A frank talk on police racism
Albany leaders speak painful truths to help build empathy and heal
Mayor Kathy Sheehan’s heartbreaking moment of acknowledging white supremacy occurred when her son, who is adopted and Black, came home from preschool and repeated what a white child told him, “It’s bad to be Black.”
Common Council President Corey Ellis, who is Black, experienced racist policing in 2007 when a white officer followed his Lexus with its "Ellis11" license plates for 2 miles along Lark Street and Delaware Avenue before he stopped Ellis for no apparent reason — other than, he believes, driving while Black.
Ellis, who had been elected to the council a few months earlier and was dressed in a suit and tie, asked repeatedly why the officer pulled him over. “Because I wanted to,” the officer said, before allowing Ellis to drive to a scheduled dinner in Delmar at the home of Albany County District Attorney David Soares, who is Black.
City Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer Darius Shahinfar, who is white and of Iranian descent, felt the sting of bigotry during middle school in New Hartford, a suburb of Utica. Classmates pushed him around, knocked books out of his hands and chanted “Let our people go!” when they passed him in the hallways during the Iranian hostage crisis that began in 1979.
These three Albany citywide elected officials bring unique life experiences to issues of race that have dominated policy discussions for the past year. Although it is an uncomfortable and fraught topic, they and Black council member Kelly Kimbrough spoke their truths and shared personal stories in an effort to build empathy and begin to heal racial wounds that have reached a fever pitch in Albany.
The month of April was particularly troubling. Black protesters demanding an end to police brutality after the April 14 killing of 20-year-old Daunte Wright — a Black man shot by a white police officer during a traffic stop in Minnesota — led to violent clashes with police at Albany’s South Station. The melee included objects hurled at officers, hand-to-hand combat and the use of pepper spray by police to repel the demonstrators.
Deep divisions, distrust and acrimony between police and activists from the city’s economically disadvantaged and minoritized communities boiled over eight days later. Dozens of officers forcibly removed an encampment and cleared out a group of about a dozen demonstrators outside the police station. Eight people were arrested on charges that included disorderly conduct, obstruction of governmental administration and rioting. At least one protester was taken away in an ambulance. Sheehan and Police Chief Eric Hawkins defended the action as removal of a public safety hazard that blocked traffic. Outraged protesters deemed the measure a police assault of a peaceful protest and called for the resignations of Sheehan and Hawkins.
The ongoing cycle of anger and recrimination has caused deep soul-searching among city officials and an acknowledgment that racial tensions remain at the core of a turbulent period in a changing city. People of color now make up 46 percent of the population. White residents represent a slim majority of 54 percent.
“Things are still tense, and these issues around race are really challenging,” said Sheehan, 57, who grew up in allwhite suburban neighborhoods “designed to be segregated” outside Chicago, Louisville, St. Louis and Cleveland. There were no Black students in the Catholic grade schools she attended. She competed on swim teams against other white kids with access to private swimming pools in suburban developments. Her father worked for an insurance company and she and her six siblings moved with their family every few years to neighborhoods and schools with no racial diversity.
When Sheehan was in seventh grade in an all-white St. Louis suburb, a Black family moved next door to them. She said her family welcomed the new arrivals, but a neighbor openly expressed racist attitudes and tried to stir up resentment against the new family. Soon, the aggrieved white family moved away.
“I grew up naively thinking I was part of a post-feminist, post-racial environment because it was unquestioned in my family that people of all races were equal and women could do whatever they wanted,” said Sheehan, who in 2014 became Albany’s first female mayor since the city was chartered in 1686.
Sheehan’s shock of recognition at being inculcated in white supremacy came when she attended a fraternity party in 1982, her freshman year at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. “I saw three Black guys there and assumed they were bartenders,” Sheehan recalled. “I was later introduced to them as members of the fraternity. I apologized and couldn’t believe I did that.”
Sheehan explained, “I was 18 years old and did not have the language or understanding of white supremacy at the time. I made an assumption as a white person. I have since come to understand that it was racist and I acknowledge it as such.”
When she and her husband, Bob, who is also white, adopted a Black infant in 2000 and moved into the predominantly Black neighborhood of Arbor Hill in 2019, they were forced to confront white supremacy at street level and not as a thought experiment.
“It’s hard for white people to wrap their heads around the fact that a person’s concept of themselves can be defined by the color of their skin,” Sheehan said. “I cannot walk in the shoes of a Black person, but I understand their feelings of trauma and anger and how toxic racism is.”
She added: “We are seeing the consequences of centuries of racial oppression. We can no longer deny systemic racism. We have to call it out every time we see it, whether it’s in policing or in the vaccine rollout or in housing and employment. We have to work together to dismantle systemic racism and continue to have these difficult conversations. I know I have let our Black city officials and Black residents down. I am listening and learning and committing myself to doing better.”
Trust and respect
Corey Ellis agrees with the mayor that systemic racism must be acknowledged and dismantled as a root cause of racial disparities that go far beyond the need for police reform in Albany. “Systems were built up over the past century to give certain groups of whites advantage and to stop African Americans from advancing,” said Ellis, 50, whose family lived in subsidized housing in the predominantly Black neighborhoods of Arbor Hill and the South End. He and his friends in the 1970s knew and respected Officer Bill Payne, a Black officer, and Officer Foley, a white officer who also coached Pop Warner football.
“We had a relationship with those officers; we trusted and respected them,” said Ellis, who had friends who aspired to become officers because of those role models. He is advancing the idea of creating trained neighborhood peacekeepers made up of respected Black residents. These civilians could be called on to de-escalate a situation like the protesters’ encampment and negotiate a compromise in order to avoid the type of aggressive police action that recently occurred.
“We need an entity in place so that we don’t call out cops in riot gear as the first contact with protesters,” Ellis said. “It’s not fair to anyone that the police department serves as the be-all and end-all for all calls. I would like community peacekeepers to be able to step in to try to talk it through and give one last chance to reach consensus before police force is used.”
Ellis and the other officials noted that the recent collaborative process strengthened Albany’s Community Police Review Board with new tools, including a budget, subpoena power, the ability to obtain police body camera and dash cam footage and the authority to discipline an officer.
CPRB Chair Nairobi Vines, who is Black, walked out of a meeting of the board April 14 after Detective Lieutenant Howard Schechter, who is white, allegedly made “several racist and disparaging remarks,” according to a letter Vines wrote on behalf of the board to the Common Council.
Ellis is not deterred. “We’re making progress,” he said. “A lot of work remains to be done. The toughest part is building trust back up again. Be patient. The civil rights movement didn’t create change in a year. It takes time to undo centuries of systemic racism.”
Consensus
Shahinfar, 54, the son of a physician, grew up “with a funny-sounding name from a country nobody could pronounce.” His whiteness and economic privilege in an affluent suburb insulated him from racist attacks. “After the hostage crisis, I understood how debilitating and corrosive it is to feel cast out as the 'other.' That stayed with me,” he said.
His father emigrated from
Tehran to complete a medical residency in Queens, where he met his future wife, a nursing student. Muslim by birth, Shahinfar never practiced Islam or belonged to a mosque. His parents split up and his mother, raised Episcopalian, gravitated to Buddhism. Shahinfar calls himself “a multi-faith person” and attends First Church, a Dutch Reformed Church in Albany.
He is encouraged by the fact that about 800 applicants are scheduled to take the Albany police exam later this month. Recruiting diverse applicants and retention have been a challenge. The force is down 56 officers from about 300 sworn officers, exacerbating staffing issues. “Some areas of the city are overpoliced and under-policed at the same time,” he said. “If we’re going to find solutions, we have to get beyond name-calling and stop putting all the blame on police. We are losing our best young officers. They are throwing up their hands, saying they’ve had enough and quitting to pursue different careers.”
Kelly Kimbrough, a Black Common Council member and president pro tempore, is a former 21year veteran of the Albany Police Department. He tries to bridge differences and build trust with Black demonstrators.
“The protesters think I always defend the police, but that’s not true,” Kimbrough said. “I’m fair to both sides. It’s hard being an officer, especially in communities that don’t like or trust police. I want us to stop painting each other with a broad brush. Both sides need to listen to each other, build consensus and negotiate change.”
Kimbrough, 55, said he bears “all the scars from the battles of being a
Black man.” He described being “choked out” by aggressive white officers in Chicago after they shouted the N-word and broke up a backyard softball game among a group of Black teenagers without provocation. Ironically, Kimbrough served at the time as a uniformed “patrol boy” in his middle school’s community policing initiative. At 14, Kimbrough moved to New York’s Orange County to live with grandparents because his parents struggled with drug addiction.
Kimbrough was a 24year-old Albany police officer studying at the University at Albany when he and his brother were pulled over by two white officers for a registration issue. Kimbrough was a passenger dressed in jeans, a collared dress shirt, loafers and glasses. “I looked like a nerdy college student,” he said. Kimbrough displayed his badge. The officer scoffed that he could have
“bought that at any five and dime.”
Moments later, Kimbrough was dragged out of the car “and basically assaulted,” something witnessed by his brother and a group of college students. His brother also was arrested. All charges were dismissed. “We were two blocks from a police station. It could have been avoided if they called a supervisor to check my badge number,” he said.
Kimbrough chose to counter racist incidents at the hands of police with resilience and optimism. He talks with disenfranchised Black youths in Albany by sharing his experiences around race as teaching tools.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about those incidents,” Kimbrough said. “Staying upset or sad are both unhealthy. You have to get yourself together and move on. Otherwise, you’ll end up broken in the streets, stuck in your angry life.”
Open minds, empathetic hearts and honest conversations about race offer a more productive way forward, the officials said, than name-calling, violent clashes and pepper spray.