Matt Cocchi (2021)
Protestors hold signs asking the Saratoga Springs City Council to approve the police reform task force recommendations.
The Saratoga Springs City Council will take up a third and final resolution regarding police reform at its special meeting this evening online at 7p.m. By state mandate, the city must vote on a final resolution and submit it to the state budget office by tomorrow.
In this final draft of the report, the phrase “for consideration” was removed twice, leaving statements that assert the primacy of the task force recommendations a little more clearly.
Left unchanged is the language that says the city council agrees "in principle" with the idea of a civilian review board to oversee the police department, but they cannot agree to establish the CRB until they investigate it further. They plan to establish a committee to look into it by June 1. This has been the major bone of contention between the council and most task force members.
This all stems from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order #203, issued last year during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests that shut down cities. In the order, the governor required all municipalities to examine their police and sheriff’s departments, especially regarding use of force, outreach to the community and policing policies, among other considerations.
Last year, Mayor Meg Kelly established the Saratoga Springs Police Reform Task Force to look into these issues. The committee worked for seven months and submitted a report in early March. The city council is considering a resolution that supports portions of the report but not all of it.
In a separate report posted to the task force’s website last Friday, Chief Shane Crooks expressed concern that the task force had not followed the Executive Order fully, so he took it upon himself, as a member of the task force, to correct it.
“I would note that the task force declined to meet with key stakeholders defined in the governor's executive order such as the DA’s office or the public defender’s office stating that the council can do it,” he wrote.
The reporting highlights some of the tension felt between the chief and other members of the task force, with the biggest point of contention being the establishment of a Civilian Review Board.
The Chief's report, a total of 88 pages, first outlines the policies and procedures of the Saratoga Springs Police Department, including training, use of force policies and community outreach. It is followed by input from a half-dozen community leaders including a couple anonymous replies.
In the cover letter to the city council, sent with the report, the chief says that some of the conclusions drawn in the official task force report are questionable, especially those surrounding “over policing” of people of color and the poor in the Geyser Crest community. He writes that the response from the Southwest Neighborhood Association, which includes Geyser Crest, contradicts this.
“The SWNA requested additional patrols including adding a substation in Geyser Crest,” he wrote. “The suggestion was made to establish a small satellite office, complete with ‘technology,’ a restroom and a coffee pot for our Zone 1 SSPD patrols.”
Molly Gagne of the SWNA wrote that.
However, others in his report also call for better training, especially regarding cultural biases and for the civilian review board, to be created especially for questionable use-of-force situations.
One writer, Kathy Johnson, said she could sum up her entire response to the task force and other reports in one word: transparency. She said there needs to be better, more clear, communication. Others noted troubles they had with statistics and analysis.
At the end of the report, the chief included an email from Saratoga County District Attorney Karen Heggen who called the task force report “thorough and wide-ranging.”
She said that some recommendations might affect investigations, and that “some of the proposals set forth in the Council’s resolution should be developed and pursued so as to not impact or jeopardize the resolution of criminal cases arising from Saratoga Springs.” The task force report offers guidance to keep the civilian review board from interfering in investigations.
This all comes on the heels of a city council meeting last week that had commissioners yelling at one another and a protest on Saturday that drew about 150 people to Congress Park, calling for the council to adopt all 50 recommendations in the task force report, especially the creation of the Civilian Review Board.
The third draft of the resolution can be found on the City Council's meeting page. Read more here.
The Saratoga Springs Police Reform task force report, the resolutions and other reports can be found on the city’s website. Read more here.
For our coverage of the task force, read more here.