By the New RoAR News Editorial Board

There are many lessons to be found in the most recent New Rochelle school board election.  As the community processes the impact of the impressive display of power, fear, and tribalism, there is one issue that needs to be immediately addressed.  For the second time during a school board election, the police were called with false claims of campaigning within 100 feet of an election site.

The weaponization of the police department as a tool of white supremacy is a tried and true method of voter intimidation and suppression.   For it to be deployed on anyone, much less the  president of our local NAACP, speaks to what lies just beneath the surface of our city.  The silence among our white elected officials has been deafening. 

Despite recent public remembrances in New Rochelle of Black and Jewish collaboration in the 1960s, in 2024 and in 2025 Black candidates and supporters who dared to hand out campaign literature north of Eastchester Road were repeatedly verbally harassed and reported to the police by people campaigning for north end candidates. 

The New York Consolidated Laws, Penal Law – PEN § 240.50  states that falsely reporting an incident in the third degree includes:

“3. Gratuitously reports to a law enforcement officer or agency (a) the alleged occurrence of an offense or incident which did not in fact occur; or (b) an allegedly impending occurrence of an offense or incident which in fact is not about to occur; or (c) false information relating to an actual offense or incident or to the alleged implication of some person therein;”

Falsely reporting an incident in the third degree is a class A misdemeanor.

We call upon the Westchester County DA, the New Rochelle City Manager and the New Rochelle Police Commissioner to re-emphasize to our law enforcement officers the rules regarding campaigning near polling sites as well as the penalty for calling in a false report.  We need to immediately end the dangerous weaponization of law enforcement in this ongoing campaign of intimidation against Black voters and candidates.

We call upon all our elected officials, religious and civic  leaders – particularly those who backed the recently victorious candidates from the north end – to speak up and to speak out against those who break the law and seek to use our police department in such a dangerous and traumatic fashion.