Upper East Side Board Calls For Sweeping Police Reforms

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — An Upper East Side community board this week called for sweeping changes to the New York City Police Department, passing a resolution that goes well beyond the reforms adopted by the City Council last month.

The resolution, which calls on city to rebuild policing "from the ground up," includes 31 proposed reforms broken into six categories.

Its recommendations include transferring police away from mental health calls, ending the doctrine of qualified immunity that can shield officers from lawsuits, strengthening the Civilian Complaint Review Board and requiring NYPD officers to live within the five boroughs.

It passed Community Board 8 Wednesday night with 33 voting in favor and two against, along with five abstentions. The package was put together by the board's social justice committee, a new panel created last summer amid protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd.

"Righteous outrage"

"We are hearing from a social justice committee that was born out of righteous outrage about police brutality in this country and discrimination that goes far beyond the criminal justice system," board member Billy Freeland said Wednesday.

Michele Birnbaum, one of the two dissenting members, said she disagreed with the concept of changing policing "from the ground up" and objected to the idea of ending qualified immunity, as well as a provision calling for the police commissioner to have no final authority in officer discipline.

"Maybe I'm in the total minority here, but my hat is off to the police department," said Jane Parshall, the other member who voted against the package. "I just don't understand this resolution."

The recommendations coincide with the police reforms passed by the city last month before the April 1 deadline that Gov. Andrew Cuomo had asked cities to meet.

Those reforms include a City Council package that weakens qualified immunity, removes crash investigations from the NYPD and urges state lawmakers to strip the police commissioner of final disciplinary authority. A separate, more modest reform plan by Mayor Bill de Blasio was also approved by the council.

Other suggestions in the community board's resolution include changing the NYPD's approach toward sex workers, holding officers accountable for overtime abuse, expanding community policing programs and ending the use of "weapons and strategies of war" like tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets.

Member Anthony Cohn told the board that calls for police reform were especially meaningful coming from the Upper East Side, a neighborhood with stark inequalities.

"Some of the wealthiest people in the city and some of the least wealthy people in the city live here," he said.

The community board resolution was drafted in part by social justice committee co-chairs Sarah Chu and Saundrea Coleman, who is herself a retired NYPD employee.

"It's a great agency, yes," Coleman said at a board meeting last month. "But there are problems, and it's rooted at the culture."

Read the full community board resolution here.

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