Panel members lament possible revisions to plan
Niskayuna board slated to adopt plan Tuesday ahead of state’s April 1 deadline
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Today’s comments about an aspirational document were not the intent of those who spent hours carefully discussing each line, often holding back from what we wanted in order to match the reality of resources. To say that the report is aspirational is to diminish its importance and the importance of those who will benefit from reform.” Aliyah Saeed, police reform
panel member
Two members of the town’s police reform panel want to set the record straight about remarks town leaders recently made that ranged from the role of the panel, to its autonomy from authors of a racial audit report, to the makeup of a committee that will be charged with implementing the recommendations the town sends to the state.
The comments in an email from Aliyah Saeed came in response to Friday morning’s virtual workshop where town officials discussed possible revisions to Niskayuna’s Police Reform and Reinvention Plan document.
The Town Board is slated to meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday to adopt the plan, two days before the April 1 deadline to submit it to the state.
College Student Anjalee Modasra, who served on the police reform group, also emailed town officials to support the points enunciated by Saeed.
“I am also concerned about the comments made this morning, and it was disheartening to hear that there were a wide range of misconceptions regarding what this report is supposed to be, what the collaborative has done, and what we have written in our report,” states Modasra.
On Monday, she did not return a call seeking comment. Saeed declined comment.
Saeed in her email obtained by the Times Union takes issue with the draft plan being characterized as an aspirational document, which Councilwoman Denise Murphy Mcgraw asked Supervisor Yasmine Syed about on Friday. Syed answered the plan was an “aspirational document.”
“Today’s comments about an aspirational document were not the intent of those who spent hours carefully discussing each line, often holding back from what we wanted in order to match the reality of resources,” writes Saeed. “To say that the report is aspirational is to diminish its importance and the importance of those who will benefit from reform.”
Syed on Monday said that the word wasn’t meant be pejorative but instead an expression of their desire to make the recommendations reality.
Saeed also dispelled any notion that the panel’s report was an outgrowth of a recently released racial audit by CNA, an outside firm, that determined racial disparities and recommended among other things that the town consider equipping its police officers with body worn cameras.
Police Chief Fran Wall told the group Friday that she has already reached out to potential vendors, some of whom planned to send the department sample body cameras.
“While we have been careful to assess each CNA recommendation, the collaborative’s work was done entirely by the Niskayuna civilians, police, and town officials who sat through late-night/weekend meetings to ensure fidelity to the group’s intent,” stated Saeed.
Modasra, the college student, said in her email that the reference to the draft being aspirational coupled with any links to CNA’S recommendations made her feel like the “time and effort I had spent researching, developing analysis, and making specific recommendations” were not being taken seriously.
Saeed in the email also emphasizes the distinction that “a school resource officer is not the same as a community outreach officer” and that “any confusion about the two “seems mystifying,” and that a recommendation to create a Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) is not the same as the planned implementation task force.
Wall said Friday the she was considering creating another sergeant’s position and possibly having that person serve as a community officer.
Saeed also wrote that the police panel did not include final recommendations for the CCRB because they realize it’s something that will likely have to be discussed with the police union but that it needed to be led by civilians, who should be the ones deciding its composition.
Syed at Friday’s meeting said in addition to herself and Brian Backus, a school board member, she planned to have the remaining three council members appoint one person to the implementation task force. That’s at odds with Saeed, who envisions having five civilians from “marginalized communities” and two board members on the task force “because being in a silo can limit ideas, having fewer civilians will not make the task force more inclusive.”
Councilwoman Rosemarie Perez Jaquith said at Friday’s meeting that community input on the CCRB is critical.
“It should not be something that we decide in a silo, it should be something that involves the community,” she said. “This is their task force, this is their community.”
Modasra said in her email that “it would be a disservice to the Black and brown community in Niskayuna if their voices were not the first and foremost in how we go about implementing the recommendations in this report.”
Saeed also objects to adding anyone’s name to the list of police reform members if they were “not part of the collaborative process which included meetings/editing of documents together, etc., it takes away from the fidelity of the work,” and advocated for body worn cameras being “fully discussed in a public forum because of the limited control/checks and balances that Niskayuna residents have with an outside vendor” and concerns around the use of facial recognition software.