The co-chairs of the Saratoga Springs Police Reform Task Force said in recent interviews that the community is seeing democracy-in-process.
The task force created a 100-page, 50-point list of recommendations for how to change policing in the city. The city attorney with input from the council and police chief drew up a resolution, took community input on it, revised that resolution and heard more from the community on Tuesday, March 23.
Though the co-chairs of the task force hoped to see all 50 recommendations in their resolution, they said the second draft of the city resolution accepts almost all the findings, and that is a step in the right direction.
“This is the democratic process,” Jason Golub said Wednesday evening a day after the public hearing on the second draft of the resolution. “If they [the council] had not had a public session, that would have been a problem.”
Golub co-chaired the committee with Camille Daniels. She largely agreed, in a separate interview.
“I did see some good come out of it,” she said. “I saw the community engaged.”
Both said one thing is clear: the community supports the idea of a Civilian Review Board to oversee the work of the Saratoga Springs Police Department. Dozens of people spoke in favor of the CRB during an online meeting with the city council Tuesday night.
So many people signed up to speak that the council asked people to exit the Zoom call after speaking so that people in the waiting room could enter and have a chance to speak. The vast majority supported the CRB, though Commissioner of Public Safety Robin Dalton said she had received many emails that were not in support.
According to officials, the mailed and emailed public comment will be added to the city’s website later today.
Among the outside contributions: a letter from the Saratoga County District Attorney Karen Heggen who oversees prosecutions in the city, and a letter from Police Chief Shane Crooks. Neither the public nor the task force has seen the letters.
Golub and Daniels said they heard about the letters during the March 23 meeting and were disappointed at not having seen them, given their roles as co-chairs of the task force.
“We don’t know if there’s a competing voice here,” Golub said.
Although the letter from the DA has not been made public, FoothillsBusinessDaily.com has gotten word that the main point of the letter asks the council to avoid passing something that cannot be enforced by the law. (FoothillsBusinessDaily.com has not seen a copy of the letter to confirm this.) An email from DeLeonardis says to expect a copy soon.
A protest is set for Congress Park on Saturday to push for implementation of all 50 recommendations, including the CRB, a ban on no-knock warrants and a ban on military vehicles in the city to counter protests.
The resolution maintains that they have little control over the police forces that come into the city in times of crisis and that no-knock warrants would be banned in most, but not all, situations.
The city does not vote on the report from the task force itself. It votes on a resolution accepting recommendations in the task force. City council members and DeLeornardis have said this does not mean they must vote yes or no on the list of recommendations without comment but may adjust the list after taking more community input.
Whatever resolution is finally adopted must be sent to the state budget office by April 1 or the city risks losing federal and state funding.
A third meeting will be held Wednesday evening March 31. Since the resolution must be delivered to Albany by April 1, Mayor Meg Kelly said during the meeting earlier this week that the council will discuss and vote on a final resolution at that time. The third draft of the resolution, if there is one, has not yet been posted to the city’s website.
CNN reported yesterday that the New York City Council has approved their task force recommendations including a civilian oversight board.