After recent events of police brutality, Nassau County is making some changes to their police department. // Photo courtesy Luiz C. Ribeiro / New York Daily News.
Nassau County is taking steps toward positive change within the police force. On March 22, the county legislature approved County Executive, Laura Curran’s, plans for police reform. After over 120 public input sessions, this bill was finally passed with bipartisan support. This comes as the nation is gripped with injustice surrounding various police inequities.
“Police think they’re above the law, but in reality, they are enforcers of the law,” said Amanda Lepurage, a sophomore criminology major. Lepurage stresses the need for reform within police departments.
The plan includes three areas of reform: robust community-orientated policing, transparency and accountability. Within community-orientated policing, there will be a push for diversity in department staffing and recruiting, community outreach and enhanced collaboration between the police department and the Nassau County mobile crisis team. This collaboration is to address the large number of mental health calls to the police department.
Sabrina Dunckley, a junior psychology and criminology major, believes that many interactions between police and people with a mental illness end in unnecessary trauma, injury and even death because police are inadequately trained to deal with those types of crises.
“When people call 911 for a mental health emergency,” Dunckley said. “I feel as though the police shouldn’t be sent for something like that.”
She also thinks that it would be beneficial for police to attend trainings or have a system implemented for mental health professionals to respond to emergency calls.
The bill also includes Nassau County’s first ever body camera program. The program will require all police officers to wear a body camera in order to accurately document the use of force. In the past, there has been controversy surrounding requiring officers to wear cameras, but according to Brenner Fissell, associate professor of law at Hofstra, any interaction with a police officer is official, not personal. Therefore, they should never be doing anything that they don’t want documented.
“There’s really no reason that a police officer should not want to have a body camera,” Fissell said.
Another reform included in this legislation is annual implicit bias training. Considering recent police misconduct and brutality revealed nationally, particularly against people of color, many people believe that police officers need more training concerning mental health, diversity and use of force.
“Those [systematically racist tendencies] need to be addressed before the [police officers] even get into the field,” said Nicole Mandy, a sophomore dance and criminology major.
Lepurage agrees, saying that “diversity and inclusion training must be a part of it.”
The rest of the plan grants the New York State Attorney General’s office new oversight to investigate officer misconduct and establishes a 24/7 Nassau County complaint hotline. While all of these reforms are steps in a positive direction, many people believe it is not enough.
“It’s a decent start,” Dunckley said, “but way more work needs to be done.”
Fissell agrees, saying that what Nassau County needs is an overhaul of the policing system. “There’s this general sense that we have been engaging in minor reforms for too long,” Fissell said. “And that the time is now to undertake some really major reforms.”
Dunckley believes that systemic problems within police forces across the country need to be addressed.
“When you hear about all these ‘mistakes’ that keep happening, it’s not [centralized] in one area,” Dunckley said. “It’s all over the country.”
As civilians continue to hold police accountable for their actions, Hofstra students are hopeful that Nassau County legislators will continue to enact more police reforms in the future.
