Ithaca Police Chief Finalists Talk about Neighborhood Policing, Implicit Bias at Meet-and-Greet Occasion
Ithaca’s two police chief finalists, John Poleway and Thomas Kelly, attended a neighborhood meet-and-greet on Nov. 2 to share their visions for main the Ithaca Police Division, reply questions and reply to considerations together with crime impacting town and racial bias within the police drive.
The occasion was additionally an evaluative stage of the police chief search course of, and a QR code posted prominently on the occasion allowed attendees to share their experiences interacting with the finalists.
The announcement of the 2 finalists comes after a number of turbulent years for the Ithaca Police Division. The town has not had a everlasting police chief since former Police Chief Dennis Nayor retired in Could 2021. In an interview with the Ithaca Voice, Nayor mentioned that exhaustion from coping with an unusually excessive quantity of crises from 2019 to 2021 was a consider his determination to retire.
The primary seek for a brand new police chief, initiated by Nayor’s retirement, culminated in December 2022 with the rescinded nomination of John Joly, the performing police chief on the time, when he was on the brink of being accepted for the everlasting place. The rescission was as a result of widespread Widespread Council objection over Joly’s remarks in regards to the Black neighborhood at an October 2022 neighborhood discussion board and allegations that Joly contributed to a poisonous office atmosphere as a police lieutenant for IPD.
Joly remained in his function as performing police chief till April 2023, when he stepped down from the function over what he claimed to be a “hostile work atmosphere” and alleged racial discrimination on the premise of being white. Joly is at present pursuing authorized motion towards the Metropolis of Ithaca over these allegations.
Appearing Police Chief Ted Schwartz, who served IPD beforehand as a lieutenant, has led the division since Could.
The IPD’s lack of a everlasting chief over the previous two years has coincided with officer staffing shortages. In line with Thomas Condzella, president of the Ithaca Police Benevolent Affiliation, the IPD consisted of solely 38 officers in August, down from over 80 within the early 2000s and 71 in 2011.
On the meet-and-greet, each finalists aimed to persuade Ithacans that their backgrounds and expertise in policing had been adequate to deal with the issues they might inherit as Ithaca’s new police chief.
John Poleway
Poleway spent a lot of his regulation enforcement profession in Larchmont, New York, the place he held a number of ranks, together with police officer, detective, sergeant, detective lieutenant and chief of police, a place he served from 2008 till his retirement in 2021. Poleway emphasised all through the occasion that policing is a career in fixed flux.
“I all the time felt it was essential to proceed to interact and educate myself, particularly in policing, which is a really tough career as a result of it’s continuously altering — definitely legislatively and societally, expectations change,” Poleway mentioned.
The IPD is at present experiencing vital departmental adjustments. On April 5, the Ithaca Widespread Council unanimously handed the Reimagining Public Security report, resolving to help progressive adjustments to the IPD, improve coordination between IPD and out of doors teams — such because the Better Ithaca Actions Heart, No Más Lágrimas and St. John’s Neighborhood Providers — set up a deputy metropolis supervisor place, enhance accountability inside the drive and create reporting constructions. Though this plan is considerably totally different from former Mayor Svante Myrick’s ’09 unique 2021 proposal to interchange IPD with a civilian-led company, which was poorly obtained by the IPBA, it can change many processes inside the division.
Poleway mentioned that a vital step in making certain that the division is altering to suit the wants of Ithacans is partaking instantly with neighborhood members.
“Neighborhood policing is absolutely what correct public security or regulation enforcement is about. It’s about attending to know the neighborhood after which responding to their points [by] working in collaboration with them,” Poleway mentioned.
Thomas Kelly
Kelly has a background in each policing {and professional} improvement. He is without doubt one of the lead instructors for the New York State Division of Felony Justice Providers in procedural justice and implicit bias. In his 22 years serving the police division in Schenectady, New York, Kelly has investigated and responded to homicides and main crimes that affected town whereas additionally investigating using drive inside the division. On the meet-and-greet, Kelly highlighted the significance of mitigating the influence of implicit bias.
“One of many issues I discovered about six years in the past after I began this course of [of working in professional development] is that everyone has implicit bias. Proper or incorrect, it’s implicit. It’s not specific. It’s not someone vocally saying ‘I don’t like this individual’ or ‘I don’t like that individual,’” Kelly mentioned. “It’s implicit, so it’s an involuntary response based mostly in your schooling, your experiences, your upbringing, the media [and] social media.”
Kelly continued that officers can cut back the hurt attributable to implicit bias by slowing down and making extra fact-based selections along with partaking with implicit bias coaching. At a bigger scale, he has expertise working with the John F. Finn Institute for Public Security to survey arrestees on their interactions with regulation enforcement and is in favor of evaluating the racial composition of arrests and visitors stops to measure the influence of implicit bias on the over-policing of individuals of colour.
Nonetheless, to Kelly, working to resolve these present-day points that create mistrust between police and marginalized communities doesn’t go far sufficient. Police departments, he mentioned, should acknowledge their historic contributions to methods of oppression.
“A part of the dialog we’ve with procedural justice — there’s a historical past element. We speak in regards to the fugitive slave patrols. We discuss Emmett Until. … the girl that began that… simply died lately. That was a really actual case that was nonetheless lively, they usually wouldn’t prosecute her,” Kelly mentioned, referring the lynching of Until, a 14-year-old Black boy in Mississippi, which was sparked by an accusation by Carolyn Bryant that Until whistled at her — and the choice to not indict Bryant over fees of kidnapping and manslaughter.
“We have now these conversations as a result of possibly I wasn’t there, and possibly the police officer subsequent to me wasn’t there, however it’s our drawback,” Kelly continued. “We put on the identical uniform.”
As Ithaca nears the top of its second search course of, the ultimate candidates vie for the approval of a neighborhood that struggles to reconcile with an unlimited vary of opinions about how policing ought to tackle metropolis issues. On the meet-and-greet, neighborhood members shared contrasting lived experiences with policing and crime with the finalists. Regardless of variations in opinion, Ithacans typically expressed optimism in regards to the potential the 2 candidates had for bettering policing within the metropolis.
“I got here [to the meet-and-greet] as a result of it’s essential to decide on someone that understands and is prepared to construct a relationship with this neighborhood for a greater and safer neighborhood and safer officers as properly,” mentioned Anesti Isufaj, one of many co-facilitators of the Alliance of Households for Justice males’s help group, in a post-event interview with The Solar. “For each candidates, their standpoint appears to be in step with what town wants in the mean time, particularly with the disaster and the whole lot happening on the streets. They’re robust, they usually’re standing by their opinions, which is essential.”
Kate Sanders ’27 is a Solar contributor and could be reached at [email protected].
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