NEWBURGH – The City of Newburgh Police Oversight Committee’s proposed police reform plan was the subject of a virtual public hearing Tuesday night.
Police Chief Arnold Amthor said the collaboration between the police department, elected officials, community activists and members of faith-based organizations yielded a number of implementable reforms.
They include annual implicit bias training, verbal judo, cultural awareness, de-escalation tactics, less lethal tactics and defensive tactics training. Beginning in the new year, city police officers will receive 20 to 30 more training hours annually in those areas.
The department is also looking at impact weapons to substitute for lethal physical force, which will also have a training curriculum next year. Also, the department will be acquiring new body cameras.
Beginning immediately, the department is changing the uniform to a less militaristic looking one and will be fully implementing the right to know field activities.
The proposal was met with some pushback from the community speakers.
A recurring complaint was that members of the community did not have the level of input intended by the governor’s executive order.
Newburgh/Highland Falls NAACP member Claire Dowdy referenced a letter written to city and Orange County officials, where they claimed their input on members of the committee and the committee name were assigned by proxy of City Manager Joseph Donat.
“A committee was appointed by elected officials of the City of Newburgh and city manager to advise the police department on strategies to comply with EO 203. The process chosen to convene was in the absence of agreed collaboration and does not build public trust,” said Dowdy. “This directly counters with the community trust that is to be nurtured during the described process,” she said.
Donat maintained the proposal for the city’s action plan was, in fact, collaborative.
“The selection process, on that same token, was done collaboratively with members of our community. The selection process was one that was reached through work done jointly with our chairman [Ray Harvey] and other senior leaders of the city,” said Donat.
Some participants at Tuesday’s session wanted more of a two-way dialogue with the committee.
City Councilman Omari Shakur, after a profanity-laced outburst, claimed the hearing should have been conducted in a more open format.
“This is not a community meeting,” said Shakur. “This is a police presentation and I’m appalled as a city councilman to even be a part of it because right now I’m tired of playing games with our community’s lives when our community’s children are at stake and we keep playing these games,” he said.
Members of the committee did not provide comment that evening.
A second public hearing will convene on December 15 at 6 p.m. via Zoom. Members of the community who wish to attend and/or speak must register through Zoom prior to the commencement of the hearing.
The slide show and proposed action plan of the Executive Order 203 Police Oversight Committee is available on the city’s website, as well as the committee’s dedicated site.
