The Saugerties Police Reform and Reinvention Committee discussed several issues surrounding local policing, including increased funding for mental-health resources, bias training, dealing with complaints against officers, and the presence of uniformed officers within schools.
The committee was created following an order by the governor last summer. All municipalities were charged with setting up committees to act on an order from Governor Andrew Cuomo calling for “urgent and immediate action to eliminate racial inequities in policing to modify and modernize policing strategies, policies, procedures and practices; and to develop practices to better address the particular needs of communities of color, to promote public safety, improve community engagement and foster trust.”
This meeting, held via Zoom on Wednesday, January 27, discussed the preliminary draft of recommendations the committee would be delivering to the Saugerties Town Board for implementation.
The committee consists of Gilda Riccardi, Christine Dinsmore, Tamika Dunkley, Robert Irizarry, Annette Mulyanti, Farzan Nadim, Joseph Puma, Robert Thomann, Gina Kiniry, Police Chief Joseph Sinagra, Lauren Swan, Michael Catalinotto, and Lanny Walter.
Gathering data
The first part of the discussion, regarding data, listed four subtopics: Expand data to include race, gender, age and nationality; State should collect and provide analysis; construct sensitive and respectful data questions; and annual review and reporting of data.
The committee looked at national studies as well as local records and studies to determine what further information would be needed, Riccardi said. “Some of the data that came out of these studies was concerning because they did point to disparities in policing,” she said. “We looked at what came out of the studies, and we looked at our own community, which I’m happy to say, we’re looking very good.”
During each of the presentations, the committee’s recommendations were posted on the computer screen. Given the expertise required to collect and analyze data, the committee would recommend this work be done on a statewide level, Riccardi said.
Mental health
The first recommendation on this topic is to expand the county’s mobile mental health team to 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “Currently it’s 10 in the morning to 10 at night,” said Christine Dinsmore. Based on the statistics from the Saugerties Police, many calls come in when there’s no backup. Dinsmore said this is a county issue, but the task force is raising it in the hope that other towns would recommend it and “also we’re recommending it because it is so widely agreed upon.”
Secondly, the task force is hoping that the county can be convinced to open a stabilization center – a place people can contact, “and there they will have a professional person who will listen to them, make an assessment, hopefully make a plan, and make a referral.”
The committee is suggesting “a co-responding team of police and mental health workers,” Dinsmore said. In Colorado, the system pairs a mental health professional with a trained police officer. “That’s pretty expensive, so the alternative would be that you have someone on call.” It is important for police officers to be able to recognize such mental health issues as autism or PTSD “because they need to recognize it, and then adjust.” Dinsmore said after incidents, such as police-involved shootings, officers often will say “if only they’d comply,” not recognizing that with some mental health issues, compliance is nearly impossible.
Finally, there is the issue of the police officers themselves, some of whom have problems with domestic violence, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and similar problems. “They see, almost daily, what some of us don’t see in a lifetime.” In overall police statistics – not specifically Saugerties Police – one out of seven officers suffers from PTSD, Dinsmore said.
Student resource officers
The now-common presence of a uniformed police officer in school buildings, known as a student resource officer (SRO), is sometimes criticized for making students feel monitored, and escalating incidents that could have been handled by administrators into criminal-justice cases, leading to more arrests of young people. Committee member Robert Thomann, who is the president of the Saugerties Board of Education, said in Saugerties the program is having a positive impact. “We have an award-winning SRO who can serve as an example to other police departments in Ulster County and the rest of the country. We have suggested developing a video so that members of the community can see what the role of the school resource officer is, how students interact with the resource officer, and really get the word out.”
A lot of what the resource officer does is prevention, and this is hard for people to see, Thomann said. The resource officer in Saugerties is not a disciplinarian; “he’s here to help.”
The committee also wants to gather data on how many arrests the resource officer makes, Thomann said. The Saugerties resource officer is mentoring 14 students who were on the verge of dropping out of school, Thomann said, “and he has shown success with 13 of the students.”
Thomann also had suggestions for training resource officers, “such as implicit bias training, ADHD, autism and so on.”
In response to a question, Police Chief Joseph Sinagra said there were no restraints conducted by the SRO in Saugerties in the past two years. And, he said, “I have a smile on my face, because out of all my officers I get praises, constantly, about our school resource officer. I get it from students, I get it from parents. Since Travis Winchell, our school resource officer, has been assigned to the middle and high school, I have not received one complaint from a parent about his conduct or any complaints from students.”
Police accountability
The subcommittee studying police accountability recommends the creation of a civilian complaint review board to evaluate complaints made against officers, Annette Mulyanti said. A second recommendation is that the “town hall” meetings continue on a regular basis. “We have found that the civilians have a lot of questions, and there is a lot of information – some of which may not be relevant or true – but we have found that these town forums play a very significant role [in improving relations] between the police and the civilians, so we are recommending that they continue on a regular basis after this committee has disbanded.”
The committee is also recommending the creation of a “right to know” card, which would let a person being arrested know they have the right to know the officer’s name, the reason for each stop, that they provide information on the complaint process at the end of any encounter that does not result in an arrest or summons.
Finally, the committee is recommending that the police department “take steps to ensure that police officers are not involved in any radical groups,” Mulyanti said. She said that the department does have procedures to ensure that officers are not involved in radical white supremacist or similar groups. The department policy manual has a provision that speaks directly to police officer conduct on- or off-duty, and a social media policy that speaks to officers’ speech and contribution to their personal social media platforms, she said.
Since 2012, two officers have been found in violation of these “moral integrity” clauses, Mulyanti said. One, a full-time officer, was dismissed and the other received command discipline and was suspended.
Increased communication
Gina Kiniry spoke about the importance of community/police relations.
“We are recommending that an officer or a resident of Saugerties be appointed the police/community liaison to be a communication bridge between the Saugerties Police Department and the Saugerties community,” Kiniry said.
Among the liaison’s functions would be to organize forums with the public and the Saugerties Police Department, giving the public the opportunity to ask questions of the police and make suggestions. “The police will be there not only to answer questions and address concerns, but they will have the opportunity to inform and educate the public about their policies and procedures,” said Kiniry.
The liaison officer would have the discretion to use other forms of communication, such as small groups or possibly focus groups, Kiniry said. The liaison would formulate a communication plan including ways to disseminate information to the community and follow up procedures to resolve misunderstandings that can’t be resolved in forums. The liaison’s information would also be available in Spanish.
It is important to highlight positive examples of police activity. “We need to bring to the forefront positive examples and stories of our officers going above and beyond,” Kiniry said. “We want our officers to know they are appreciated and that their community supports them.”
“With the events of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, policing in America has been under extreme pressure to redefine our roles and become more aware of the needs of their communities,” said Joe Puma, speaking on police training. He praised the Saugerties Police for already functioning at a high level of community awareness.
He also commented on and praised Sinagra’s involvement in the discussion.
“What struck me, and I have 25 years in law enforcement, has been the willingness of the officers to learn more,” Puma said. What can consistently improve the police operation is training – both before working in a department and in-service, he said.
Puma advocated a change in the police academy’s military-based approach to a community-based approach, “centered on the role of police as guardians, not warriors.” Emphasis should be on trust and accountability between police and the community.
Puma said that when stopped by a police officer, “comply, even if you know you’re right. Comply and fight it out at a later date.”
In response to a question on training, Sinagra said the state does not offer courses specifically on bias and racial diversity. The Saugerties Police Department looks for training that is appropriate, and “this committee is in a good position to help evaluate and see what is appropriate for training police officers here.”
The issue of the need to comply with a police officer’s request came up again in the question period. Sinagra said that refusal to comply with an officer’s order could escalate the situation into an encounter “that eventually could become a lethal encounter and I wouldn’t want that. So I would ask, and have always asked, you may not always agree with the police, but comply with what we’re asking you to do. There is so much recourse today, particularly civil recourse, that holds us accountable.” Sinagra said anyone who feels that they were ill-treated by the police should complain, and that all complaints are investigated.
Racial bias
In his discussion of racial bias, Lanny Walter said he is “not inclined at this point to accuse the Saugerties Police of being racist or biased towards anybody. They actually have a policy called ‘unbiased policing,’ … but having a policy alone does not necessarily solve the problem.” Some people are prejudiced, he said. Walter referred to the “doll test,” an experiment done in the 1940s and again in 2015. Sixty-five to 70 percent of children between 2 and 6 years old, when shown white and black dolls, said the white dolls were smarter, friendlier and prettier, and the nonwhite dolls, which varied in color, were stupider, meaner and uglier, Walter said. “Of course there’s no reality to that, but it was a sense that these kids had, that had developed at a very young age.”
“Bias is not a fiction, and it may exist in our minds and in the minds of people both civilian and law enforcement,” Walter said. Saugerties is “a pretty segregated community,” Walter said, citing figures from the 2019 census that had the black population at 1.6 percent, and the white population at 93 percent. However, “the more we interact with people who are not the same, the bias diminishes, even I’m sure, the subconscious bias.”
Walter checked training records for 2019 and 2020, expecting to find training on implicit bias “in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement.” The police training manual does contain a stipulation that “all employees will receive periodic and basic in-service training and where deemed necessary, remedial training,” in a long list of topics including “cultural diversity, implicit bias and related topics suitable for preventing incidents of biased policing.” Walter said he expected this statement to be backed up by training, but when he looked he found that this type of training doesn’t exist.
The recommendation of the committee is that there should be subconscious bias in all training, Walter said. While some bias is revealed in the initial vetting process, “we favor such training upon hire for racial bias implicit and sometimes overt, and [retraining] every two years.” The training must be followed up with an analysis of police conduct to be sure it is effective, Walter said.
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