Already reeling from three months of COVID-19 regulations, Genesee County government officials and law enforcement personnel now must deal with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s latest executive order mandating that all New York police agencies must revise their policies and procedures by next spring or risk losing state and/or federal funding.
“At this point there are no details, but all we know is that we at the county level will have to conduct public hearings and solicit public comment for, as the term was used, cadre, of local law enforcement reforms,” said County Manager Jay Gsell, speaking at today’s Genesee County Legislature Public Service Committee meeting via Zoom videoconferencing. “Everybody will be required to go through this process and adopt reforms via local law at the county level by April of 2021.”
The executive order, named the New York State Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative, requires that the municipality that oversees the law enforcement agency must adopt, certify and enforce its plan by passing a local law. It also applies to the NYPD.
Cuomo, during his COVID-19 briefing on Friday, said protests taking place across the nation following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer “illustrate the loss of community confidence in our local police agencies — a reality that has been fueled by our country’s history of police-involved deaths of black and brown people.”
He said the executive order will help “rebuild that confidence and restore trust between police and the communities they serve by requiring localities to develop a new plan for policing in the community based on fact-finding and meaningful community input.”
Issues that must be addressed in the plan include use of force, community policing, community outreach, restorative justice programs such as Genesee Justice, crowd management, retraining for bias awareness and a procedure for citizens to lodge complaints against police officers.
The measure calls for municipalities to bring in representatives from a variety of community organizations (for example, in Genesee County, the Criminal Justice Advisory Council comprised of several law enforcement and judicial entities) and be receptive to public feedback after developing, presenting and ratifying their plans into law.
It also stipulates that if the local government does not certify the plan, the police force may not be eligible for future funding from New York State.
The executive order builds upon the governor’s signing of 10 police reform bills into law earlier Friday, with several Republicans joining the Democratic majority in voting for the legislation.
Assemblyman Stephen Hawley, contacted by telephone, called the reform mandate action another example of Cuomo taking a one blanket covers all approach.
“Again, he’s lumping everything into a one-size-fits-all, and I don’t think that’s appropriate with the state of the size of New York and a city the size of New York City,” he said. “We in Western New York and the Finger Lakes Region and rural counties, I believe do have strong community-minded police agencies. And when you threaten New York State taxpayer money being withheld from those who are there to serve and protect, that’s the wrong direction to go.”
Hawley acknowledged that there are “a few bad examples in any organization,” but called it an overreaction to isolated incidents.
“I stand with the men and women in blue, unequivocally,” he said. “We need to be sure that police agencies are working in a collaborative way with the citizens they are charged with protecting. No police agency would have a problem with that.”
Genesee County Sheriff William Sheron said, by phone, that he is working with sheriffs across New York to try to get a handle on what the governor is expecting to happen.
"Our department is a New York State accredited agency, meeting all the standards, rules and regulations, and there are well over 100 of them as far as the right way to do things," he said. "All he has to do is simplify that to require that all New York State police agencies be accredited."
Sheron noted that it was the NYS Sheriff's Association that first came out with the current standards and that a few years later, those guidelines were adopted by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.
He made it clear that he believes in community input -- "we do that now and that is important," he said, and rejected Cuomo's practice of "painting all agencies with one brush because of a few bad apples."
"I'm proud of our sheriff's office and it's upsetting to me that the governor doesn't stand behind our police officers," Sheron said.
In an email, Batavia City Police Chief Shawn Heubusch reserved comment until he and his leadership team learn more about the governor’s mandate.
“We are currently reviewing the executive order internally, and when I have a better understanding I’ll reach out,” he said.
Back to the Public Service Committee meeting, former Sheriff Gary Maha, now a county legislator, asked Gsell if the governor had the authority to tie police reforms to funding.
“The receipt of future state or federal funds is conditioned on the filing of the certification at the local level, and realistically, that second issue of federal funding grants for emergency management … there’s already some considerations and concerns as to whether or not he can even go to that extent,” Gsell responded.
Gsell said that although Cuomo “means business,” more legislation is likely to follow at the state level and there will be plenty of debate over the next several months.
“There will be a lot of back and forth before anyone goes diving in with both feet and potentially finds themselves, can we say, in quicksand,” he said.
