A citizens panel has recommended police reforms in Rockland that include banning stun guns, creating a civilian police review board to investigate police misconduct, demilitarizing the police and removing officers from schools.
The proposals are part of a far-reaching report by the Rockland People’s Panel on Policing to curtail law enforcement brutality and systemic racism.
The panel, formed as a response to the police-involved deaths of George Floyd, Tina Davis of Spring Valley, and other people of color, focused on ending what the group calls racially biased policing in Rockland County.
The panel also called for an investigation of the sheriff s office and the ousting of Sheriff Louis Falco.
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Civil rights attorneys have sent a letter with more than 300 signatures to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, asking to push back the April 1st deadline for communities to complete their police reforms. They say municipalities have not addressed the underlying issues of systemic racism and police misconduct.
The governor’s Executive Order 203 the Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative Plan requires local police agencies to modernize their strategies and programs based on community input. Orange County-based attorney Michael Sussman says implementation of the order has been uneven and generally leaves out the voices of people most affected.
“In our letter to the governor et. al., explicates exactly the problem a top-down approach, a non-transparent approach, an exclusionary approach and an approach which refuses to look square-eye at the issue,” Sussman says.