The New Rochelle Police Department (NRPD) has a long history of tension with the city’s communities of color, which has erupted at times into lethal violence. 

In May 2013, for example, the wife of Samuel Cruz, a 48-year-old artist who suffered from bipolar disorder and had stopped taking his medications, called police for assistance in getting him to a hospital.  The police forced their way into his apartment and found him holding a knife.  Police Officer Steven Geertgens shot him once in the chest, killing him.  Officer Geertgens was not charged.

The killings of George Floyd and Kamal Flowers

On May 25, 2020, Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd.  Eleven days later, on the evening of June 5, 2020, Kamal Flowers, a 24-year old Black man, was shot and killed by Police Officer Alec McKenna on a dark street in New Rochelle. 

Mr. Flowers had been the passenger in a car that was pursued by Officer McKenna and his partner from downtown New Rochelle to a quiet industrial area several miles away.  When the police caught up with the car, Mr. Flowers got out and ran.  Officer McKenna pursued him further on foot and shot him.  There were no witnesses. 

The police later displayed a handgun that they said was brandished by Mr. Flowers and claimed that Officer McKenna had shot Mr. Flowers in self-defense.  No forensic evidence linking the displayed weapon to Mr. Flowers has been made public. 

The Westchester County District Attorney and the New York State Attorney General declined to investigate because Mr. Flowers was allegedly armed.  The NRPD has never explained why Officer McKenna and his partner pursued the vehicle in which Mr. Flowers was riding, nor why a fleeing passenger (not the driver who might have committed a traffic infraction) was pursued on foot leading to a lethal confrontation.  Nevertheless, following an internal investigation, the NRPD issued a brief statement concluding that Officer McKenna had followed all relevant policies and procedures and restored him to full active duty.

The community demands accountability

On June 12, 2020, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo issued Executive Order 203, reviewing the history of racially discriminatory policing and police violence against Black men, and mandating that every jurisdiction in New York State with a police department review its police policies and procedures to identify any racial bias or overpolicing of communities of color and adopt a plan to correct such disparities no later than April 21, 2021.

On August 13, 2020, in response to Governor Cuomo’s order, New Rochelle’s City Manager convened a Policing Review Committee consisting of 14 citizens and several government representatives.  The Committee held a series of community meetings and issued a report with numerous recommendations on October 31, 2020.

The Committee presented its report to the City Council on November 4, 2020.  The City Manager dismissed most of the Policing Review Committee’s recommendations as either impractical or redundant, but at a City Council meeting on December 1, numerous citizens expressed support for the Committee’s work. 

Also on December 1, Mayor Noam Bramson and Councilwoman Yadira Ramos-Herbert issued a memorandum responding in detail to the recommendations of the Policing Review Committee and recommending the formation of a Community-Police Partnership Board (CPPB) and other reforms. 

Bramson and Ramos-Herbert’s memo seemed to form the foundation for a draft “Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative Plan” submitted to the City Council on January 12, 2021, which was substantially different from the recommendations of the original Policing Review Committee. 

At a “Citizens to be Heard” session with the City Council on January 12, numerous community members expressed their dissatisfaction with the city’s proposal and stressed the importance of an independent Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) to ensure transparency and accountability. 

Beginning in late January, New RoAR convened a series of online community meetings to hear additional public comment.  Based on these meetings, New RoAR and others drafted a detailed set of proposed amendments to the reform plan.  Among these proposals, an independent CCRB was identified as a critical need. 

At a four-hour public hearing before the City Council on February 9, scores of citizens expressed continued dissatisfaction with the city’s latest proposal and presented the additional proposals drafted in the community meetings.  Several members of New Rochelle’s Black community testified personally to abuse they had suffered at the hands of NRPD and the efforts of NRPD to dissuade them from filing official complaints. 

In addition, the Next Step Forward Initiative, a local community group, collected testimony from members of the Black Community about abusive behavior by NRPD officers and posted these accounts on Instagram.

Council approves a Civilian Complaint Review Board

The city accepted some, but not all, of the community’s proposed revisions to its police reform plan.  The proposal for a CCRB was initially strongly opposed by the NRPD, the City Manager, the Mayor, and the City Council, who all argued that the CPPB would be a sufficient mechanism to ensure police transparency and accountability. 

After continued public outcry, however, the City Council agreed to initiate a process leading to the creation of a CCRB.  The City’s final Police Reform and Collaborative Plan, passed by the City Council on April 20, 2021, created the CPPB and directed it to “recommend a framework for the creation of a Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB).”  The CPPB was asked “to present its findings and recommendations to the City Manager and City Council as timely as practical and no later than one year following appointment of the CPPB, so that a CCRB can be established in 2022.”

The Mayor requested applications for the seven seats on the CPPB designated for the “general community,” and several members of New RoAR and others who spoke out on the city’s reform plans applied.  Other than one member of the original Policing Review Committee, none of these community activists was appointed to the CPPB.

The NRPD has implemented several of the measures in the Police Reform Plan, including a complete body camera and dashboard camera system, an online form and a non-retaliation policy for civilian complaints, and the deployment of mental health professionals for calls involving people in emotional distress. It did not meet its deadline to submit a plan for the CCRB.

In early 2022, New RoAR, anticipating the CPPB’s efforts to develop a proposal for a CCRB, convened another series of online community meetings to identify the essential features of a CCRB.  Participants in these meetings agreed on six criteria for an effective CCRB.  Briefly, these are:

• Independence
• Transparency
• Full investigative powers, including subpoena power
• Meaningful disciplinary power
• Broad scope, including minor as well as major infractions
• Adequate budget, indexed to the NRPD budget.

In late 2022, the CPPB engaged CGR (formerly the Center for Governmental Research), a non-profit research group based in Rochester, NY, to assist in the development of a plan for a New Rochelle CCRB. CGR reviewed police oversight practices in Rochester in 2017 and included extensive community input in its report, which found that Rochester’s approach was dated and suggested more modern practices including independent investigations of police complaints and monitoring of data.  New RoAR has offered to assist CGR in its work with the New Rochelle CPPB and is awaiting their reply.