Police forces plan on reform
Smaller departments working through state reinvention collaborative
Police Chief David Keevern has studied the guide for the New
York State Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative to see how to apply it to his 19-member department and its role in a town of 12,246 residents.
The North Greenbush department is typical of most of the state’s police forces. It has fewer than 100 sworn officers and the job is quiet, unlike the way police work is depicted on television crime dramas set in the nation’s big cities.
Calls for police reform seem more in line for places like New York City, Keevern said. “You would think this wouldn’t be applicable to small police departments like we have in Rensselaer County.”
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s April 1 deadline for the state’s 446 cities, towns, villages and counties that have police forces to adopt policing reform plan or risk losing state funding is about four months away. The local governments are responding with studies and planning that are already affecting their departments.
Departments in 408 communities have fewer than 100 officers
compared to 38 agencies that have 100 or more officers, according to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services’ 2019 census. In the Capital Region’s 32 police departments, there are 1,518 police officers with 1,002 of them working for the six largest forces. The remaining 516 are in 27 smaller agencies.
De-escalation techniques and implicit bias training for officers had been discussed in North Greenbush but now the department has followed through with it since the review of the town’s operations began, Keevern said. The chief and his local counterparts are discussing what they can do working together to compensate for their small size and costs they will face.
The departments hear the calls for greater police accountability, such as use of body cameras for officers, but they don’t have the budgets to pay for installation and operation. They also find that they are impacted by crime spilling over from larger communities, leaving them vulnerable to unanticipated crimes.
But the smaller departments also see their size as a strength. They see officers having better relationships with their residents, providing the basic ingredient for successful community policing. And they say the size of their departments allows for better supervision and control of officers’ interactions both with local residents and people from outside their areas.
The Capital Region’s big city departments of Albany, Schenectady and Troy get the most attention, with a focus on interactions with their larger minority communities and gun violence, especially in 2020, a year that has seen sharp increases in fatal and nonfatal shootings.
“The smaller places are really taking the diversity issue seriously and having the community much more involved,” said Alice Green, the executive director of the Center for Law and Justice in Albany.
Green has worked with the city of Beacon in Dutchess County, which has a 38-member police force. In Beacon, the public is discussing funding for police and what the future could be, she said.
“And if they have people of color in their community, they’re involving them,” said Green, who has been critical of the Albany Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative for lacking community representation.
Green said that the smaller departments may have better relationships with residents because officers often live in the community instead of being commuters. This is something that should be considered by larger municipalities, she said.
Cohoes resident Kizzy Williams serves on the Cohoes Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative Committee and owns Allie B’s Cozy Kitchen at 353 Clinton Ave. in Albany’s Arbor
Hill neighborhood. Mayor Bill Keeler, a retired State Police major, named the panel.
“It’s a spotlight on the community. And it will allow the outside people to find out what’s going on in the city. So, that’s why I’m happy for the police reform and being a part of the body,” said Williams, who also serves on the city Planning Board.
With her restaurant in Albany, Williams has watched violence cut across the city this year. She said Cohoes, with its 33 police officers, is peaceful. Cohoes is working to increase diversity and welcome the minority community, she said.
“So here today, they have a Black woman on two boards making decisions with them, getting my voice out, letting them know what we need and how we’re going to get there,” Williams said. “Sometimes we have to look at the small cities and take some advice.”
Keeler, who began his career as a Cohoes patrol officer and eventually retired as the Troop G major commanding 600 to 700 troopers in a 10county area that included the Capital Region, has embraced the governor’s police reform and reinvention collaborative. When Keeler took office in January, plans called for department accreditation and an in-depth look at city police operations.
Cohoes had some Black Lives Matter demonstrations but not of the magnitude of those in the region’s larger cities, the mayor said. The city’s panel is drawn from its six wards and strives to be inclusive by taking into account the city’s growing diversity, Keeler said.
The governor’s push for police reform arose in the spring after George Floyd was killed in May while being arrested by Minneapolis police, triggering nationwide protests. In August, Cuomo mandated that communities statewide and their police forces develop and institute reforms for a safer, fairer policing standard, with an April deadline.
Maria Haberfeld, professor of police science at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York City, has questioned if this is the responsible way to achieve true reform and improvement of policing in the state. There is a level of frustration in communities but that doesn’t mean they Please see
should be writing the guidelines for local police, Haberfeld said.
“It’s a complicated profession. We have solid empirical research of the past six decades on how police can be reformed. For people to suddenly be giving mandates, come up with ideas and come up with how to reform is irresponsible,” Haberfeld said about plans that don’t rely on the research that has been done.
Reform has to focus on recruiting, ensuring officers have no criminal record, more extensive training and hiring of more mature officers to prevent problems, Haberfeld said.
The scope of police actions ranges from criminal arrests to enforcing traffic laws. Bethlehem, which has a 28-member department, has been conducting its public reform meetings. The most recent forum covered traffic enforcement
and included a presentation by the department and community comments.
Hoosick Falls Police Chief Bob Ashe said the village’s reform collaborative is evolving to become a permanent sounding board and a review board for his department of three full-time and 15 part-time officers. The Green Island Police Department’s 25 members are all part-time, but experienced officers often work full-time at larger regional departments. The village has established a committee and has started the review, said Sean Ward, executive assistant to Mayor Ellen McnultyRyan.
“It is a lot of work for a small department like ours,” Ward said.
A key element is hearing from people who aren’t enamored of police, said Keevern, the North Greenbush chief. “We want to hear their views.”
The North Greenbush department’s interactions are not only with its hometown, Keevern said.
North Greenbush is neighbors with Troy and Albany and just a 12minute drive away, the chief said. The officers had to reflect on how they deal with people from other communities.
“We know about the problems with gang violence between Albany and Troy,” Keevern said. What most people don’t know is that when I-787 became too hot to travel, suspected gang members took a detour through North Greenbush, the chief said.
“They started going up Route 4.”
Part of that flow of traffic results in North Greenbush police officers seeing 70 percent of crime arising from out-oftown people, Keevern said. That means the department has to make its officers even more cognizant that they deal respectfully with people.
All the municipalities will be conducting public forums to discuss reforms and solicit public comment before finalizing their recommendations by the April 1 deadline.