes to about
45,000 deaths per year from respi-
ratory diseases, and that tighten-
ing it could save about 10,000 of
those lives.
In April, a study published by
researchers at Harvard linked
long-term soot exposure and
Covid-19 death rates. The study
found that a person living for dec-
ades in a county with high levels of
fine particulate matter is 15 per-
cent more likely to die from the co-
ronavirus than someone in a re-
gion with one unit less of the fine
particulate pollution.
And last month, the agency fi-
nalized a rule that creates a
lengthy new legal process to over-
turn or withdraw certain policy di-
rectives known as “guidance doc-
uments,” which give federal agen-
cies direction on the specifics of
how to enforce laws.
Such guidance documents can
give an administration some li-
cense to interpret laws in ways
that advance their policy agenda.
For example, the E.P.A. during the
Trump administration has pub-
lished a guidance document that
allows oil and gas companies to re-
lease flares from their wells for up
to 15 minutes at a time before reg-
ulations apply — a process that re-
leases methane, a powerful plan-
et-warming greenhouse gas.
These types of documents are
not legally binding, but they do
stand as the official policy of a
government agency until they are
formally withdrawn or changed.
Under the new guidance docu-
ment rule, the E.P.A. would have
to formally issue a new regulation
in order to withdraw the guidance
— a lengthy legal process that can
take months or even years, mean-
ing that until it is complete, those
Trump guidance documents will
stand as the official policies of the
Biden administration.
Jody Freeman, a professor of
environmental law at Harvard
and a former adviser to the
Obama administration, called the
rule a “little I.E.D.,” referring to an
improvised explosive device, or
roadside bomb, aimed at slowing
a Biden administration’s plans to
overturn Mr. Trump’s rules.
“Shenanigans like these are
what awaits the Biden team,” she
said.Coral Davenport contributed re-
porting.
A coal-fired plant in West Virginia. A recent study linked soot exposure to Covid-19 death rates.BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERSE.P.A.’s Staff Resists a Final Deregulatory Push
By LISA FRIEDMANAndrew Wheeler, the E.P.A. chief, has maneuvered legally to
erect time-consuming hurdles for the next administration.POOL PHOTO BY AL DRAGOEmboldened to stymie
the goals of departing
political appointees.
Police body cameras can help
reduce the kind of bogus stops
that have fueled accusations of ra-
cial bias and harassment against
police officers in New York City,
according to a long-awaited report
released Monday.
Officers who wore the devices
reported almost 40 percent more
stops than officers who did not,
the report found, suggesting that
body cameras could compel offi-
cers to provide a more accurate
accounting of their pedestrian
stops under the department pol-
icy known as stop-and-frisk.
Peter Zimroth, the federal mon-
itor who prepared the report and
is guiding changes to the stop-
and-frisk policy, attributed the in-
crease in documented stops to of-
ficers being more inclined to
record their actions on official pa-
perwork knowing that they were
recorded and could be reviewed.
Underreporting has hindered
court-ordered reform efforts for
years, but the report suggests that
the cameras are key to under-
standing the scope of the problem
and fixing it.
While body cameras are not a
cure-all for policing problems, Mr.
Zimroth said in the report, their
ability to illuminate police en-
counters can be “a powerful tool
for increasing transparency and
accountability for officers, the
public and for police officials.”
Underscoring critics’ claims
that the stop-and-frisk policy still
disproportionately affects people
of color, the report found that en-
counters were significantly more
likely to involve Black or Hispanic
people. They were also more
likely to be deemed unlawful by
supervisors reviewing the result-
ing video.
Darius Charney, a senior staff
attorney for the Center for Consti-
tutional Rights and one of the lead
plaintiffs’ lawyers in the stop-and-
frisk case, said the New York
study’s key findings suggest that
the problems at the heart of the
case — underreporting and racialbias — are much larger than pre-
viously known.
“Those two things together
raise a red flag for me,” he said in
an interview. “That would suggest
that the stop data is actually hid-
ing the true extent of the dispari-
ties and the true extent of the ra-
cial bias in stops.”
Mr. Charney said that he was
disappointed that the monitor did
not provide policy recommenda-
tions or dive deeper into the impli-
cation that the underreporting is-
sue could be racially skewed.
Mr. Zimroth, who does not grant
interviews, was appointed as a
monitor by a federal judge who
declared the Police Department’s
stop-and-frisk policy unconstitu-
tional in 2013. The study was de-
signed to assess the risks and
benefits of outfitting the city’s en-
tire police force with body cam-
eras, but the city went ahead with
a departmentwide rollout before
the yearlong pilot program
started in April 2017.
Alfred J. Baker, a police spokes-
man, said the department wel-
comed the report, but it reflected
outdated practices. Some 22,000
of the roughly 35,000 officers in
the department wear the cam-
eras, including all officers on pa-
trol and in specialized units.
“The NYPD has long since de-
ployed body-worn cameras for its
entire patrol force to realize the
benefits of increased transparen-
cy and better compliance by offi-
cers with the NYPD’s policies and
procedures, including those relat-
ing to street stops,” he said.
The Police Department joined
other law enforcement agencies
in rapidly adopting the devices af-
ter cellphone video shed light on
the police killings of Black men
like Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Mo., and Eric Garner in New York,
and ignited nationwide unrest and
calls for greater accountability for
officers.
Some law enforcement agen-
cies around the country, however,
have stopped using the devices,
citing the exorbitant costs of stor-
ing the resulting video footage
and the lack of proof of their effec-
tiveness.Police body cameras have gen-
erated more than eight million
videos since they were adopted in
New York City, officials said last
year, and officers record about
130,000 videos each week, accord-
ing to the monitor. The devices are
routinely used by the police, pros-
ecutors and the city’s civilian po-
lice watchdog agency to investi-
gate crimes and review officer
conduct in the line of duty.
The vast majority of the footage
is shielded from the public, but po-
lice have released footage from in-
cidents like fatal shootings to
show why they believe officers’
actions were justified. Legal activ-
ists have also used the video to
push for changes in department
policies and procedures, like re-
moving officers from calls dealing
with people in mental or emo-
tional crisis.
The Civilian Complaint Review
Board, which investigates accusa-
tions of police misconduct filed by
civilians, has said that body-cam-
era footage increases the likeli-
hood that its investigators will be
able to complete their investiga-
tions and substantiate claims
against officers.
The debate over the policy
came to a head in New York in
2013, when Judge Shira
Scheindlin ruled the Police De-
partment used the stops to target
Black and Hispanic people with-
out valid legal reason, in violation
of the Constitution. The judge ap-
pointed Mr. Zimroth to oversee
changes designed to bring the pol-
icy in line with the Constitution,
including a pilot study of whether
body cameras provided any reme-
dial benefits.
Since then, stops have plum-
meted. Officers conducted 13,459
stops last year, down from 191,851
stops in 2013. At the peak of stop-
and-frisk in 2011, officers made
685,724 stops.
But Mr. Zimroth has repeatedly
raised concerns about officers
failing to file paperwork docu-
menting the stops, which allow of-
ficers to detain and question peo-
ple who they reasonably suspect
are involved in criminal activity.
In a recent report, the monitor
said that 30 percent of stops con-
ducted in 2019 were not reported
by officers. Those who did fill out
department paperwork failed to
articulate a sufficient legal reason
for 21 percent of the 1,237 stops
that were audited last year.
During the pilot study, Mr. Zim-
roth found that the number of
stops reported by officers wearing
cameras rose 38.8 percent.
The justifications given by offi-
cers who reported stops while
wearing cameras were more
likely to be judged as unlawful
compared with those given by of-
ficers who did not use the devices.
The trend was also true for stops
that led to subsequent police ac-
tions like frisks, searches and ar-
rests.
The New York study involved
more than 1,200 uniformed and
plainclothes officers working the
3 p.m. to midnight shift in 40
precincts. The precincts were
paired based on their similar lev-
els of enforcement activity, civil-
ian complaints and demographics
of officers and neighborhoods.
One precinct in each pair was part
of the treatment group assigned to
wear body cameras, while the
other precinct was part of the con-
trol group that did not use the de-
vices.
The study found that officers
wearing body cameras drew 21
percent fewer complaints than of-
ficers who did not wear them, sug-
gesting that both parties — officer
and civilian — were mindful of
their behavior when the devices
were present.
But the devices had no signifi-
cant effect on arrests, officers’ use
of force, reporting of crimes and
domestic disputes, or public atti-
tudes toward the police, according
to the monitor’s report.
“At the very least,” Mr. Zimroth
said, the presence of body cam-
eras helps to satisfy the public’s
expectation to see video of contro-
versial encounters and judge for
themselves. The devices also sig-
nal that mechanisms exist to hold
officers responsible for miscon-
duct, and their use can help im-
prove public attitudes about the
legitimacy of police actions, he
said.
“Given the demonstrated bene-
fits and absence of harmful out-
comes, this study supports not
only the use of body-worn cam-
eras by the NYPD, but their use by
other departments as well,” he
concluded.Police Body Cameras
Called ‘Powerful Tool’
By ASHLEY SOUTHALLAn image from a body camera showing an arrest in June. A re-
port finds civilian complaints fell when officers wore the device.NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESSMonitor issues report
on stop-and-frisk by
the N.Y.P.D.
FRONT PAGE
An article on Saturday about
down-ballot losses for Democrats
in the 2020 U.S. election misstated
the name of a G.O.P. group. It is
the Republican State Leadership
Committee, not the Republican
Legislative Leadership Commit-
tee.
TRACKING AN OUTBREAK
An article on Wednesday about
the clinical trial results of As-
traZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine
misstated how many clinical trial
protocols AstraZeneca and Oxford
have made public. They have
released protocols for the trials in
Britain and in the U.S., not only
for the U.S. trials.
An article on Sunday about teach-
ing during the pandemic mis-
stated the shape of students’
desks at Walter P. Carter Elemen-
tary/Middle School in Baltimore.
They are trapezoidal, not triangu-
lar, as the students there undoubt-
edly learn in geometry.NEW YORK
An article on Monday about
struggling drivers working for
food delivery apps misstated New
York City’s current unemploy-
ment rate. The most recent rate,
from October, is 13.2 percent, not
14.1 percent.BUSINESS
An article on Monday about on-
line competition among luxury
brands misstated the ownership
of the watch brand Patek Phi-
lippe. It is owned by the Stern
family, not by Richemont.SPORTS
An article on Sunday about the
first woman to play football in aPower 5 conference game
misidentified the first woman to
score in a Division I football
game. It was Ashley Martin of
Jacksonville State in the Football
Championship Subdivision, not
Katie Hnida of New Mexico, who
was the first woman to score in
the Football Bowl Subdivision.ARTS
An art review on Friday about
Cecily Brown’s gallery show
misstated the phone number for
the Paula Cooper Gallery. It is
(212) 255-1105, not (212) 255-1155.A music review on Friday of
Megan Thee Stallion’s album
“Good News” misidentified the
home of the duo City Girls. They
are from Miami, not Los Angeles.OBITUARIES
An obituary on Thursday aboutthe Argentine soccer star Diego
Maradona misstated the round of
the 1990 World Cup in which he
scored the only goal in a win
against Brazil. It was the round of
16, not the quarterfinals.A headline with an obituary about
the recording engineer Bruce
Swedien misstated his age. As the
obituary correctly noted, he was
86, not 66.Errors are corrected during the press
run whenever possible, so some errors
noted here may not have appeared in
all editions.Corrections
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