Metro

Cuomo signs police reform bills that expand records access in New York

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Published June 12, 2020
Updated June 12, 2020, 6:25 p.m. ET

Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a slew of bills Friday that promise to improve transparency at police departments across the Empire State, including granting the public access to officer disciplinary files.

“There is no trust between the community and the police,” said Cuomo, before he signed the bills. “That’s what the protests have said — there’s no trust. And if there is no trust, the relationship doesn’t work.”

“If there’s no trust the police can’t effectively police. If there’s no trust, the community is not going to allow the police to police,” he added.

Lawmakers in Albany fast-tracked the package of legislation as tens of thousands of people hit the streets of New York — and across the country — demanding police reforms and budget cuts in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, who died as a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes.

“There’s no trust and if there is no trust, the relationship doesn’t work,” Cuomo told reporters Friday before he signed the package of bills. “If there’s no trust, the police can’t effectively police. If there’s no trust, the community is not going to allow the police to police.

“There is no trust or there is a breach of the trust and that has to be restored.”

Cuomo was joined by state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester), Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and longtime civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton as he signed the legislation.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs a slew of bills that reform police policies today.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs a slew of bills that reform police policies today.James Messerschmidt

The newly enacted legislation makes a slew of changes to state laws, which were among the most favorable to police in the nation, including:

  • Repealing the state’s controversial police records secrecy rule known as “50-a” that sealed off access to disciplinary records
  • Makes it a crime to make false 911 complaints against a person who is a minority;
  • Banning the use of chokeholds
  • Codifying Cuomo’s existing executive order granting the state attorney general the power to conduct independent probes of in-custody deaths

Cuomo signed four of the ten bills passed by lawmakers on Friday and expects to sign the remainder — including body cameras for state police and requirements for courts to report demographic data for low-level offenses —in the coming days, an official said.

Additionally, the governor issued an executive order that requires police departments across the state develop new policing strategies in consultation with local communities or risk funding if they do not comply.

The NYPD only expected to receive $23 million in state funding in its 2019 budget.”We know that this is the beginning but it’s a move to bring justice to a system that has long been unjust,” said Stewart Cousins.

The lawmakers were also joined by the longtime civil rights activist Hazel Dukes and the mothers of two men killed in confrontations with New York City police, Valerie Bell and Gwen Carr.

The largest cop union in the city, the Police Benevolent Association, blasted Cuomo for signing the bills and claimed the new laws would leave cops hamstrung.

“We will be permanently frozen, stripped of all resources and unable to do the job,” said Pat Lynch, the union’s head. “We don’t want to see our communities suffer, but this is what Governor Cuomo and our elected leaders have chosen.”

Civil rights activists, progressives and legal aid groups demanded these changes for years, but the bills remained bottled up in Albany thanks to the outsized political sway of police unions and district attorneys.

That was until the footage of Floyd’s arrest and death went viral, sparking the mass demonstrations.

“Watching a man being suffocated by strangulation, crying for his deceased mother, I think struck a nerve,” Heastie added.

Even the New York City police brass conceded during a City Council hearing this week that the furor has damaged police and community relations in the Big Apple.

“Simply put, it was an atrocity, fatal to Mr. Floyd and deeply damaging to police-community relations here in New York and everywhere in our nation,” said First Deputy Police Commissioner Ben Tucker, the NYPD’s highest-ranking African American. “Our profession is better than that.”