Reform plan set
Panel’s guidance includes restarting review board, complaint forms on web
Task force recommends plan for Troy Police as part of state-mandated effort.
A special task force has recommended a plan for the Troy Police Department that includes a web-based complaint system and “citizen police academy” to educate the public about how the police operate as part of the department’s state-mandated police reform effort due April 1.
“It is an obtainable plan to implement real change and strengthen the relationship between the police department and the residents they serve,” Mayor Patrick Madden said of the plan.
A 15-member steering committee — comprising police, clergy, neighborhood leaders, social service representatives and city officials — held nine public sessions during February and March to gather input.
Similar proposals are being finalized across the state following Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s executive order last June calling for all of New York’s police departments to produce reform plans to improve safety, reduce racial disparities and become more effective.
Cuomo issued the order in the wake of the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis, Minn., last May. Floyd died after a police officer put his knee on Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes. News and images of the death on social media set off protests nationwide including in New York state. The officer, Derek Chauvin, is currently on trial for murder in Minneapolis.
Police departments that don’t meet the
April 1 deadline for a reform plan risk losing state funding.
Troy’s recommendations include the creation of a new web-based complaint form with “plain language” instructions and a description of the process so people understand how it works and what to expect.
Additionally, a “Citizen Police Academy” could instruct the public about how Troy’s 151-person police department operates.
Recommendations also include looking at creating a Police Athletic League as a way to build bridges between youths and law enforcement, create a Diversity and Inclusion Committee to help recruit a more diverse workforce.
The plan also calls for making police discipline records more easily accessible by the public. That policy, the report points out, is more realistic now that state law has been changed to unseal police discipline records.
Many of the recommendations have been echoed by other police departments, especially those regarding of racial diversity and training police to be aware of mental health or other crises that can affect people during or before encounters with law enforcement.
Another recommendation calls for restarting the city’s Police Objective Review Board which has been dormant for some time.
The new board would clearly be independent from the police department and city administration.
Like many cities, Troy’s Police Department has had issues, especially concerning treatment of Black or other minority residents. Those worries came to a head in 2016 when Edson Thevenin, a Black DWI suspect was shot to death by a Troy patrol sergeant who had said his legs were pinned between Thevenin’s Honda Civic and his patrol another car.
Witnesses, however, contradicted that account and Thevenin’s surviving family is suing the city.