City’s difficult reckoning
Calls increase for acknowledgment of problems in Saratoga Springs
In the summer of 2018, Carol Daggs says her quiet street became a speedway for harassment.
A large truck with a Confederate flag waving from its flatbed drove back and forth in front of the Black woman’s home. Daggs says the person behind the wheel, a white male teen, allegedly yelled racial slurs at her and other family members.
The lifelong Saratogian reported it to city police, but was told the teen’s actions did not rise to the level of a crime. “That summer, I think I mowed my lawn once,” said Daggs, a singer, pianist and historian whose family has lived in Saratoga Springs for five generations. “I didn’t want to go outside. He was a menace, blasting down the street like a fool, calling us names. It’s unsettling to say the least.”
The incident led a group of city residents, who were mostly white, to organize meetings to discuss racism and their role in how to improve the atmosphere in the upstate New York city of 28,000.
For Saratoga Springs, a resort community for more than two centuries with a population that is 92 percent white, the current reckoning with racial discrimination and injustice in the wake of police killings of Black people nationwide has been met with awkwardness and resistance — still many see it as long overdue.
Black people have been part of the city’s history since it was founded, including servants
who worked at the resorts and slaves who tended to their masters while their owners relaxed in the storied spa waters right up to the Civil War.
Policing issues
In recent years the call for Saratoga Springs to take an unflinching look at its own issues of systemic racism has grown louder after the death of Darryl Mount, a young biracial man who died after police pursued him in 2013.
The former police chief admitted to lying about an internal probe into the death, and there is still no definitive answer about how the left side of Mount’s skull was crushed after police say he fell off a scaffold during a pursuit.
As the Black Lives Matter movement exploded this past summer in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis by a white police officer, protesters have gathered in Saratoga Springs and loudly criticized the city for being obtuse to the changes happening in the world around it — from Saratoga County sheriff’s deputies shooting pepper balls at them for occupying a street at night to a white police officer at a public meeting talking about how hard it is for his child to know he’s patrolling Black Lives Matter protests, which some felt was tonedeaf as Black people in the audience say they are stressed every day of their lives because of racism.
While Public Safety Commissioner Robin Dalton acknowledges racism exists in the city, neither she nor police Chief Shane Crooks believe it taints policing or that police racially profile. And Mayor Meg Kelly, aside from forming a task force on police reform as ordered by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has been publicly silent on Mount’s death (which happened before she took office) as well as protests and the pepper ball incident. She did not respond to a request for comment about the issues.
But many say discrimination against Black residents and visitors — from unprovoked stops by police to disproportionate punishment exacted on Black city school students — has been an unspoken truth in Saratoga Springs for years, and that it continues today.
The past haunts
Blacks have a long history in Saratoga Springs. The Daggs family has lived for more than a century in an area known as Brandtville, the area just south of Crescent Street. There, Carol Daggs’ family thrived as farmers, growing produce and tending to cows, chickens and pigs. She wrote about the Daggs’ long history in her newly published book “Saratoga Soul: Brandtville Blues.”
She said Black residents in the Spa City go as far back as Gideon Putnam, the city’s founder, who had slaves who are buried with him at his Burying Grounds on South Franklin Street. According to the Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project, Blacks also fought in the Battle of Saratoga, the turning point of the Revolutionary War, and rode at Saratoga Race Course as jockeys. It was also the city from which free man Solomon Northup, whose autobiography inspired the film “12 Years a Slave,” was kidnapped and sold into slavery.
Enslaved Blacks were also brought north in the summer months to Saratoga Springs by Southern aristocrats who vacationed at the opulent hotels, said Lorie Wies, local history librarian at the Saratoga Springs Public Library. Though slavery was outlawed in 1827 in New York, Saratogians were tolerant of the practice, Wies said.
Timothy Holmes, who wrote “Saratoga Springs, New York: A Brief History,” said the enslaved citizens’ presence caused friction as the city was also a stop for orators like Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, who spoke for abolition and women’s rights.
“It got uncomfortable here, the years before the Civil War,” Holmes said. “It’s like what we are going through now, a polarized country over racism.”
Commissioner of Accounts John Franck, 57, said when he was growing up in Saratoga Springs racism was more prevalent. But he agrees it still exists. Franck tells a story about collecting signatures with a Black woman who is a member of the Democratic Party. He said when he’s with her, residents answer the door with skepticism and want to see her identification. At one point, police were called on her.
He also said no Black person has ever served on the City Council.
Still, he thinks the police are doing a good job because the force has a lot of young officers.
“It’s a very overall white community,” Franck said. “But what is happening should have happened awhile ago. There is a lot of frustration in the Africanamerican community. I have African-american friends who are like family. I know what people of color have to go through. But I think the police do a pretty good job.”
In the schools
Allegations of overpolicing Saratoga Springs City School District have been cited in recent years for treating Black students unfairly. In 2018, the U.S. Department of Education found that Black students in the city school district, who total 2.5 percent of the student body, made up 14.4 percent of out-of-school suspensions and 6.6 percent of in-school suspensions. In June, the district Board of Education passed a resolution noting the district has “zero tolerance for racism of any kind” and “is dedicated to fostering a supportive and effective educational environment for all students.”
But much of the discussion
around disparity and race in Saratoga Springs has centered recently around the same issue most communities face — claims of systemic racism by the police department.
Daesha Harris, who sits on the city’s newly formed Police Reform Task Force, said she has so many stories about police targeting members of her family, it would take “a lifetime to tell them.”
a7
They include multiple times she has been stopped while driving for, she says, no reason — including a recent incident in which she said the police officer questioned her about why a girl, who is white, was riding in her back seat. The girl was Harris’ niece. She said her father was stopped recently coming back from a fishing trip. Police wanted to know where he was going.
“I do not consider the Saratoga police to be there to serve and protect me or anybody else of color,” said the artist and member of the Skidmore College faculty who teaches photography. “I would never think to ask them for help because they aren’t going to help me. I want to avoid them.”
Though Black residents make up 2.1 percent of the city population, as the U.S. Census Bureau reports, police department data that was read at a recent Police Reform Task Force meeting shows that Black people accounted for 10 to 20 percent those arrested in the city from 2013 to May 2020. Statistics from the police department also show that, during the same time period, use-offorce was applied to Black people facing arrest 10 to 26 percent of the time.
Police encounters
The circumstances surrounding Mount’s death only increased distrust of city police by Black residents. Police chased Mount, 22, in the early morning hours of Aug. 31, 2013, after police said they saw him slam his girlfriend’s head into a brick wall. Police said when they caught up with Mount, he was unresponsive near the bottom of the scaffold in an alley. He never regained consciousness and died in May2014fromwhataforensic pathologist hired by Mount’s family described as “trauma sustained by a direct assault.”
For years, Mount’s family and friends have been frustrated by city officials who have said repeatedly they can’t comment on the death because the city is still in litigation with the Mount family.
“I’d love to talk about it, but I can’t,” said Dalton who was not in office at the time of the incident.
Then on July 30, a clash with Black Lives Matter protesters escalated when Saratoga County deputies shot pepper balls at about 60 people who were standing on Broadway, blocking traffic. Organizers were critical of city police for allowing that to unfold against the mostly homegrown crowd. And in turn, the city released body camera footage meant to explain why force was deployed to disperse the crowd. The footage mostly showed protesters were blocking the road, but otherwise were not being aggressive.
Tensions were evident Wednesday night when Dalton, appearing at Police Reform Task Force meeting, faced questions from citizens upset about how law enforcement officers responded July 30 and also what they believed was a large police presence at a vigil for Mount on Aug. 31 marking the seven-year anniversary of his grave injury. In front of a crowd of about 30, Dalton struggled to speak as people yelled and interrupted her.
Dalton reiterated that it was the sheriff’s deputies who were present July 30 as backup, not Saratoga Springs police, who shot pepper balls at protesters. Dalton also said police were just ensuring “everyone was safe” so that no one would be run down by a car. She also said she was horrified that protesters were hit with pepper spray.
Sheriff Michael Zurlo said the pepper ball projectiles were deployed toward the ground by members of the sheriff’s special operations team. He said they were used because “the crowd was advancing on officers attempting to effect arrests at the front of the line. The deployment of pepper served to divide the crowd and prevent them from advancing on officers.”
Black Lives Matter and All of Us leader Lexis Figuereo, who has organized the protests, said he has been unimpressed with the Police Reform Task Force.
“The first thing they did was tell us how good this police department was,” Figuereo said. “How they are the best department in the area and how good their officers are. I’m sick of hearing about how hard (Black Lives Matter protest) is on the mental health of their officers.”
The 33-year-old father of two believed the police presence at the Mount vigil was intended to intimidate those in attendance. Skidmore College senior Adia Cullors, who also took part, agreed.
“I saw a disproportionate amount of police officers at the vigil,” she said. “It was a candlelight vigil with the family. It felt very threatening.”
Crooks, when asked about the claims that Black people are being overly policed, strongly denied such allegations, saying there is no discrimination on his force. The police chief also said that there must be more to the stories of Black people who say they are stopped on the street and in their cars and asked to show identification.
“To walk up to someone and ask for identification with no sign of criminal activity or anything else, would be violating their rights,” Crooks said. “If that is the case, they should be reaching out and contacting us. Asking where you are going or where you are headed is part of the normal conversation. We are recording everything
... Most of the cars have cameras, the officers have body cameras.”
Cullors, who is from Baltimore, said that the chief doesn’t know because Black people won’t complain to the police.
She said she had her own frightening experiences with Saratoga Springs police two years ago. She wanted to go stargazing one night with her partner. As she laid on her back in the grass in a park near her friend’s home, a police officer came by.
“He came up with his