Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. February 6, 2021.
Editorial: Governor, Legislature must press for police reform in wake of Rochester incident
The need for comprehensive police reform across New York - already a priority we have advocated for - was underscored by the horrendous episode in which Rochester police handcuffed and pepper-sprayed a 9-year-old Black girl.
Police body-camera footage of the episode on Rochester’s Harris Street is difficult to stomach.
In the videos, published by the Democrat and Chronicle, viewers see a clearly distressed young girl taken into custody as she struggled to make sense of a domestic dispute.
Police acted under New York’s mental hygiene law and took her into custody - ultimately handcuffing her, placing her inside a police vehicle and pepper-spraying her face. She later asked that the handcuffs be removed - but footage of that request has not yet been made public.
We echo a call from the Rochester Police Accountability Board, the independent group tasked with probing the incident, that all of the footage be released.
We have been disturbed by comments from Mike Mazzeo, president of the union that represents Rochester police. Mazzeo, who asked for patience as the Harris Street incident is investigated, has said that department policy on when and how pepper spray is to be used is not clear. Mazzeo, we think, needs to advocate for greater clarity - there should be no questions about how officers interact with emotionally distressed children.
Rochester Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan has said this week that police were not required to have used pepper spray. One officer was suspended with pay and two others were placed on administrative leave for their involvement in the Jan. 29 encounter.
Rochester’s leadership - in city government, on the PAB and in the police department - say they are working to address this incident, which follows the Daniel Prude case.
These leaders need help.
It is time for the governor and the Legislature to act. Albany must set a new tone - and must do so with urgency.
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Albany Times Union. February 9, 2021.
Editorial: It’s not about economics
As New York moves to close four youth detention centers, the focus shouldn’t be primarily on the shutdown’s economic impact.
That may seem an odd thing to say, since Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget projects that the closures could save $22 million a year, plus avoid millions in capital costs. Taxpayers would welcome those cuts. But the rationale for closing or keeping the centers must be whether they’re needed for juvenile justice aims - not for economic gains.
For decades, New York used prisons and juvenile centers alike as economic development tools. They were placed in rural communities across upstate where jobs were scarce. It was a lazy form of economic development that failed to address the real problems underlying the decline of rural New York. After all, local economies should be based on something more productive than imprisonment.
And intentionally or not, the strategy provided a perverse incentive for draconian prison sentences and mass incarceration. The impact on families and communities, especially among minority groups, was devastating. It was also unnecessary for public safety.
With the repeal of the harsh sentences of the Rockefeller drug laws, and other criminal justice reforms, New York has been implementing alternatives to incarceration. The positive change has emptied some prison cells; three state prisons are scheduled to close this year.
Similarly, New York’s youth juvenile justice system is shrinking: The state Office of Children and Family Services says the number of youths in detention centers has fallen by 73 percent since 2010. Now, according to Mr. Cuomo’s budget, four youth detention centers - three in the Hudson Valley, one on Long Island - are “chronically underfilled,” with roughly two-thirds of their beds typically empty.
The facilities in Columbia and Orange counties are secure centers, for juvenile felons sentenced by adult courts; those in Dutchess and Suffolk counties are non-secure, for young people sentenced by Family Court.
State officials insist the closures will not result in layoffs, but the union representing the workers is concerned. It’s understandable that the workers are worried about reassignments and retraining, because those moves are disruptive. Yet keeping those jobs in place is not a reason to keep the centers open - because there are other factors to weigh. The state should detain no more youth and maintain no more facilities than is necessary.
As with adult prisons, it’s important that those being held in youth detention centers are not too far from their homes and families. And Mr. Cuomo’s administration should not bypass a law that requires a year’s notice before a facility is closed. That helps ensure the state is making measured and well-considered decisions, and it gives communities and workers time to prepare for the changes.
In the end, decisions about incarceration must be made aside from economic factors. Prison cells and facilities for criminal youth shouldn’t be used to keep communities afloat.
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Adirondack Daily Enterprise. February 8, 2021.
Editorial: Black History Month is time for learning
The past eight months, in many ways, have served as a new reckoning for our nation in dealing with race. The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the anger and riots that followed, were a stark reminder to the nation that, more than 50 years after the Civil Rights movement, we still have a long way to go.
That’s why all of us should use this month - Black History Month - as a time to not only learn more about our friends and neighbors but also to gain a better understanding of the issues that Black Americans face.
Black History Month 2021 reflects on the tapestry presented by Black families and the role they have played in the African American experience.
“The Black Family: Representation, Identity and Diversity,” is the theme that has been selected by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the founders of Black History Month. It’s a multifaceted topic, and one that looks at the many layers of the family, including the reverence that has been shown, the stereotypes that have been perpetuated and the parts that have been vilified from the time of slavery to the present.
Black History Month was established by Carter G. Woodson. Woodson, born in 1875 and the son of former slaves, himself a former coal miner and educator, understood a proper education was important in seeking to make the most out of one’s freedom. He earned his high school diploma at an all-Black high school in Huntington, West Virginia, and then earned advanced degrees at the University of Chicago and Harvard University. Woodson was the second Black man to earn a doctorate degree at Harvard. He later founded what is known today as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
In 1926, Woodson established what today has become known as Black History Month after recognizing a lack of information on the accomplishments of Blacks in American history. February was chosen because of the correlation with the birthdays of abolitionist author Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln.
Woodson knew and understood that all men were created equal, and following college set out on a life mission to teach truth to that point.
Again, let us all use this month to learn more about our neighbors. That could go a long way to a deeper understanding of the challenges we all face and how, working together, we can tackle those issues.
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New York Daily News. February 10, 2021.
Editorial: Death and truth: What to make of new numbers on New York nursing home fatalities
No thanks to the Cuomo administration’s many months of obfuscation, now we know: Almost 15,000 of New York’s 44,512 COVID fatalities since the pandemic began were among residents of nursing homes and adult-care and assisted-living facilities. The state Health Department finally disclosed those numbers this week after losing a Freedom of Information Law suit. Until recently, , New York reported only deaths of nursing home residents that happened inside nursing home facilities, not those of people who died after transfer to hospitals.
With the new totals included, deaths among nursing home, adult care and assisted living residents now make up about 33% of New York’s confirmed and presumed COVID fatalities to date.
Which means, Gov. Cuomo’s distorted, self-congratulatory claims to the contrary, New York hasn’t done any better or any worse in terms of nursing home deaths than the country at large, where 33% of deaths have come from the nursing home population.
We wonder whether the governor will fix the record in the second edition of his memoir, if there is one. In the first, he wrote: “New York was number 46 out of 50 in the nation when it came to percentage of deaths in nursing homes. There were only four states with a lower percentage of nursing home deaths, and New York had a much worse situation to manage.”
In fact, New York ranks near the middle of the pack among U.S. states in percentage of total deaths among nursing home residents. The new data show an extraordinary additional number of nursing home fatalities took place in the months after New York passed the peak of the first wave last spring.
So now, with the Legislature poised to pass a package of nursing-home-safety bills, the question becomes: Why didn’t the measures facilities were ordered to undertake to ward off new infections, like mandatory testing for patients and staff, restricting visitors and PPE wearing, work? Or were they just not followed closely enough?
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Newsday. February 8, 2021.
Editorial: Limit the use of hate symbols on public property
It should have been clear not so long after 1865 that the Confederate battle flag was a symbol of a failed, racist rebellion - the violent effort by Southern states to preserve slavery and secede from the United States.
That only became clearer in the decades and century-plus after, as the flag grew to symbolize not only the South’s Lost Cause but also white supremacy and Jim Crow discrimination.
This is the core importance of State Sen. Anna Kaplan’s proposed legislation banning public entities like fire and police departments and school districts from displaying symbols of hate such as the Confederate flag or Nazi paraphernalia, with limited exceptions that include when the symbol appears in a book or serves an educational or historical purpose.
The Great Neck Democrat’s bill on the subject comes after a much-publicized incident last summer in which a Confederate flag decorated a Brookhaven Fire Department truck during a Patchogue parade. That is on top of the Levittown Fire Department drill team’s logo for many years including a man in a gray Civil War uniform holding a Confederate flag.
That kind of imagery is unacceptable, a point made starkly clear by the recent upsurge of white supremacist incidents around the country, from Charleston, South Carolina, where a mass shooter with a predilection for the battle flag entered a historic Black church to commit murder in 2015, to Charlottesville, Virginia, where white nationalists rallied in 2017, sporting images of the flag and other icons of hate.
It has belatedly dawned on society at large that the battle flag isn’t just a way to symbolize rebellion, youthful or otherwise. It’s now a clear message of white supremacy - that Black Americans, Jews and immigrants aren’t fully welcome wherever the flag furls.
Kaplan’s office says that rules about what can be displayed on these public properties are a patchwork across the state, and her legislation would bring some uniformity. That makes sense, as does her paired bill prohibiting municipal officers or employees from displaying political advertisements on or within public buildings, vehicles, equipment or location.
There has recently been a Donald Trump flag at the Levittown Fire Department house, and during election season political signs are often found on local town and county properties.
Kaplan’s bills, however, must be carefully worded and reviewed by lawmakers to make sure they don’t infringe on free speech rights, no matter how unpopular or populist the view. Most important, the measures underscore that advocates of either political party or policy sentiment should not be able to appropriate public property to disseminate their message.
Neither political signs nor symbols of hate belong in public places and Albany lawmakers must make that clear by passing this legislation in this session.
It’s a step toward a civic culture that is open to all, antagonistic to none.
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