Schuyler County Police Reform Initiative

On June 12, 2020 Governor Cuomo signed Executive Order No. 203. The Executive Order states this was created in response to “…the police-involved death of George Floyd in Minnesota, protests have taken place daily throughout the nation and in communities across New York State in response to police-involved deaths and racially-biased law enforcement to demand change, action, and accountability.”  The Executive Order  instructed each local government entity which has a police agency operating with police officers as defined under 1.20 of the criminal procedure law must perform a comprehensive review of current police force deployments, strategies, policies, procedures, and practices, and develop a plan to improve such deployments, strategies, policies, procedures, and practices, for the purposes of addressing the particular needs of the communities served by such police agency and promote community engagement to foster trust, fairness, and legitimacy, and to address any racial bias and disproportionate policing of communities of color.

EO 203 Overview

1. A review of current local government, not State, policing policies;
2. Subsequent or in coordination with the review, developed a plan to meet the goals of mitigating police-involved deaths and racially biased law enforcement. This plan development must be done with the involvement of multiple interested parties (listed below);
3. This plan is to be ratified by local government legislative body after such plan is offered to the public for comment;
4. The ratified plan must be submitted to the State Budget Director. The police policy review, the new plan development, and the ratification of such plan each have involvement from different entities.