The killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the resulting demonstrations prompted a discussion of policing practices and praise for the local department and its leadership. “The Town of Woodstock denounces the senseless murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers,” supervisor Bill McKenna said in a statement in support of the demonstrations across the nation calling for police reform.
“Recognizing that such reform begins in our own backyard, this town board created the Woodstock Human Rights Commission,” McKenna said at a meeting of the town board. “We remain committed to their mission and the need to give voice to any individual who has felt discriminated against by town personnel,”
McKenna stressed the responsibility town employees, officials and volunteers have to ensure government accountability to all citizens. “With that responsibility comes the need to listen, to understand, and to deliver change when change is required,” he said. “It is a responsibility that we must carry each and every day, and not one that only comes to the fore following the senseless murder of a fellow citizen.”
McKenna thanked councilman Richard Heppner for helping craft the statement.
“If there is a silver lining to this. it is change that will come at different levels of government,” councilwoman Laura Ricci said at the June 9 meeting. “As a resident of Woodstock since 1980, I have the highest regard for the Woodstock police force,” she said, noting the town board’s long-standing practice of communicating to police candidates the importance of de-escalating situations.
Heppner said it was time to rethink some of the responsibilities of police officers and to give them better resources to do their job. “We’ve heaped on the cops much like teachers things that aren’t their duties,” Heppner said. Issues of mental health and addiction are becoming more prominent in policing.
“They are half social worker, and in this town they have to be three-quarters social worker,” councilman Lorin Rose quipped.
“For any one of us to look inward, it’s difficult,” said councilman Reggie Earls, Woodstock’s first black town-board member. “As a society, one of the basic things we lack is empathy.” Earls said everyone has a role to play and should be ready and able to speak up when they see suffering. “We all can look at how we have privilege and how we can look and pull each other up when we don’t have it,” he said.
Earls called Woodstock police chief Clayton Keefe “a great chief who is open.” But Woodstock was an exceptional place. “This is a different kind of town,” he said. “But we should never be too complacent and rest on that.”
Keefe thanked the town board for its support. “We do take a very conscious effort to get the right officers for our community,” said Keefe.
In New York State, it’s not easy getting a job at a police department right out of school. There are two phases of training and instruction. While anyone can enroll in a 16-week program at a community college, an officer candidate cannot move into the second phase until hired by a department. The state requires 20 full eight-hour shifts under field training. Not everyone makes it through this phase.
“In our town we take each officer differently,” explained Keefe. “Some take the minimum. Some need more.” Once hired, Woodstock officers are under a one-year probationary period in which they can be dismissed if they are not deemed the right fit for the community.
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