NEW YORK – The New York
Civil Liberties Union has developed a new online resource to look at practices
and policies of police departments across the state.
The database is aimed at providing new transparency and accountability
to police-community interactions.
Once all of the data is gathered, www.BehindtheBadgeNY.org will look at
police departments in the cities of Mount Vernon and Newburgh and the
Town of Ramapo. Data is already posted for the City of White Plains.
The new report says White Plains was one of the few departments to have
a policy on the use of body-cameras at the time NYCLU requested the information.
The watchdog agency said the policy gives “a lot of discretion to
officers to determine when or whether to activate the cameras and it doesn’t
clearly limit an officer’s ability to review footage of incidents
related to misconduct investigations before first completing any initial
reports or providing officials statements.”
The White Plains Police Department acknowledged that it has language
access and interaction with people with limited English proficiency, but
only provided NYCLU with a provision to use a translation line for 911
calls and that refers to “Asian” as a language. The agency
said it is not clear if the department has additional policies governing
procedures for in-person or other interactions where there may be language
barriers.
“Our community needs to know what rules police the police,”
said Shannon Wong, Hudson Valley NYCLU chapter director. “Transparency
is essential for the community to be able to hold police accountable when
they abuse their power, use excessive force or make discriminatory stops
or arrests.”
