Public may comment on the proposal for a weak “review-only” board at Council hearings on July 9 and September 10.

The New Rochelle Community-Police Partnership Board (CPPB) has submitted a detailed proposal to the City Council for the creation of the city’s first Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB). The proposal will be discussed at the City Council meeting on Tuesday afternoon, July 9, and the public will have an opportunity to comment that evening at 7:00 pm at the Council’s monthly “Citizens To Be Heard” session.

The Council’s agenda for July 9 also includes a resolution to schedule a public hearing on the CCRB for Tuesday, September 10.  Presumably, the Council will approve the public hearing and vote on the proposal after the hearing in September.

From the beginning, members of the community have consistently demanded a CCRB with full investigative and subpoena powers.  Opposition to such a board has come almost exclusively from the NRPD, the police union, and civilians with personal or professional relationships with the police. The proposed CCRB would have no independent investigative or subpoena powers.

Consistent with the recommendation of CGR, a consultant group hired in 2022, the proposed CCRB is a “review-only” model, empowered only to review the NRPD’s completed internal investigations of its own officers’ alleged misconduct after the Commissioner has imposed what he considers appropriate discipline, and then “issue the CCRB’s opinion to the Police Commissioner.”  Under this model, the CCRB would have no input into police investigations or disciplinary decisions, and the Commissioner would have no obligation to respond to the CCRB’s “opinion.”

Further, the CCRB’s reviews of police investigations would not be open to the public “in order to protect the privacy and rights of the complainants and police,” and under the proposal’s extensive “Confidentiality” provisions, CCRB members would not be permitted to “discuss complaint investigations with any non-member or allow any non-member to discuss any information relevant to a pending complaint with them.”

The CCRB would be required to hold quarterly public meetings, but the proposal does not state what the purpose of these meetings would be.  The CCRB would also be required to hold “an annual meeting to educate members of the public on the role of the Board and to enable its members and the City Council to hear differing perspectives regarding police/civilian interactions.”

The CCRB would consist of seven members, one from each Council District, selected by the City Council member serving that District and approved by a majority vote of the City Council, and one from the City at large appointed by the Mayor.  Members would serve without compensation.

Members of the Police Department, elected officials, city officials, employees of the city, and members of other city boards would be ineligible to serve on the CCRB, as would relatives of elected officials, city officials, and city employees.  CCRB members could, however, include former members of the Police Department, elected officials, city officials, employees of the city, and members of other city boards, as well as current or former law enforcement officers from other jurisdictions.  

The importance of membership criteria was illustrated when Wendell Sears, a New Rochelle resident and retired NYPD officer, appointed to the CPPB as a “community” member in 2021, voted against the recommendation to create a CCRB in November 2023 along with two ”police” members of the CPPB, Lt. Edward Hayes and Capt. Raul Rodriguez. 

“Training” would be a “mandatory requirement for membership on the CCRB,” with training “provided by qualified training officers assigned by the Police Commissioner.”  The proposal outlines an extensive “comprehensive core training curriculum” focused overwhelmingly on police procedures.  Of 18 training areas specified in the proposal, only two suggest a community perspective: “History, culture, and concerns of the community served by New Rochelle Police Department, in particular the public’s concern with biased based policing and racial profiling,” and “The expectations the local community and government stakeholders have of the CCRB.”  These topics, like the others, would be covered by “qualified training officers assigned by the Police Commissioner.”

There is no requirement for training in the history of institutional racism in New Rochelle and its role in creating conditions that may lead to encounters with the police, the history of police violence against Black men and other people of color in New Rochelle and elsewhere, or strategies for eliminating structural racism in policing and in society at large.

In conducting their investigations, CCRB members would have access to “(1) The original complaint; (2) Any reports, summons or other written materials that may be the nexus of the interaction between the complainant and the Police Officer; and (3) Media, including audio and video, associated with the investigation, except that media may be redacted to maintain the confidentiality of witnesses, bystanders, and officers not involved in the investigation.” It is unclear whether CCRB members would have access to interview transcripts and other documents generated during the NRPD’s investigation, or whether they would be able to request such additional evidence from the NRPD as part of their review.

The full text of the proposed resolution can be found here.

Resistance to civilian oversight of the police  in New Rochelle has a long history. In May 2015, the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing found that “Some form of civilian oversight of law enforcement is important in order to strengthen trust with the community. Every community should define the appropriate form and structure of civilian oversight to meet the needs of that community” (Recommendation 2.8, p.26).  In its final report in November 2015, the New Rochelle Committee on Community Policing (NRCCP) ignored this recommendation, calling only for “constructive dialog between the community and the NRPD.”  Five years later, after the killings of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, New Rochelle resident Kamal Flowers by NRPD officer Alec McKenna, and dozens of other instances of police killings of civilians around the country, and in the midst of worldwide protests against US police violence and racism, nothing had changed.  In its July 2020 Special Report to Council (pages 33-39), the NRPD simply repeated the recommendations of the NRCCP from 2015. 

In June 2020, Governor Cuomo’s Executive Order 203 ordered every police department in New York State to publish a comprehensive reform plan to “address any racial bias and disproportionate policing of communities of color.”  A plan for a CCRB was included in New Rochelle’s final 2021 Police Reform Plan only after months of community advocacy.  The City Council addressed the community’s demand for a CCRB by creating the CPPB and directing it to propose a structure for a CCRB within a year “so that a CCRB can be established in 2022.”

In late 2022, after much delay, the CPPB hired the consulting group CGR to study possible structures for a CCRB.  Community members told CGR that “low income and Black neighborhoods are often over-policed,” that “the city’s most disenfranchised residents may…see law enforcement as a threat,” and described “past and current harassment of Black males by NRPD.”  NRPD members, on the other hand, told CGR their relationship with city residents was “good to great.”

In November 2023, CGR recommended the weakest possible structure for a Civilian Complaint Review Board, a “review-only” board with no independent investigative or subpoena powers.  CGR conceded that a fully empowered board would be more independent and less prone to pro-police bias, but it noted that a weaker “review-focused” board would be less expensive.  The CPPB approved CGR’s recommendation and passed it along to the City Council, which approved the recommendation as the terms of several of its members were coming to a close.  

The 2021 Police Reform Plan required the CPPB to hold quarterly public meetings, but the CPPB has not held a public meeting since it approved the CGR recommendation in November 2023.  Since then, it has apparently been working on the details for the current proposal behind closed doors with no public accountability or input. 

The public will have its opportunity to respond to the new proposal at Citizens To Be Heard on July 9 and at the public hearing on the CCRB on September 10 .