Is Anyone Taking This Seriously?

By the Editorial Board of New RoAR News

Facts:

• On  June 5, 2020, New Rochelle Police Officer Alec McKenna shot and killed Kamal Flowers, a Black resident of New Rochelle, under suspicious circumstances.  Officer McKenna had followed a car in which Flowers was a passenger from downtown until the car stopped on Potter Avenue.  Flowers then got out of the car and ran onto a dark side street.  Officer McKenna followed him and killed him.  There were no witnesses.  McKenna said Flowers threatened him with a gun.  The video from a neighboring building was inconclusive. An internal NRPD investigation found that McKenna followed all standard procedures, but it did not explain why McKenna followed the car or why he chased Flowers—a passenger, not the driver—when he ran away, setting up a fatal confrontation.  McKenna remains on the force.

• On the afternoon of July 3, 2023, NRPD Detective Steven Conn shot and killed Jarrell Garris, a Black New Rochelle native, in front of St. Catherine AME Zion Church on Lincoln Avenue.  Garris had allegedly eaten some fruit at the nearby New Rochelle Farms market and left without paying.  Both the store owner and Detective Conn noted before the shooting that Garris appeared to be having mental health issues.  Two officers were talking with Garris who was quietly walking away, when Conn arrived on the scene, ran over, placed a handcuff on Garris, punched him in the face, and, along with another officer, wrestled him to the ground.  When Garris appeared to reach for the other officer’s holstered gun, Conn shot him in the neck.  An investigation by the New York State Attorney General found that Conn could likely justify the shooting in court as “self-defense,” but criticized Conn’s needless use of physical force to restrain Garris and the NRPD’s training on managing people with mental health issues who are accused of “petty offenses.”  Conn remains on the force and faces an internal investigation by the NRPD.  The NRPD police union issued a statement calling Garris a “violent criminal” and blaming him for his own death.

• On May 29, 2024, NRPD Lieutenant Sean Kane, the leader of the Special Investigations Unit, videotaped himself handling a bag of white powder in his patrol car just before finding a similar bag under the car of Ivin Harper, a Black New Rochelle native, and then having Harper arrested.  Harper filed a complaint, and when the video was discovered, Kane was suspended, the case was referred to the District Attorney for investigation, and the drug charges against Harper were dismissed.  It is unknown how many other people might have been framed over the years by NRPD officers who were not caught on tape.

• In 2020, after the police killings of Kamal Flowers, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black people across the country, then New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered every local government in the state to create a reform plan to address issues of racism in the policing of Black communities.  After intense pressure from New Rochelle residents, the City Council agreed in 2021 to form a “Community-Police Partnership Board” (CPPB) and directed the CPPB to propose a structure for an independent Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) within a year.  More than two years later, the CPPB proposed a virtually powerless CCRB, which is now being considered by the City Council.  Most of the police members of the CPPB opposed the creation of any CCRB at all.

• At the quarterly meeting of Citizens for a Better New Rochelle on September 25, Police Commissioner Robert Gazzola dismissed calls for enhanced training of New Rochelle police officers.  He said the suspension of Lieutenant  Kane would be “serious training for everyone else,” and that “just that alone is going to be enough.”  Gazzola also said that all the officers involved in the Garris killing had been thoroughly trained in de-escalation and mental health responses, that “there was probable cause to make an arrest–it was a lawful arrest,” and that Conn “did not escalate in my opinion, just looking at the video.”

Police Commissioner Robert Gazzola

Two Black men shot dead by NRPD officers in four years, a third Black man framed on drug charges by a senior NRPD officer, a department that openly resists any public accountability, and a commissioner who treats all this as business as usual.

What is going on in the NRPD?  Is this the kind of policing New Rochelle wants and deserves?  Who is setting standards for the NRPD and enforcing them?  The Police Commissioner?  The City Manager?  The City Council?  The Mayor?  Anyone?

New Rochelle needs a police department where officers are well trained and sensitive to the needs of the communities they serve, and where officers who are corrupt or violent are held accountable.

Make your voice heard!  Contact the mayor, your council member and the acting City Manager.

Or show up at the City Council’s next monthly Citizens To Be Heard session:

Tuesday, October 8, at 7 pm

City Hall, 515 North Avenue

(Anyone can sign up to speak to the Council and the community for 3 minutes.)