Day of Dialogue shines light on police reform in New York

Photo courtesy of the Center for Civic Engagement. // The Center for Civic Engagement hosted a day-long Day of Dialogue to engage the Hofstra community.

Hofstra’s Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) hosted a Day of Dialogue event on Wednesday, Sept. 27. The annual one-day event consists of panels to help the Hofstra community learn about local and global issues, share perspectives and listen to the thoughts of others in the community. One event titled, “Police Reform on Long Island: The History and Future of Policing on Long Island,” discussed racial bias and disproportionate policing of communities of color on Long Island. 

The event, moderated by Philip Dalton, director of CCE and professor of rhetoric and public advocacy, consisted of the discussions of students, faculty and panelists. The panelists were Charlton McIlwain, vice provost for faculty development and engagement and professor of media, culture and communication at NYU and Helen Boxwell, a member of the United for Justice in Policing Long Island, a coalition that advocates for social justice.

Dalton opened the panel by introducing the executive order that former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued in August 2020. The order mandated policing jurisdictions around the state to develop plans that would reform and reinvent policing. 

“The mandate was saying that every single department had to relook at the things that were going on,” Boxwell said. “They had to create community engagement and ... create a new way of transforming policing and submit a proposal by April [2020].”

Geraldine Hart, director of public safety at Hofstra University and former Suffolk County Police Department (SCPD) commissioner, attended the panel and thinks this plan focuses on transforming the way police respond to individuals with a mental disorder, developing a model to investigate complaints against police officers and changing the way traffic stops are conducted.

“I represented the SCPD on a 38 member task force drawn from the community to develop a police reform plan pursuant to the Governor’s executive order,” Hart said. “In the end, we developed a comprehensive plan that addressed a myriad of community concerns.” 

However, Boxwell believes that there is still more to be done when it comes to police reform on Long Island. 

“I got into police reform in the ‘90s when my sons were teens and stopped by the police at gunpoint while walking to the store,” she said. “All the concerns that we have, we need to get involved to try to help improve things and it’s not going to improve if we don’t do nothing.”

Boxwell spoke about how members of the Latino community were afraid to speak to police officers when they were being harassed and how Black communities can be targeted by police. 

“You look at the numbers of people in the jail,” she said. “Eighty percent are Black and brown, but that is not Suffolk County’s demographic.”

Some Hofstra students agree with Boxwell that there are no repercussions for officers who do not follow the reform policies laid out in the plan. 

“Officers should be held accountable for the actions they take ... and they should be disciplined,” said Sarah Holmes, a junior criminology and public policy and public service major. “If there’s no one to hold them accountable or discipline them in any way, then how can we trust that it’s a just system because it’s not right now.” 

Rosella Carlini, a freshman political science major, thinks there needs to be more community input and focus on integrating the police so they can better serve the community.

McIlwain wrote a book titled, “Black Software,” which focuses on technology used for policing. This technology was created during the ‘60s when communities of color began protesting and fighting for civil rights. 

“Crime was represented by folks that were fighting for civil rights, out in the streets and framed as civil disorders, lawlessness, criminal behavior,” he said. “All of this data that they had taken and build predictive models based on, told them where they should put the most police and where they should locate their hub for this operation.” 

While these technologies may be systematically biased, McIlwein believes the technology can be redeveloped and used positively.

“Let’s find a way to see if we can get these new computing technology powers to help us fix the problem of crime,” he said. “A problem that was very explicitly framed as a problem of race, a problem of urban culture, a problem of a divide between Black and white.”

Students and faculty felt the panel was informative and addressed multiple issues regarding police reform on Long Island. They appreciated the opportunity to discuss these topics during the Day of Dialogue.