Beacon forum on policing draws range of responses
Beacon Mayor Lee Kyriacou and the city council on Saturday, June 20, hosted a forum via Zoom on how to improve morale between the police and Beacon residents.
The forum brought out passionate but reasoned debate on how police can be funded in the future. Former city councilman and police officer John Rembert and Beacon High School graduate Sadé Barksdale served as moderators.
The mayor was the first in the region to call a conference after Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for a community-based dialogue and reinvention of policing in every law enforcement agency in the state. Cuomo added that he wanted reports by next spring.
The #DefundthePolice debate was on the minds of many. Most agreed that there needs to be funds cut from the police department and transferred over to social services, arguing that 911 calls tend to be made for matters that could be handled by other agencies.
Rachel Wasser, who recently came to the Beacon area from Los Angeles, told how the police department she worked closely with in Los Angees was overworked from tasks its personnel weren’t trained to handle.
“There’s a real opportunity to reprioritize,” she said. She suggested that the police force should be disarmed and that funds should be reallocated from police departments to social services.
Those who weighed in on the #DefundthePolice debate suggested a 50 percent cut.
Resident Will Lulofs said that he believed that as the country experiences a recession due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this could be an opportune time to focus on balancing the budget in Beacon. He discussed how police budgets often are increased at the expense of cutting social services, which are essential in times of great financial stress.
“I think when we’re headed into times where people are losing their jobs, the last thing that we want
to do is defund social services,” he said.
A Main Street bar owner who was identified only as Mark said he has not once called the police for fights that break out at his bar, as
he believes the people who fight have deep-seated issues that the cops cannot solve.
“I don’t believe that a militarized response is appropriate in this case,” he said. “In every one of those instances, I wish there was someone I can call who could come and handle the situation without a gun.”
Charles Dimetropolous, a mixed-race resident who lived in New York City during the time Rudolph Giuliani was mayor, called for a greater focus on the positive side of law enforcement while acknowledging the anger many people of color feel.
“I’ve been stopped and frisked before it was even popular, but that was not the majority of my experiences with police officers,” he said. “I don’t think demonizing the police officers and putting them in a bad light is a great thing.”
He pointed to videos on YouTube showing cops fixing people’s cars as examples of good policemen who are out there.