Advocates await Spa City’s plans
Council — facing deadline — plans two public meetings in coming weeks
The city council has police reform recommendations in hand and has a deadline of April 1 looming to adopt reforms or forfeit state aid.
This week’s city council meeting agenda has no mention of police reform, which surprised and upset reform advocates who have backed the city’s Police Reform Task Force,
which has met for months to craft recommendations for the city to consider.
Early Monday evening, city council members confirmed to the Times Union that there will be two dates for public meetings, March 23 and 31, with the reform plan possibly passing only hours before the April 1 state deadline. Those dates had not been posted publicly as of Monday early evening.
“I’m very upset about that,” said city Black Lives Matter leader Lexis Figuereo earlier Monday, who said he reached out to supporters to speak at Tuesday’s meeting on police reform. “It’s disheartening. Every other jurisdiction that I have seen had a public hearing. It doesn’t make sense. It’s like they don’t want us to have say in the final things that are set up.”
Times Union calls Monday to Mayor Meg Kelly to address the issue of public hearing timing and the April 1 state deadline were not returned. The city's website calendars show no more City Council meetings for the rest of the month. However, Commissioner of Accounts John Franck said the mayor will announce the plans for the March 23 and 31 meetings at Tuesday's council session.
Meanwhile, attorney and longtime Saratogian Eric Lawson is making yet another pitch to city council members for a civilian review board — one of nine recommendations that the task force has presented to the city.
In a third letter to the members of the city council, Lawson argued “no democratic government will survive when its uniformed services are autonomous.
“Contrarily, those governments will thrive when their citizens know that they are secure from threats, domestic and foreign, as well as from the abuse of power by those who have been granted authority to provide that security,” he wrote to the city council on March 8.
On Friday, he pointed to the George Floyd settlement in Minneapolis — $27 million — the largest pretrial settlement in a civil rights wrongful death in U.S. history. He said the city cannot afford a settlement of that magnitude.
“If you want to see how badly out of line things are, look at that settlement,” Lawson said. “It’s just enormous. … The events that have taken place in our country and our communities has shifted the conversation to this issue of increased citizen involvement in the affairs of government and oversight. Participatory democracy is so important. And I believe a lot of the polarization and violence and raised voices, because people don’t feel they have an adequate way to address people who are in positions of power and authority over them and who are able to have profound influences on their lives.”
Albany has a Community Police Review Board (CPRB), an independent body established by city in 2000 to “improve communication between the police department and the community, to increase police accountability and credibility with the public, and to create a complaint review process that is free from bias and informed of actual police practice,” the board says on its website.
Lawson said he advised the city's 12-member task force on civilian review boards, something he had advocated for since Peter Martin was the city’s commissioner of public safety. Martin, whose term ended in 2019, dismissed the idea, opting for a Citizens Advisory Board, which Lawson called a “cosmetic gesture.”
Lawson said he also has a fully fleshed out plan that would ensure that a civilian review board would be “strictly neutral.” As a labor lawyer, who has negotiated contracts for unions, he said the board would recognize “the statutory rights of police officers to engage in collective bargaining.”
He recommends a five member board of representatives from the community with one member with knowledge of due process. He said the board would hear citizen grievances and that complete documentation of incidents would be kept. He also said the process would promote “communication at the earliest step of a grievance and provide facilitation through mediation.”
There would be a procedure to “dismiss meritless claims” and due process for hearings and fact finding. All recommendations would be advisory only, he said, but they would be made public.
While Lawson said he spoke with Martin about the board, he has not been able to get a response from current city officials, including Commissioner of Public Safety Robin Dalton. She has said in the past that a civilian review board is not necessary as she is the civilian oversight for city police.
Lawson, in his prodding for the city to adopt the idea, said he offered to meet with members of the council to discuss dispute resolution and the Taylor Law in creating the board. He also offered to arrange discussions with the retired commissioner from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services.
“The inhabitants of our communities are their lifeblood, its human capital; and unfailing devotion to their personal welfare by their representatives is the best evidence of good government,” Lawson wrote.