After months of protest and a push for reform, what has changed in Rochester policing?

Throughout much of 2020, thousands of marchers filled the streets of Rochester and cities across the country, protesting and often clashing with police.

The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer lit the fuse.

Growing unease amid communities already frustrated by onerous COVID restrictions fueled the crowds.

It would be months until the public learned of Daniel Prude – about his death following being placed in a restraint by Rochester police , and the city’s efforts to keep secret how he died.

In the midst of that chaos, Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for police reform across the state, ordering every department to come up with a plan or risk the loss of state funding.

But the directive was toothless. His executive order featured no mechanism for enforcing reform plans, nor any system for evaluating how departments implemented their plans.

Four years later — under a new governor who has vowed to move on from the push to defund police and embraced a renewed emphasis on public safety among state and local politicians — is anything different?

“Something had to change, and that was the time, right?” said Stanley Martin, whose efforts helping organize the Rochester protests put her centerstage and propelled her onto the Rochester City Council. “It’s easy to say it fizzled out. And on some level, I can see that.

"But I do see some material changes.”

A new era

Every police department in Monroe County submitted a reform plan under the governor’s June 2020 order. WXXI obtained all departmental policy and procedures for these departments through a Freedom of Information Law request.

Some plans included specific new initiatives meant to improve policing outcomes.

Fairport launched a “restorative justice initiative” alongside Roberts Wesleyan College. That program sought to analyze past arrests, recommend alternatives to incarceration, and focus on reconciliation over incarceration. Meanwhile, Irondequoit codified mental health checks into its general orders, requiring that all officers undergo mental health evaluation after any critical incident.

Other goals were so vague as to be impossible to evaluate.

The Greece Police Department set a goal of "fostering a culture of self-evaluation, empathy, caring for one another, and freedom to feel and talk about emotions.”

When it came to follow through, some departments missed simple self-imposed targets. Brockport had proposed issuing annual reports on crime statistics and police training, to be presented publicly. It has published no such reports.

In Rochester, the reform plan passed City Council on a 5-3 vote. Those voting no included now-Mayor Malik Evans, who cited last-minute revisions by the administration. The city paid a high-powered consultant $250,000 to craft many of the plan’s recommendations, which sought to create fast-moving change to the department.

And some measures did move forward.

The department created a wellness unit meant to address officer mental health. It also banned the use of chokeholds, except in instances where deadly force was authorized.

But many goals have gone unmet.

The department had proposed altering its disciplinary practices to better address issues of discrimination within two months of the plan’s adoption. No change in those policies can be found in the department’s general orders.

And despite a pledge to reduce RPD’s budget over three years to fund police alternative models, Rochester’s police budget is currently the highest proposed on record. There was an initial cut of $3.6 million, or 4.5%, in 2020, largely due to a halving of the recruitment class that year. But spending only has increased since – growing by 16% over the past four years to more than $110 million in the current city budget.

A question of policy

Rochester Police Chief David Smith held the rank of captain in 2020 and was on the frontline of the protests. He’s now the third person to hold the department’s top office since then. He defines his policing model as “customer service” based.

“My take is that we can always do better,” Smith said. “We can do better tomorrow than we did today, that should be a constant theme.”

Since the adoption of the reform plan, the Rochester Police Department has implemented two major policy changes.

One was a change to protest policy, which, among other things, limited the use of chemical and crowd control weaponry. That goal was also outlined in the department’s reform plan. The other was a change to the use of force on juvenile’s policy, which came after officers pepper sprayed a 9-year-old girl in the back of a police car in February 2021.

That policy, among other things, prohibits the use of chemical weaponry against a juvenile unless they are physically assaulting the officer. It also bans the use of tasers except in incidents when deadly force is authorized.

Smith said the department has not substantiated any complaints against officers since it adopted either policy.

Smith acknowledges that better policy only goes as far as the department's culture allows. Quantifying how well the department is faring in avoiding violations is difficult. But two key indicators offer some perspective: the number of disciplinary complaints against officers that are investigated, and the number of lawsuits alleging misconduct filed against the department.

When it comes to allegations of police misconduct, RPD records show:

• In 2011, the department conducted 107 internal investigations of which 86 were initiated by citizen complaints.
  
• In 2023, there were 25 such investigations of which 14 were triggered by citizen complaints.

In June, the Rochester Police Accountability Board issued a report questioning those figures, writing that the drop in misconduct charges "suggests there may be a new approach to police discipline altogether.”
Smith denied that allegation, instead saying the records are the result of changing ethos in the department.

“I think the most obvious thing everyone is going to point to is body-worn cameras,” Smith said. “Like anything else, it's human nature, how do you behave when you’re being watched?”

RPD began using body worn cameras in the latter half of 2016. But it was Prude and prominent cases like the one involving the 9-year-old that drew the greatest public attention to the footage.

As for lawsuits, records show:

• Ten lawsuits were filed against the department in the first half of this year. Most involved property damage, with two cases settled for a combined $2,773. The remaining lawsuits were dismissed.

• RPD fielded 120 lawsuits in the last half of 2020, a period that coincides with the protests. The city has so far paid out $489,265 on those claims. The payouts include $75,000 to settle a defamation suit brought by former Police Chief La’Ron Singletary and $17,500 to resolve an assault and battery claim by Monroe County Legislator Rachel Barnhart, who police shot with a pepper ball, striking her in the head at one of the protests. A large, federal lawsuit brought by a slew of protesters alleging injury is ongoing.

• In all of 2019, the department logged seven lawsuits, including allegations of excessive force, false arrest and assault, and paid out $205,782.

Not included in those numbers is the $12 million the city paid in a wrongful death settlement with Daniel Prude’s children.

A spirit ends

Throughout 2020 and in the years after, former Rochester Police Chief Cedric Alexander was a prominent national voice on police reform. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey appointed Alexader to oversee reform efforts there in 2022. He retired from that position last year.

“It’s kind of like things are at a stalemate,” Alexander said of reform efforts nationwide. “The public pressure and opinions have lessened. We moved into an era where we see less talk around this. In some cases, departments are not making as much effort as they were at the beginning.”

Talk of reimagining policing is a nonstarter in the current political climate, he said. He pointed to the death of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021 in the U.S. Senate as a key loss for that movement. The act would have made it easier to prosecute and to sue officers for misconduct, while also increasing federal oversight to push reform.

“They could not, unfortunately, provide the country with the kind of leadership that it needs,” Alexander said of Congress.

That leaves it to state and local leaders, “and they’re doing the very best that they can. But does it get political? Yes.”

“Depending on who the next mayor is, who the next chief is, who the next chief executive of that county is, it may have a different twist,” Alexander continued. “Then you have 50 states all with their own police academies, and in some ways, they do things similar, and some ways they teach and train differently.”

New York’s change in governors represents a clear example of that shift in ideology between administrations.

When Cuomo signed the order directing police to craft reform plans in June 2020, he said “police reform is long overdue” and that it went beyond Floyd. The governor added, “There is no trust between the community and the police. If there's no trust the relationship does not work."

Gov. Kathy Hochul, meanwhile, has insisted that the moment for police reform is over , and avowed her stance on increasing funding for law enforcement. When asked about the reform plans during a recent visit to Rochester, Hochul said many of the plans weren’t that robust and reaffirmed her position.

“I will be very clear: we will never defund police in our state,” Hochul said. “Not now. Not ever, because it's foundational .... I am fighting every single day, to bring it back to where it always should have been: Support for law enforcement.”

The 2020 protests put a strong emphasis on not just reforming police but finding avenues to replace them for non-criminal issues. Particularly, following the death of Prude, Rochester protesters had sought a rethinking of mental health crisis response.

That tree bore some fruit with the creation of the Person in Crisis (PIC) team in late 2020. That team of crisis social workers was tasked with complementing, and in some cases, replacing Rochester police on calls for mental health and substance abuse issues.

The PIC Team responded to an estimated 6,000 calls last fiscal year, 1,650 of which were without police, according to city budget documents. The organization is still small, comprised of 15 social workers, a figure that has remained largely stagnant since its creation. Its budget is $2.7 million, about 2% of the police budget.

The Rev. Myra Brown was a critical voice during the protest era, serving as key face in the “Elder Shield” program, meant to put community leaders between protesters and police.

She sees the energy of that era now largely falling flat.

“I’m not really aware of much change, because we’ve continued, since 2020, to have issues of police brutality and issues around abuses of power,” Brown said.

Brown said during that time, she saw an opportunity to make lasting change in how Rochester handles its public safety. That moment is now largely over.

“It is disappointing,” Brown said. “It’s always disappointing to me, it just means that people on the local level need to work that much harder to keep their eye on the store. You just never know what’s going to happen.”

Alexander echoed that sentiment. He fears only another tragedy will spur the conversation on policing again.

“The public outcry, the public attention, both from police and the public, that noise has certainly lessened,” he said. “We should be talking more to each other, and not waiting on some unfortunate event to occur to jumpstart the work that needs to be done.”

Martin said she thought City Council would allow her to put her protest ethos into practice. And there have been small victories, she said, like the consideration of stronger tenant protections or the adoption of the police alternative program this year. But it’s not the progress she had anticipated.

In many ways, she said, progress seems to be one step forward, two back.

During the protests, the area of the downtown park since named Daniel Prude Square was the gathering spot before the marches. Martin and other organizers gave speeches there, about the change they hoped would come.

The nearby street was painted with “Black Lives Matter” — in big bold letters that have begun to wear away. In the park square, the city placed a plaque that memorializes Prude and serves as a reminder of the protests.

Seeing it, Martin sighed: “I struggle with that.”