Race & death
An 11-year-o Brooklyn girl’s death when her family’s car was chased and rammed by a New York State trooper in upstate Ulster County is in line with overly aggressive policing of Black residents in the area, activists said Tuesday.
In the months leading up to the Dec. 22 crash that killed Monica Goods, state police and local cops in the city of Kingston and in the next-door Town of Ulster responded to a rash of shootings with a campaign of aggressive traffic stops focused on a 1.5-square mile predominantly Black neighborhood known as Midtown Kingston, the activists said.
“It was this overpolicing that spilled over into what happened with Monica,” said Anne Ames, a 20-year resident of Kingston active on policing issues.
“There was no need for it to go that far,” said Ames. “With this hyperpolicing stuff going on, I can’t speak to the officer’s mind. But there’s this need [by police] to control people’s bodies.”
Ames cited police figures showing 1,329 people were stopped in their vehicles during the campaign — a number equal to about 6% of Kingston’s population.
While census figures show that just 14% of the Kingston’s roughly 23,000 residents are Black, 36% of the traffic stops in the city last year were of people of color, Ames said.
Shannon Wong of the New York Civil Liberties Union said her organization has fielded a series of complaints from motorists alleging they were stopped because of their race.
“There’s no way a traffic stop should have led to this girl’s death — but traffic stops have been used in the past by police to harass, intimidate and in this case inflict fatal violence,” said Wong, director of the NYCLU’s Hudson Valley chapter.
“The police are the escalators-in-chief,” Wong said. “Many people were speeding on the
New York State Thruway in that hour, but the police stopped this particular family and assumed there were guns and drugs in the car. If they had stopped someone who was not Black or Brown, I doubt it would have gone that way.”
Monica’s father, Tristin Goods, 39, said in a Daily News interview published Sunday that State Trooper Christopher Baldner forced a confrontation after he stopped his car for speeding.
Baldner asked if he had “guns or drugs” in the SUV, and pepper-sprayed him, his daughters Monica, 11, and Tristina, 12, and his wife, Goods recounted.
When Goods decided to flee the scene — he said he did so to ensure his and his family’s safety — Baldner gave chase, and rammed his car twice, forcing it over a guardrail. Monica died in the crash.
The fatal encounter took place on Interstate 87 at Exit 19, between Ulster and Kingston. Baldner is on desk duty while the state attorney general’s office investigates. The state police are also conducting an internal probe.
“It breaks my heart to see there’s no accountability in Monica’s case,” said Lisa Royer, criminal justice organizer of RiseUp Kingston. “It breaks my heart to see her father begging for accountability and not to receive support from those that we vote into power see them not standing up for our children.”
Tiffany Van Dyke, a lifelong Kingston resident and the granddaughter of Ulster County’s first Black elected official, said Monica’s case should have gotten much more attention in the days and weeks after her death.
“We had a vigil for Monica, and then we didn’t hear anything else about her case,” Van Dyke said. “We were taken aback because there was no response from the elected officials.”
A lawyer representing Baldner did not return phone messages. The Ulster County district attorney also did not return messages. State Attorney General Letitia James’ office has has declined requests for comment.