Editorial: Reform, or buying time?

Ten months ago, amid a nationwide uproar over the police killing of a Black man in Minneapolis, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order requiring every local government in New York with a police force to come up with a plan for reform. The deadline was April 1.

Ten months, some community leaders right here in the Capitol Region seem tempted to think, is plenty of time for the outrage over George Floyd’s death to cool down. They should think again.

Mr. Cuomo certainly couldn’t have anticipated it, but all these months later, at the very moment these reform plans have come due, America is reliving the episode that sparked a national reckoning with systemic racism in our criminal justice system. The officer who knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck for nearly nine and a half minutes as onlookers pleaded with him to stop is now on trial for murder. The communal wound is opened anew as we listen to wrenching testimony from witnesses still coming to terms with their own traumatic memories of watching as a human being was slowly killed before their eyes. The need for reform is as urgent as ever as we hear the officer’s lawyers defend his actions as in line with his training.

That police officials now say the officer’s actions violated policies and best practices is heartening, but this isn’t one isolated case. Mr. Floyd’s death brought into stark focus all the abuse, lethal or not, that people of color around the nation have long endured at the hands of police. The disparity in the way they are treated compared with whites. The injustice of targeting people for traffic stops, frisks, violent and sometimes deadly no-knock raids, surveillance, and other encounters with police simply because of the color of their skin.

Mr. Cuomo’s executive order represented an opportunity to address that disparity. It was a chance to hear from people who live with this reality, day in and day out, how we could try to eradicate biases so ingrained that an Albany police officer would think nothing about making idle talk with an Albany County Sheriff’s deputy about his disdain for people of color while his body camera was on.

Yet as the deadline approached, people involved in drafting reform plans in places including Albany, Niskayuna, Saratoga Springs, and Troy say their input was ignored, diminished or disrespected, and that the final products fall short.

It understandably raises concerns when a leader like Niskayuna Supervisor Yasmine Syed suggests that the work of all these months is “aspirational,” as if progress is just some nebulous wish. Or when Saratoga Springs’ City Council won’t commit to embracing its task force’s report. Or when Albany is criticized for excluding leading social justice groups from its collaborative. Or when some in Troy see a document that “screams white supremacy.”

If this was just a way in some politicians’ minds to buy time to let the outrage cool down, it failed. When the very groups that studied the issue and the very communities harmed by systemic racism say these reform plans fall short, elected officials should be listening. We may accept that the search for a perfect criminal justice system will always be a work in progress, but the idea that reform is something we can still only dream of in some far-off future is unacceptable.