‘I know it has taken too long’
Mayor says he’ll sign police accountability legislation if Common Council approves it
Less than two days after Mayor Steve Noble publicly told the Common Council he would sign police accountability legislation if the body adopts it, members of the council’s special committee on policing, who have been working on it for almost two years, said they were glad he “finally” pledged his commitment.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday
evening, Noble wrote: “I hear you. I see you. I know it has taken too long.” His post names all nine members of the Common Council, as well as its president, Andrea Shaut.
“Let’s make this happen,” Noble wrote. “Adopt police accountability legislation and I will sign it.”
The post came about an hour
after the start of a “Walk 4 Black Lives” rally and march in Kingston that drew more than 1,500 people protesting racism and calling for police accountability. The event, and a smaller march in the city on May 30, were prompted by the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. A black man, Floyd died after a white police officer held his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as Floyd was lying on the ground, handcuffed.
In a press release Friday, Kingston Alderman Jeffrey Ventura Morell, D-Ward 1, Council Majority Leader Reynolds Scott-Childress, D-Ward 3, and Alderwoman Rita Worthington, D-Ward 4, said they have been working with Shaut for almost two years to bring about revisions to the city’s police commission. The three lawmakers
are the members of the Common Council’s special committee on policing, which Shaut created.
“We have consulted with the community and legal experts, hosted forums, and engaged in many difficult conversations about race and policing,” the three lawmakers said in the release. “We are dedicated to making meaningful change.
“We are glad that Mayor Noble has finally pledged his commitment to signing this legislation that we have worked on for so long,” the release continued. “We also call on him to take action today by appointing qualified community members, who have already applied, to the police commission.”
The mayor did not respond to a request for comment.
Shaut said she fully supports the comments her colleagues made in the press release and that she hopes “the mayor’s unexpected statement on social media means
the obstacles are no longer in front of us.”
“However, the executive branch has not provided us with an explanation of the apparent change of direction,” Shaut wrote in an email Friday. “I look forward to receiving clarification and working with the Common Council, as well as the executive branch. The time for justice is already 400 years late.”
In April, the Common Council authorized spending $10,000 from the city’s contingency fund to allow members of the Kingston Board of Police Commissioners and others to attend a oneday training session on implicit bias.
Training for commissioners is one part of proposed police accountability legislation presented to the city by the grassroots organization Rise Up Kingston. The proposal was presented to city lawmakers more than two years ago, but it was in January that the special committee
on policing began to publicly review the proposal to determine what parts could be adopted.
Members of the council have said repeatedly that parts of the Rise Up Kingston proposal cannot be adopted without changes to the City Charter or negotiations with the city police union. Rise Up Kingston members offered on more than one occasion to work with the city’s corporation counsel to make changes to the proposal so that aspects of it could go forward.
Training for members of the police commission was something that was not subject to negotiations or charter reform and was a topic Noble had expressed support for.
“In 2019, we introduced police commission revisions legislation, which was based on model language provided by Rise Up Kingston,” the release from the policing committee said. “We were very enthusiastic to move forward and worked closely with the
city’s lawyers and political scholars to verify that the proposed legislation’s language conformed with state law. The city’s lawyers, who serve at the pleasure of the mayor, advised us not to discuss the legislation publicly during a period of contract negotiations with the police union. Exercising caution, we agreed to await the conclusion of contract negotiations.”
The police contract ultimately went to arbitration, and the matter still is pending.
The lawmakers said in their press release that they were ready to move forward with the legislation after being told the city was close to reaching an agreement with the police union but were halted again by the corporation counsel “and told that we could not move forward with many parts of the proposed legislation because they needed to be addressed through union contract negotiations.”
The mayor also was encouraged to reform the composition, practices and complaint processes for the police commission, the lawmakers said in their release. They said the City Charter allows the mayor to enact those reforms immediately but that he has failed to act and “failed to appoint qualified members of the community who have applied to join the commission.”
Noble has also not yet sent a proposal to the council outlining reforms he proposed in a speech in January, which included forming a nine-member citizens’ advisory council to review police commission decisions, the release said.
The lawmakers in their press release that they are creating a citizen advisory board to the special committee on policing “because we understand that for change to be real and significant, it has to include the community and has to be a collaborative effort .... ”