Republican View: Fair police reform for all

Nine, 28, 130: I’d like you to remember those numbers. They’re important because as we vote in the county and in the city of Ithaca on the recent Reimagining Police report, those numbers are how many community members are setting the policy for a county of over 100,000.

Under Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Executive Order 203, municipalities with police departments need to submit a police reform plan, and, under the order, the voices of people of color must be given more weight.

The county/city plan is suggesting retiring the SWAT vehicle and putting a Community Justice Center under county administration in place, and Mayor Svante Myrick is recommending changing the Ithaca City Police Department to a community safety department with an administrator.

These and other changes have been portrayed as a clarion call from the community, but they are not — not from the larger or the marginalized communities. Out of the 130 participants in the community forums, only 28 gave demographic information, with fewer than that identifying as people of color. Most of those 28 people live in the city of Ithaca.

The recommendations often cite this input, and it is used to defend the recommendations despite the report saying multiple times that the information received from community forums “should not be used to make specific or generalized claims about Ithaca/Tompkins County community attitude toward reimagining public safety.”

“The community input, while informative, should not be understood as representing all community voices,” it reads. “There is very little quality control of the community input.”

The report says its findings were primarily influenced by individual interviews and targeted and law enforcement focus groups. Nine individual interviews were done. Nine. Eight of those interviews were people of color. It’s clear that cannot be considered a viable sample for policy decisions.

When looking at these interviews, these folks were asking for a better connection to police, not a dismantling, and thanks to the botched roll out of this report, that is how many are seeing this reimagining.

The two focus groups are Targeted and Law Enforcement. Nowhere in the report from either group is a call for a dismantling of the City Police Department, SWAT or the establishment of an administrative position at the county to oversee the Sheriff’s Department.

The targeted focus group were the voices the governor most wanted to hear from. That group expressed a community distrust in the police but also acknowledged the hard work of police. It argued the police don’t know how to deal with mental health, people detoxing, people with disabilities and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

The group called for more and different training on dealing with those groups, in de-escalation and in assessing situations. It called for a move to trauma-informed policing and community building and getting police out of their cars and into the community. Even when it came to oversight, the group was more pragmatic than the final report, calling for a community board or a third party.

Four years ago, the county did a major study on policing with CGR, Inc. and Highland Planning. The highest percentage in the survey, 17%, worried about a lack of police presence, not too much. Those surveyed did not have blinders on.

Second was a concern over bias and racial profiling followed by community relationships. Calls for change, yes. Dismantling police structures including SWAT, no.

My worry throughout this process is why two agencies that have led the way in many respects in policing are being castigated by some in the community. We may say that has not been done, but over the past six months, “pigs” was written on the Ithaca Police Department building, protestors routinely chant, “All 63 badges” and “police are terrorists,” and some police officers have been doxed and had wanted posters put up for them. This has been met with silence from many elected officials.

This report also begs the question, what about the crime victims? When looking for reforms, what about the 100 outstanding sexual abuse cases that were not investigated by IPD? Where are we with the shooting victim on State Street back in the fall? Six months for charges with the anti-Semitic graffiti downtown?

To gain trust, we need to show accomplishment, and closing cases is a way to do that. The police can’t do that without adequate resources. You don’t get there by defunding the police.

I believe in most of the report, but there are some points that I think make our community less safe including the marginalized population. If we were adding investigators, changing hiring rules, negotiating in union contracts how to deal with rogue police, that would all help to address what we’re talking about, but that would all take buy-in from police.

We’ve heard concerns from four diverse past chiefs of IPD, multiple IPD officers and the sheriff, and I don’t believe their concerns have been addressed.

I want everyone to be safe. That will require changes so that marginalized people feel comfortable calling police, providing information on crime to police, and yes, perhaps becoming police officers. It also requires we keep everyone safe from criminals who like many activists want “all 63 badges.”