NYCLU chides cops over transparency

Report includes Troy, Schenectady and Spa City departments

The Saratoga Springs, Schenectady and Troy police departments lack key policies, and reports they provided about use-of-force cases lacked demographic information, making it hard for the public to understand their operations, a New York Civil Liberties Union report says.

“It’s really alarming that not just in the Capital Region but really throughout the state that there are so many departments operating without rules in place,” said Michael Sisitzky, lead policy council at the NYCLU in New York City.

One example cited in the report: The Schenectady department uses policing software meant to predict where crimes may happen, but does not have a written policy to govern the data

fed into it to identify crime areas, according to the NYCLU.

“One of our biggest concerns with predictive policing technology is it’s only as good as the data being put into these systems and algorithms. When you have bad or biased data going in, it’s going to lead to continuing disparities in terms of enforcement,” Sisitzky said.

Schenectady Police Sgt. Matt Dearing said his department would not comment on the report until it is able to review a copy of it and consider its findings.

The report, “Behind the Badge,” draws on information secured by Freedom of Information Law requests filed with 23 police departments around the state asking for information in 39 areas. Sisitzky and Melanie Trimble, chapter director of the Capital Region chapter of the NYCLU, said it was dismaying to see the data the departments couldn’t provide.

“The public deserves to know what rules our police must follow to be able to hold them accountable when they abuse their power, use excessive force, or make discriminatory stops or arrests,” Trimble said.

The Saratoga Springs, Schenectady and Troy police departments are included in Wednesday’s “Behind the Badge” report; Albany’s department was in last year’s report.

The report also noted that in Schenectady, the department heavily redacted information on its use-of-force policy; withheld information on types of weapons carried by officers; and did not provide information on the permissible range of force that officers can use against someone. The report also noted that there were 392 use-of-force reports from April 2013 to May 2015, but that information on race and gender in the reports supplied to the NYCLU was redacted.

In Troy, the department did not provide demographic information on more than 90 percent of its use-of-force reports from 2012 to 2014. There were 71 misconduct investigations between 2012 and 2015, in which 50 percent involved unauthorized use of force, the NYCLU report said.

Troy Deputy Chief Daniel Dewolf didn’t respond for a request for comment about the findings.

Trimble said her chapter had asked for a copy of Troy’s bodycamera policy and was told there isn’t one.

Troy is about to launch a pilot program for its patrol officers to wear the cameras.

“The Troy Police Department is lax in providing, creating and enforcing policies within the department,” Trimble said.

The report said Saratoga Springs provided no demographic information for any of the 11,511 people stopped between 2012 and 2014 and has no policies for interacting with people with disabilities or people with limited English skills.

Saratoga Springs Lt. Robert Jillson said his department would not comment without seeing the report and reviewing its conclusions.

Saratoga Springs provided information on 33 use-of-force reports between March 2012 and February 2015; 18 of those incidents resulted in injuries and there were no fatalities, the report said.

“Looking at Saratoga Springs use-of-force reports, they initially told us that the majority of their information was exempt from disclosure because it is used to evaluate officers so it’s exempt under Section 50-a,” Sisitzky said, referring to the law that protects police officers’ personnel files from disclosure.

Sisitzky said departments are using this regulation more and more to apply to “any information departments don’t want to release.”

NYCLU is pushing the state Legislature for laws that will make police department data more accessible to the public.

“When we analyzed police department records across the

state last year, we found that there were very few rules that police the police in New York state, and unfortunately our look into the Capital Region yielded the same results,” Sisitzky said. “This is yet another indication to the legislature that laws like 50-a that allow the police to shield important information from the public must be repealed.”

NYCLU also is backing the Police-stat Act, a transparency measure that would ensure the public can access police data.

The NYCLU report also found that the Saratoga Springs department is 85 percent male and 99 percent white, while the Troy department was 93 percent male with no women holding a rank higher than officer or detective. Schenectady did not respond to a request for information about its department’s composition, NYCLU officials said.