Letter to NYS Legislature to Defend Black Lives
Dear Speaker Heastie and Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins:
We write to urge your respective houses to assist communities across the state in accessing the expertise needed to implement real changes to policing policy.
As you know, the Governor recently issued an Executive Order to mandate that every municipality with a police department in New York State develop a collaborative process to reform local policing practices. These reforms must be approved by local elected bodies prior to April 1, 2021.
While we applaud this effort, we are concerned that in most parts of the state the public lacks expertise regarding which reforms work, and just as importantly, which do not. This concern is exacerbated by the short time available to do this work.
To address this concern—and to empower communities—we respectfully request that the Assembly and Senate convene a joint hearing or other public process to call on academics, researchers, advocates, practitioners, and other experts to advise you on available research and practical experiences across the country that have proven effective at reforming local law enforcement agencies.
Our goal is not to tell communities what to do. Rather, by developing a broad database of effective policing reforms that communities can access, we seek to empower them to pick and choose those policies and practices that best fit their local needs.
We fear that if this information is not made available—and soon—communities will be at a significant disadvantage in this process. The result could be outcomes that do more to protect the status quo than the communities that suffer under current policing practices.
We stand ready to assist your respective houses in this work, and in the subsequent dissemination of the data that it produces.
