By Kate Hill

Staff Writer

On Jan. 20, the Village of Cazenovia Board of Trustees hosted a public input session regarding the village’s initial police reform plan.

The village developed the plan in response to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Executive Order 203 (June 12) — ‘New York State Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative.’

The order requires every local government with a police agency to perform a comprehensive review of its department, and to develop a plan to improve its police force deployments, strategies, policies, procedures and practices.

Each police agency’s reform plan must address the particular needs of the community and promote community engagement to foster trust, fairness and legitimacy, and to address any racial bias and disproportionate policing of communities of color.

In August, Cuomo announced additional guidance offering a framework and topics for consideration by local police departments, elected officials and citizens as they develop their plans.

According to the guidance, the collaborative process should involve: Reviewing the needs of the community served by its police agency, and evaluating the department’s current policies and practices; Establishing policies that allow police to effectively and safely perform their duties; Involving the entire community in the discussion; Developing policy recommendations resulting from this review; Offering a plan for public comment; Presenting the plan to the local legislative body to ratify or adopt it, and; Certifying adoption of the plan to the State Budget Director on or before April 1, 2021 to be eligible for future state funding.

In recent months, the village and the Cazenovia Police Department have spent considerable time self-assessing and seeking public inputs on how the department might best serve the community.

Mayor Kurt Wheeler and Police Commissioner Fritz Koennecke facilitated the review process with assistance from the chief of police and his staff.

The village began implementing the governor’s directive in October and November by reviewing its current policies, gathering relevant data, establishing the calendar for the development of the plan, and beginning outreach to ensure diverse community participation.

The public was invited to provide initial inputs to the planning process during a Dec. 3 public meeting and through an online survey.

The open-ended survey questions were designed to provide a framework and focus for discussion of local issues and expectations relevant to the police department.

The village used the public input to produce an initial draft of its police reform plan, which was made available on the village website for public review on Jan. 11.

The plan documents the review process, the analysis, and the conclusions that the village arrived at over the course of the effort.

According to the draft, communication was identified as a major area for improvement. As a result, much of the village’s plan is focused on improving relationships and understanding between the department and all segments of the community.

The list of planned actions include: clearly stating and publishing the police department’s mission and values; reinforcing the oversight role of the village board; exploring opportunities to appeal to a wider, more diverse pool of police officer candidates; enhancing community engagement; creating a police advisory and liaison committee; improving the relationship with Cazenovia College; improving the relationship with Cazenovia Central School District; updating the village website; and reevaluating police resources.

At the beginning of the Jan. 20 public input session, Wheeler and the village trustees recited the following oath of office: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of New York, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of Cazenovia village trustee according to the best of my ability.”

Following the oaths, Cazenovia College representatives and other members of the Cazenovia community provided input on the police reform plan draft and asked questions.

Cazenovia College Psychology Program Director Rachel Dinero, Ph.D. requested additional information regarding the village’s plans to implement implicit bias awareness training.

Wheeler explained that the bias training is part of an overall anti-discrimination training that the police officers receive on an annual basis.

The mayor added that he hopes to involve Cazenovia College staff members and students in conducting the bias training on at least an annual basis.

“I think the most effective type of training is not a one-and-done, check the box [type of thing], but really continuing an ongoing dialog and reinforcing understanding,” Wheeler said.

Dinero also requested that specific details regarding the content of the bias training be included in the plan.

Cazenovia College Vice President for Student Affairs Karey Pine commented that the college is currently working to provide similar bias training to its campus safety officers and proposed that the campus safety and village officers receive some joint training.

Cazenovia College student Emily Ledyard suggested that the village explicitly mention “racial sensitivity training” or “implicit bias towards race” in the plan’s discussion of implicit bias awareness training.

Dara Harper of the Anti-Racism Coalition of Cazenovia (ARC-C) suggested that the village allocate funds in its budget specifically for implicit bias training.

She also advocated for inviting prominent experts to Cazenovia to speak with and help train local law enforcement officers.

Wheeler responded that he would be interested in eventually partnering with other Madison County communities, like Hamilton, to potentially co-sponsor outside expert speakers on racial bias or related issues.

Community member Louise Brown-Smith requested additional information in the draft regarding the role of the proposed police advisory and liaison committee in receiving and relaying community concerns, complaints or inputs regarding the effectiveness of the village policing.

Wheeler noted that the draft plan currently states that complaints against officers or the police department can be conveyed directly to the chief or sergeant, to any member of the board of trustees, or to a police advisory and liaison committee including diverse stakeholders from the community.

“With the committee [we are hoping] that people who might be reticent to [contact the village directly] would have a way to confidentially pass on a concern or pattern or perception through a member of the advisory committee, so that we might get some feedback that we are not hearing right now,” Wheeler said.

The mayor added that he also hopes to have regular on-campus engagements with the college, not only to help build relationships, but also to gather input on the village policing.

“One of the things that I’ve heard throughout this process is that if you are in a position of power or authority, you can’t wait for people to come to you with complaints,” Wheeler said. “You’ve got to be proactive and go to them [to] say ‘How are we doing? How are we meeting your needs? What can we do better?’”

Following Wheeler’s comments, Katiuzca Loaiza-Espinoza, Cazenovia College’s director for multicultural affairs and residential programming, requested that the draft be amended to include more specific information regarding the duties of the advisory committee and the people it would include.

“My thought is that once the concept of the advisory committee is embraced by the community and by the village board, we would flesh that out as a separate process with public input . . .” Wheeler responded. “Before we just sort of dictated that these are the rules of the game, I think we wanted to get more feedback from the community to flesh that out.”

Wheeler added that a tentative timeline for the creation of the advisory committee would be added to the plan’s action items. According to the mayor, an interim committee should be created by March 2021 with a permanent committee ready by July 2021.

Loaiza-Espinoza next addressed her concerns regarding the village’s intention to increase the frequency of foot and bike patrols.

“For me, as a person of color, that would make me more nervous,” she said. “I can’t speak for all of my students of color, but more police would mean more instances that are available for me to mess up, or for me to be profiled, or for me to be in some sort of incident . . .”

Wheeler clarified that the overall number of officers on duty at one time would remain constant. The goal, he explained, is to increase the amount of human interaction between the officers and community members in an effort to foster more positive relationships.

During the remainder of the meeting, members of the public made a number of additional comments and suggestions regarding the draft plan, including requests for additional information on the following: specific policing policies and New York State standards; the department’s plans to ensure accountability for misconduct; the role of the “Crisis Intervention Team;” and potential strategies to improve public opinion of the police and foster productive relationships and trust between officers and members of the community — particularly people of color.

Wheeler concluded the meeting by stating that the village would continue to seek written input through Jan. 22.

“We’ll review the comments and add additional specifics where possible and review our content to ensure that our intent is more clearly spelled out,” said Koennecke. “As with any document that gets reviewed by a group of people with different backgrounds and perspectives, there were several areas identified where we don’t share a mutual understanding of what is written. We owe many thanks to the reviewers and attendees for pointing out where we can improve the text for clarity and understanding.”

The updated plan will be presented for village board ratification at the February regular monthly meeting in order to meet the April 1 state deadline.

To learn more about the Cazenovia Police Department, visit villageofcazenovia.com/police.

The ARC-C will hold next meeting on Jan. 28. The event will feature both the founder and the board president of the Syracuse-based nonprofit OG’s Against Gun Violence. For more information, visit facebook.com/arccazenovia.