Cuomo signs bills to overhaul policing in N.Y.
ALBANY, N.Y. — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday signed into law a sweeping package of police accountability measures that received new backing after protests of George Floyd’s killing, including one allowing the release of officers’ disciplinary records.
The measures were approved earlier this week by the state’s Democratic-led Legislature. Some of the bills had been proposed in years past and failed to win approval, but lawmakers moved with urgency in the wake of nationwide demonstrations over Floyd’s death at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis.
“Police reform is long overdue, and Mr. Floyd’s murder is only the most re
cent murder,” said Cuomo, a Democrat.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis City Council members took a first step Friday toward changing the City Charter to allow for abolishing the Police Department and replacing it with something else.
Five of the 12 council members said Friday that they’ll formally introduce a proposal later this month to remove the charter’s requirement that the city maintain a police department and fund a minimum number of officers. Voters would have to approve the change if the proposal makes it onto the November ballot.
In Boston, Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh declared racism a public health crisis Friday, outlining a series of police changes.
He said he would propose transferring $12 million from the Police Department, or roughly 20% of its overtime budget, to fund a range of social services, including mental health counseling, housing and homelessness programs, and new public health commission efforts to address racial disparities in health care.
Protesters have called on Walsh to “defund” police, and redirecting money from police to other social services is one of the goals of that movement. Activists have also asked Walsh to remove or rename city landmarks in recent days.
The mayor also announced the creation of the Boston Police Reform Task Force to review the department’s use-offorce policies and suggest ways to improve officer training, its body camera program and the city’s police review board.
Cuomo was joined at the signing ceremony in New York by the Rev. Al Sharpton; Valerie Bell, the mother of Sean Bell, who was killed by an officer in 2006; and Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who was killed by police in New York in 2014.
The laws will ban police chokeholds, make it easier to sue people who call police on others without good reason, and set up a special prosecutor’s office to investigate the deaths of people during and after encounters with police officers.
Some bills, including body camera legislation, drew support from Republicans, who opposed legislation that repealed a state law used to block the release of police disciplinary records over concerns about officers’ privacy.
Eliminating the law, known as Section 50-a, would make complaints against officers, as well as transcripts and final dispositions of disciplinary proceedings, public for the first time in decades.
New York Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Jessica McRorie said the department “will review the final version of the legislation and utilize it in a manner that ensures greater transparency and fairness.”
The state’s approximately 500 police departments will all have to come up with plans to address everything from the use of force to implicit bias awareness training by next April under an executive order that Cuomo said he will issue next Friday.
The governor said New York is the first to come up with such a plan and warned that police departments who fail to do so will not receive state aid.
DISSENT VOICED
Patrick Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association, the city’s largest police union, said in a news release that Cuomo and the legislative leaders “have no business celebrating today.”
Lynch said police officers spend their days addressing the “failures” of elected officials. “Now, we won’t even be able to do that,” he said. “We will be permanently frozen, stripped of all resources and unable to do the job.”
President Donald Trump said in an interview Friday that he thinks outlawing chokeholds is “generally” a good idea but expressed concerns about officers who might engage in a one-on-one “scuffle” in which such a maneuver might be hard to avoid.
“You get somebody in a chokehold,” he said. “What are you going to do now? Let go and say, ‘Let’s start all over again, I’m not allowed to have you in a chokehold.’ It’s a tough situation.”
Cuomo has 10 days to act on other bills passed by lawmakers this week, including legislation prohibiting police from using racial profiling and a bill ensuring that individuals under arrest or in policy custody receive attention for medical and mental health needs.
Lawmakers also passed a bill to require New York to collect and report the race and other demographic details of individuals who are charged. The legislation says police departments must “promptly report” to the state the death of any people who die in police custody and in an attempt to establish custody, and provide a demographic breakdown.
JUDGE’S ORDER IN SEATTLE
Also Friday, a U.S. judge ordered Seattle police to temporarily halt using tear gas, pepper spray and flash-bang devices to break up peaceful protests.
U.S. District Judge Richard Jones issued the two-week order after a Black Lives Matter group sued the Seattle Police Department this week to halt the violent tactics.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and Police Chief Carmen Best have apologized to peaceful protesters who were subjected to chemical weapons. But Best has said some demonstrators violently targeted police, throwing objects and ignoring orders to disperse. Both have faced calls to resign, which they have rejected.
Durkan also has requested reviews of police actions from the Office of Police Accountability and the city’s inspector general.
This week, protesters have occupied part of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and turned it into a protest center with speakers, drum circles and “Black Lives Matter” painted on a street near a police station.
Police largely left the station after the chaos last weekend, with officers tear-gassing protesters and some demonstrators throwing objects at them.
Durkan tweeted that she visited the so-called autonomous zone Friday to speak with organizers about moving forward. She said that for as long as she can remember, Capitol Hill has been a place where people can go to express themselves.
Trump has slammed her and Gov. Jay Inslee for not breaking up the occupation by “anarchists” and threatening to take action if they don’t.
MONUMENTS TUMBLE
Meanwhile, a statue honoring police officers killed in the line of duty was removed from a park in Virginia’s capital city Thursday after it was covered in red paint.
Video obtained by news outlets showed a truck hauling the Richmond Police Memorial away from Byrd Park, the same place where a statue of Christopher Columbus was torn down, set on fire and thrown into a lake Wednesday.
The bronze memorial was placed at the location in 2016 and lists the names of 39 fallen Richmond police officers, news outlets said. The statue was damaged during the ongoing protests.
The police memorial was set to be restored and “returned to public display,” WRIC-TV quoted a spokesman for Mayor Levar Stoney as saying.
Gov. Ralph Northam ordered a statue honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee be taken down from its position on the same street.
A Kentucky commission voted Friday to take down a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis from the state Capitol, adding its voice to a global push to remove symbols of racism and slavery.
The Historic Properties Advisory Commission, which is responsible for statues in the Capitol, voted 11-1 to move the 15-foot marble statue of Davis to a state historic site in southern Kentucky where the Confederate leader was born.
Also, the smallest U.S. state has the longest name, and it’s not sitting well with some in the George Floyd era.
Officially, Rhode Island was incorporated as The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations when it declared statehood in 1790. Now, opponents have revived an effort to lop off the plantations reference, saying it evokes the legacy of slavery.
An online petition aims to ask the state to shorten the name to just Rhode Island, a nonbinding campaign intended to generate momentum toward an eventual ballot question in November.
BRITISH ON BANDWAGON
Cities around the world are taking steps to remove statues that represent cultural or racial oppression as support grows for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Authorities in London boarded up monuments including a war memorial and a statue of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill in anticipation of rival demonstrations by anti-racism and far-right protesters, as the city’s mayor Friday urged protesters to stay home because of the coronavirus pandemic.
A statue of slave trader Edward Colston was hauled from its plinth by protesters in the English port city of Bristol on Sunday and dumped in the harbor.
Several other statues have been defaced during protests around the country, including Churchill’s, which was daubed with the words “was a racist.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who cites Churchill as a personal hero, said it was “absurd and shameful” that his statue was “at risk of attack by violent protesters.”
Churchill, who was Britain’s prime minister during World War II and again during 1951-55, is revered by many in the U.K. as the man who led the country to victory against Nazi Germany. But he was also a staunch defender of the British Empire and expressed racist views.
In a series of tweets, Johnson said Churchill “sometimes expressed opinions that were and are unacceptable to us today, but he was a hero, and he fully deserves his memorial.”
He said tearing down statues would be to “censor our past” and “lie about our history.”
NEW ZEALAND, FRANCE JOIN IN
The New Zealand city of Hamilton on Friday removed a bronze statue of the British naval officer for whom it is named — a man who is accused of killing indigenous Maori people in the 1860s.
The removal by city authorities came a day after a Maori tribe asked for the statue be taken down and one Maori elder threatened to tear it down himself.
The city was originally called Kirikiriroa by Maori. In the 1860s it was renamed after Captain John Hamilton, a British officer who was killed in the infamous Gate Pa battle in the city of Tauranga.
The statue was gifted to the city in 2013. The Waikato-Tainui tribe, or iwi, on Thursday formally requested for it to be removed.
City authorities said it was clear the statue was going to be vandalized after Maori elder Taitimu Maipi this week told news organization Stuff that he planned to tear it down. He said Hamilton was being represented as a hero when he was “murderous” and a “monster.”
City authorities said they have no plans to change the city’s name at this point.
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, who has Maori heritage, said he was outraged at the “wave of idiocy” over the role of historic statues.
“Why do some woke New Zealanders feel the need to mimic mindless actions imported from overseas,” Peters said in a statement. “A self-confident country would never succumb to obliterating symbols of their history, whether it be good or bad or simply gone out of fashion.”
In France, activists dislodged a 19th century African funeral pole from its perch in a Paris museum Friday, saying they wanted to return it to Africa in a protest against colonial-era abuses.
The five protesters were stopped before they could leave the museum with the artwork, according to France’s culture minister. The work did not suffer serious damage.
The activists posted live video of the protest online, in which Congo-born Mwazulu Diyabanza accused European museums of making millions from artworks taken from now-impoverished African countries.
“It’s wealth that belongs to us, and deserves to be brought back,” he said. “I will bring to Africa what was taken.”
TRUMP STANDS FIRM
In his interview Friday on Fox News, Trump addressed reactions about the walk to a damaged church in Washington D.C.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologized for appearing alongside the president at St. John’s Episcopal Church minutes after federal authorities forcibly removed mostly peaceful protesters from the area. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who was with the group, has said he did not realize what would be happening.
Asked whether he thinks such concerns are “significant,” Trump replied, “No, I don’t think so.”
“I mean, if that’s the way they feel, I think that’s fine,” Trump said. “I have good relationships with the military. I’ve rebuilt our military … . When we took it over from President Obama and Biden, the military was a joke.”