At its  quarterly public meeting on February 23, 2023, New Rochelle’s Community-Police Partnership Board (CPPB) provided a brief update on its work to propose a structure for a Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) but declined to provide any details on the “stakeholders” that will be interviewed for the project.

The CPPB was created by the City Council in the summer of 2021 in the wake of the 2020 police murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, and Kamal Flowers here in New Rochelle.  Following a 4-hour public hearing with dozens of witnesses concerned about police abuse, the Council assigned the CPPB to “research and recommend a framework” for creation of a CCRB for New Rochelle, with the intention to form a CCRB in 2022.  In late 2022, the CPPB retained CGR, a Rochester-based research and consulting organization, to assist in formulating their proposal. 

At its public meeting on Tuesday night, the CPPB announced that CGR has been “analyzing data” and was preparing to interview “community stakeholders” in March.  But it declined to provide any information about the people who would be interviewed or the method for selecting people who would be contacted.  It also declined to provide any details on the data that was being analyzed.

A member of New RoAR suggested that the people who came forward to testify at the public hearing in February 2021, many of whom had direct experience with abusive police behavior and overpolicing, be on the list of people to be interviewed, but the Board did not respond.  The Board did state that a representative of CGR might attend its next quarterly public meeting.

Of the many residents who spoke up demanding a CCRB for New Rochelle in 2021, several applied for seats on the CPPB but none were appointed.  It’s not known if any of these “stakeholders” have been (or will be) interviewed by CGR.  Does New Rochelle want those who most strongly advocated for a CCRB to have a voice in its creation?  Or does the city have a different agenda?

Among other updates, the CPPB announced that the NRPD has posted statistics on the last 5 years of civilian complaints on the city website.  The data shows 14 sustained (proven) complaints in 2018-2020, 11 in 2021, and 12 in 2022, but no details on the nature of those complaints or any disciplinary action that was taken.  A resident said he would seek release of that information.  The proportion of complaints that were sustained increased from 20% in 2018-20 to 33% in 2022.

And the CPPB announced that the city’s Mobile Crisis Response Team, comprised of mental health professionals from the Guidance Center of New Rochelle, has responded along with the police to 73 calls so far this year.

New RoAR News has posted a history of recent efforts to increase police accountability in New Rochelle.  The full video of the February 9, 2021, public hearing on police reform can be found here.