PRR Collaborative Police Draft Report (translatable Document)

*This message can be translated into over 100 languages by clicking the "Select Language" option on the top of this page. PDF of this document is linked here**

Click here to review the Ossining PRRC Resumen de recomendaciones document in Spanish.

Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative

VILLAGE OF OSSINING, NEW YORK

DRAFT REPORT

January 21, 2021

Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Summary

2. The Community Listening Sessions

3. Summary of the Community Survey

4. Police Reform and Reinvention Initiatives

• Governance, Oversight and Transparency
• Policies and Procedures
• Internal Operations and Practices
• Hiring and Training

1. Introduction and Summary

The Matrix Consulting Group was retained by the Village of Ossining to facilitate a Police Reform and Collaborative involving the community and its police department. Arising from New York Executive Order 203 and based on extensive stakeholder input, this document provides a long range plan for policing in Ossining. This draft report provides a summary of this four month effort.

1. Background and Scope of the Study

In the Spring of last year, in the wake of incidents resulting in the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a great protest movement arose around the country questioning not only the handling of these incidents but the role of policing in society generally should be. Last June, New York State issued an Executive Order (203) entitled “New York State Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative”. Each local government with a police agency was required to perform a comprehensive review of practices and policies to promote fair and transparent community-oriented policing strategies designed to eliminate racial disparity. These efforts were designed to be inclusive and collaborative, involving not only police departments but community stakeholders. These publicly reviewed and approved plans are to be delivered to the State by April 1, 2021. This report represents the Village of Ossining’s Plan for Police Reform and Reinvention.

2. Developing Ossining’s Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative

During the summer of last year, Ossining’s Mayor and the Board of Trustees began its police reform evaluation effort to meet the requirements of Executive Order 203. Two steps were taken to initiate this process:

• The Mayor and Board created a working committee to coordinate the overall process of developing the Village’s police reform plan. The representation of the committee was drawn from the community but included involved citizens, faith-based members as well as representatives from the Ossining Police Department (OPD). A list of representatives of the working committee is at the conclusion of this Introduction and Summary section.
• The Village reached out to consulting firms to assist with the facilitation of a public outreach process and the development of their police reform plan. The Matrix Consulting Group was selected in October and the process was initiated in late October.

The process employed by the consultants to develop the police reform plan was inclusive, and consisted of the following steps:

• Initial meetings with Village and Town elected and appointed officials to understand their perspectives on current and past policing issues and priorities for the future.
• The Chair and board members from the Village’s Civilian Police Complaint Review Board (CPCRB) to understand those processes and, given the new appointments to the CPCRB, opportunities to improve the review of complaints.
• Meetings were held individually with a variety of community stakeholders representing:
  • Citizens who have been involved in public services generally and policing specifically.
  • Representatives from various community groups.
  • Representatives from faith-based organizations.
  • The Ossining Police Chief, his command staff, and randomly-selected line and supervisory personnel.

Most of these interviews were conducted in November of last year.

To maximize public input into key issues relevant to this effort, the Village and the consultants conducted more general outreach to the community. These efforts took the following forms:

• Community listening sessions were conducted over a two-month period. Because of the Covid19 pandemic, these community listening sessions were conducted virtually, via Zoom. The following listening sessions were held:
  • On Thursday evening, December 10th, a Spanish language session was held.
  • On a Saturday morning, December 12th, a general community meeting in English was held.
  • On Thursday evening, December 17th, a meeting sponsored by the Ossining chapter of the NAACP was held.
  • On Thursday evening, January 7th, a meeting sponsored by the LGBTQ Alliance and the LOFT Community Center was held.
  • Finally, on Tuesday, January 19th, a meeting was held with students from Ossining High School.
• Over 200 people participated in one or more of these sessions. A brief summary of the input received from these sessions is provided later in this Introduction and Summary with a more complete summary provided later in this report.
• A community survey was created for this project and was open online for residents to respond to. The focus of the survey was on perceptions of safety and interactions with police officers in Ossining. There were English and Spanish language versions of the survey. There were over 1,000 responses to this survey. A brief summary of the input received is provided later in this Introduction and Summary section.

Throughout this process, the consulting team met with the working committee to plan the community listening sessions and the roll out of the community survey. Project planning meetings were held with the consultants on November 20th and December 2nd,  Beginning in December, four subcommittees of the working committee were established to provide focused discussion on grouped police reform topics. The subcommittees included:

• Governance and Oversight
• Internal Operations and Practices
• Policies and Procedures
• Hiring and Training

Subcommittee meetings were held in December and January to develop suggested recommendations on police reform to bring to the working committee as a whole and eventually to the Board and the public for adoption and submission to the State. Working committee discussions on the results of the subcommittees were held on January 6th and January 13th. This Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative report is the result of this process.

In summary, the Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative had extensive focus from within the community and this input was valuable in the development of the multi-year plan contained in this report.

3. Key Themes Arising from the Community Listening Sessions

While a substantial majority of the participants were critical of the OPD’s interaction and engagement with members of the Ossining community, many attendees also expressed having had positive interactions, especially with the Chief, and were very appreciative of these efforts. Additionally, participants were largely complimentary of the community-policing events in place in Ossining, such as attendance at block parties, coffee with a cop, the motorcycle unit’s parade, drive-by birthdays, and movies in the park.

4. Key Themes Arising from the Community Survey

The survey was publicized through the Village’s social media pages, website, and the Mayor’s newsletter, as well as various posts by community groups and email newsletters.

In total, 839 respondents took the survey. Given Ossining’s population of 25,086, this can be considered an exceptionally high response rate.

Overall, responses were largely positive, comprising over 75% of the responses in every question on issues of accountability and trust in law enforcement. The questions where the most doubt was expressed involved complaints, particularly whether they would result in retaliation and whether they would be appropriately investigated. There was significant divergence, however, in the responses by race. These disparities in attitudes toward accountability and trust and wide enough such it is critical that they be highlighted.

Clear majorities agree with all statements, indicating high levels of community support for the department’s interaction and engagement efforts. However, positive responses among black residents was lower than that for white and Latino respondents.

Only 2% of respondents do not feel safe during the day, compared to 16% at night. This was fairly consistent among all respondents.

5. Key Themes Arising from Ossining Police Department Personnel

The project team conducted a series of police department interviews of randomly selected personnel. The interviews covered the following topic areas: Understanding of Executive Order 203, What does the department do well, what areas for improvement, policies and procedures, community engagement /relations and training.  The following are general themes from the police department interviews.

Most respondents felt the department does a particularly good job of community outreach; social media was specifically mentioned. Having body worn cameras was mentioned as a positive and officers feel that leadership is good, open, and supportive of new ideas.

OPD officers are paid less than some nearby departments which can make it harder to attract good candidates. The department would benefit from additional training.

OPD line staff often volunteer at community events and all stated they had attended community events.  Community outreach is strongly encouraged from leadership. Officers felt they had an incredibly good relationship with the community and stated they do a lot of business and community check ins.

Officers overall thought their training was superior to other agencies, but most felt they could benefit from additional training. Officers were generally supportive of additional training on de-escalation and procedural justice. All officers had attended the implicit bias training.

6. Summary of Recommendations

The working committee and its subcommittees worked diligently to create suggested improvements to the Ossining Police Department which are implementable in a reasonable period.

The following table provide a list of the suggested recommendation areas to be found in this report. The report needs to be consulted for linked recommendations in each area plus discussion on each issue and a prioritized implementation plan.

List of Working Group Members

This study took many hours of work on the part of community members who were selected and served on the Working Committee and its various Subcommittees. Over a period of more than four (4) months  of evening meetings,  plus between meeting research , the ideas and commitments here came together. The members of the Working Committee  should be recognized for this effort.

• Kendall Buchanan
• Jennifer Cabrera
• Juan Encarnacion
• Ben Ervin
• Maria Teresa Garcia
• Victoria Gearity
• Althema Goodson
• Gabrielle Hamilton
• Shaun Jones
• Rika Levin
• Omar Lopez
• MaryPat Long
• Frank Luis
• Rodolfo Moran
• Mary Phifer
• Christina Picciano
• Jackie Shaw
• Kevin Sylvester
• Joan Whitaker

It is also important to recognize the support that this process had from the Ossining community  in many ways – over 200 people participated in one or more community listening  sessions, almost 1,000 provided input to the process through a community survey, and finally, many stakeholders were interviewed for input and ideas. This community support is recognized here.

2. The Community Listening Sessions

As an essential element of the Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative process, members of the Ossining community were invited to voluntarily participate in a series of five (5) Public Engagement Sessions. The purpose of the public sessions was twofold: 1) to solicit meaningful feedback from Ossining residents on a wide range of topics related to police-community relationships and, 2) to solicit input on whether there were community perceptions of needed operational reforms and discuss opportunities for change. The public sessions were two to three plus hour virtual conversations facilitated by the consultant team over Zoom.

Three of the public engagement sessions were open to the public and were held on the following dates:

• Thursday, December 10, 2020, at 7:00 PM: This session was geared toward the Spanish-speaking population and was conducted in Spanish.
• Saturday, December 12, 2020, at 11:00 AM: This session was geared toward the general public.
• Thursday, December 17, 2020, at 6:00 PM: This session was geared toward the African-American/Black community. (Co-Hosted by the Ossining NAACP)

Two additional sessions were held on a sponsored basis – one was sponsored by Ossining’s LGBTQ Alliance and LOFT on Thursday evening, January 7th; a second on Tuesday, January 19th, with students from Ossining High School. In order for community members to share in a safe inclusive environment, participation in these meetings was by invitation, (the OHS meeting included student leaders and members of the student equity committee). During the course of these two meetings, a wide range of topics related to police services and engagement were discussed with the attendees.

The public listening session discussions were focused on the following three major topics areas:  

• Legitimacy and Trust
• Engagement and Communication
• Community Priorities

During the community sessions, emphasis was placed upon actively listening to the voices, experiences and thoughts of the Ossining community. All sessions were well attended, with community members actively engaged in the dialogue. For each topic area, questions were offered to consider. Community participants were encouraged to address any of the questions within that subject area during that portion of the Community Session. The questions were primarily intended as prompts for the topic areas. Community participants were also encouraged to share about other experiences related to the specific topic areas that may not have been included within the questions that were offered by the Consultant.  

Through the community engagement process, the consultants reached over 220 Ossining community members. Collectively, the experiences, perceptions, beliefs, attitudes and opinions of those community members became a major source of “data” for assessing the public’s satisfaction with and confidence in the Ossining Police Department (OPD). In the pages that follow, the feedback received through this collaborative community engagement process is summarized.

Summary of Key Themes

While a substantial majority of the participants were critical of the OPD’s interaction and engagement with members of the Ossining community, many attendees also expressed having had positive interactions, especially with the Chief, and were very appreciative of these efforts. Additionally, participants were largely complimentary of the community-policing events in place in Ossining, such as attendance at block parties, coffee with a cop, the motorcycle unit’s parade, drive-by birthdays, and movies in the park.

Topic 1
Legitimacy and Trust

Legitimacy and Trust was defined as “the extent to which members of the public view law enforcement as legitimate, which in part can be measured in terms of the civilian community’s willingness to obey and cooperate with the police. Legitimacy is linked to the degree of community support for, and cooperation with – law enforcement’s efforts to address crime.”

Key questions that were posed for Legitimacy and Trust were:

1. What is your expectation in regard to an officer’s personal demeanor engaging with you, when you are calling the department for assistance or in making a complaint?
2. What are your thoughts in regard to transparency and the police department?
3. If you filed a complaint, what was your experience in how it was handled and investigated?

Key Themes

1. Overall Distrust in Law Enforcement.

For many in the African-American community there is distrust due to generations of injustices predominantly experienced by African-American men. Those experiences continue to particularly traumatize this community. Throughout the years, there have been reoccurring instances of perceived unnecessary contact, misconduct and misuse of power, with the most typical forms of misconduct (as reported by attendees), being verbal abuse (e.g., being generally discourteous and rude, making disrespectful comments); stopping people without sufficient cause, “over-policing” / policing more frequently the less affluent, and discriminating by race. In addition, many in the community are still healing from the death of Chris Anthony Malone, fatally shot by police in Ossining in 1998.  This, together with a perceived lack of transparency and inclusion to help advance progress in reforming the organization, has resulted in the diminishing trust of Ossining police officers with many in the African-American community.

Within the Immigrant (Latino) community, many members perceive an “increased involvement” of the OPD in immigration enforcement. The lack of transparency / clarity about the relationship between Ossining police officers and ICE has significantly heightened the fears and distrust many Latinos have of the police.

Many young participants have a negative perception of the police.  First-hand and reported  experiences have negatively impacted and influence young peoples’ views and opinions of police officers. Many young people are said they were ‘scared’ of police officers. At the High School, many students were unclear about the roles and responsibilities of the School Resource Officer (SRO) with many feeling threatened, especially students of color and students with special needs (e.g., disabilities, LGBTQ). In addition, there were some concerns expressed about the type of training received by an officer to become a SRO. 

2. Overall reluctance to contact police for a public safety or community problem.

Members of the Latino community are less likely to contact police officers due to fearing that officers will use this interaction as an opportunity to inquire into their immigration status. There are situations where it is not clear for people if they should call police for help. They feel that officers should be trained to instill more confidence in the members of the Latin community.

The fear or lack of willingness to contact police is not confined to immigrants. Community members from other ethnic groups of color, including many within the African-American community, expressed a similar lack of willingness to contact the police based on negative experiences. On the one hand, there is a shared sentiment that police will not follow-up on their issue, and there is a perception that some police are dismissive and not engaging.

3. Reluctance to Report Police Misconduct and File Complaints.

Many Ossining residents reported finding it very difficult to file complaints or comment on a negative police-citizen interaction. Currently, complaints cannot be submitted on-line. The complaint form is not available in languages other than English. Typically, a Spanish-fluent staff member is not at the front desk either.

While the Village has a Civilian Complaint Review Board in place, it has not been promoted. Many people do not know that this Board exists, and many do not know how to use this resource. 

Many people believe that there is very little follow-up by OPD with these investigations, and that not enough complaints make it to the Board. As a result, the perception is that police officers are not being held accountable for their actions. This lack of accountability is also a contributor to the feeling of mistrust.

Topic 2
Engagement and Communication

The topic of Engagement and Communication focused on how the Ossining civilian community perceived the Ossining Police Department’s interactions with the public and transmission of information to the community. 

Key questions that were posed for Engagement and Communication were:

1. What is your expectation in regard to an officer’s personal demeanor engaging with you, when you are calling the department for assistance or in making a complaint?
2. What are your thoughts in regard to transparency and the police department?
3. If you filed a complaint, what was your experience in how it was handled and investigated?

Key Themes

1. Disconnectedness from the OPD.

Although many OPD officers live in the Village, many Ossining residents feel that officers do not know residents well enough, nor are aware of the diversity of the population they serve. Other residents expressed that there is a lack of familiarity by police officers with the history, culture, and traditions of their communities, as well as the unique needs of people suffering from mental health issues, LGBTQ+, teenagers, etc.

2. Lack of Consistency.

There is a perceived lack of consistency of officers from many residents. While the Chief is viewed as supportive, empathetic and positive, many other officers are not viewed as positively. There is also perception of inconsistencies in police responsiveness and engagement, depending on who is the officer responding to a call for service.

3. The Need for More Effective Police Engagement to Keep the Community Informed.

There is a need for more creative and culturally-sensitive ways for officers to be engaged with community members of ethnic communities of color. Although a number of community-policing events are hosted by the OPD annually (e.g., block parties, coffee with a cop, etc.), the majority of meeting attendees expressed to only have heard about these events, yet not having  participated due to culturally or socially not relating to these particular events. Outside of these events, there is little engagement.

The community would like to see more open forums, talk-back community sessions, sit-downs and other types of face-to-face forums that can help promote open dialogue that is not one-sided, in a safe space. This would allow police officers to get to know community members better. In turn, this could help correct the current misperceptions of who they are and what they do.

4. Dissatisfaction with the Quality of Police Service Provided to Populations with Special Needs.

There are perceived issues with the handling of first responder roles appropriately due to not understanding the community. Similarly, there are concerns regarding police responses to incidents involving people suffering a crisis episode (e.g., after an ICE arrest) or exhibiting mental health issues. Many community members feel that police are not well trained to de-escalate behaviors and to provide the type of emphatic, compassionate, emotional and psychological support needed in these types of situations. As a result, some of these encounters are very traumatizing for the residents.

5. Lack of Police Outreach.

Many community members feel that although the use of technology and social media have helped police to reach out to more people and places than in the past, many residents also feel that OPD should make greater efforts to reach out to hard-to-reach communities.  Only one officer is reported to be actively involved with the Hispanic community, regularly visiting local churches and talking to Spanish-speaking groups about police policing practices.

In addition, police need to improve their communication skills to get their message across in a more effective and sensitive manner. While active on Facebook, the current OPD page is not updated and is not working well as an effective outreach tool. Some residents feel that the OPD Facebook page should address a range of social issues for which a police response would be helpful; it should tag different community groups; and some of its content should be available in Spanish.

Topic 3
Community Priorities 

The topic of Community Priorities focused on what the Ossining civilian community perceived the Ossining Police Department’s public safety Community Priorities to be, and if those Community Priorities align with their own priorities as civilian Community Members.  

1. Key questions that were posed for Community Priorities were:
2. What public safety priorities does the community want the department to focus on?
3. Are the issues that the Ossining Police Department focuses on aligned with your priorities as a resident of Ossining?

Key Themes

1.Defining Community Priorities

Many community members do not feel that OPD has a good understanding of the values and priorities of Ossining residents. Due to the perception of a lack of transparency and open communication, many community members are not aware of what the priorities of OPD might be. Currently, there are no official groups or meetings where members of the public can attend to listen and add into the discussions.

2. Address Systemic Issues within Police Training and Recruitment.

Training: Many community members feel that police officers need additional training. Specifically, many residents would like for police officers to have additional training on crisis intervention, use of force, implicit-bias, cultural diversity and human relations.

Recruitment: Many community members feel that the make-up of the OPD is not reflective of the diversity amongst residents: leadership is generally white and male and there is inadequate Spanish speaking representation within the police.  Their priority would be for the department to hire more people of color, bi-lingual and female and LGTBQ officers.

3. Counseling for Police Officers.

A majority of community members expressed the importance for OPD officers to seek and receive psychological assistance. There is a strong acknowledgment that officers’ jobs are stressful and that those officers should be able to access psychological services, undergo psychological tests and know that they have someone they can talk to. There is a feeling with some community members that officers should attend therapy, so that citizens can trust that they are in good hands.

3. Results of the Community Survey

1. Introduction

The project team developed a survey to gather input on policing issues in Ossining, as part of a greater effort that includes open and focused meetings, interviews with key stakeholders, and the Working Committee.

Anonymous online surveys present the opportunity for input to be expanded greatly, enabling anyone with a smartphone or computer to participate in the study. Additionally, in public meetings, some individuals may not feel comfortable expressing opinions about OPD, particularly if they feel those opinions are not shared by their peers at the meeting. An anonymous online survey can significantly mitigate or bypass these issues.

The survey was developed by the project team and revised with input from the Working Committee, which includes the Chief and an officer from OPD.

The survey is structured as follows:

• Demographic questions
• Agree/disagree (Likert scale) statements
• Multiple choice format
• Open-ended responses

The survey was publicized through the Village’s social media pages (particularly) Instagram, website, and the Mayor’s newsletter, as well as various posts by community groups and email newsletters.

In total, 839 respondents took the survey. Although not all finished the survey, nearly every question has around 700 answers, including those that selected “No Opinion” in the multiple choice sections. Nonetheless, given Ossining’s population of 25,086 (2019, Village of Ossining only), this can be considered an exceptionally high response rate.

2. Agree/Disagree Questions

(1) Introduction

The initial series of questions of questions following the demographics section uses a Likert scale, which presents respondents with a statements and asked them to rate whether they agree or disagree with each.

Respondents were given a series of statements and asked whether they strongly agree (SA), agree (A), disagree (D), strongly disagree (SD). The following subsections group these questions together thematically, examining issues of accountability and trust, general performance, and community engagement.

Respondents were also able to decline to answer a question by selecting ‘No Opinion’. In keeping with research on best practices for these types of surveys, these selections are not shown in the percentages. The total number of responses for each question is, however, shown.

(2) Accountability and Trust

Several questions dealt with issues of trust in the police department to hold itself accountability, investigate complaints, safety when requesting service, and other topics. The responses are shown in the following table, showing the percentage of respondents that answered the question selecting strongly agree (SA), agree (A), disagree (D), or strongly disagree (SD):

Overall, responses were largely positive, with Strongly Agree and Agree comprising over 75% of the responses in every question. The questions where the most doubt was expressed involved complaints, particularly whether they would result in retaliation and whether they would be appropriately investigated.

There was significant divergence, however, in the responses by race. These disparities in attitudes toward accountability and trust and wide enough such it is critical that they be highlighted.

For the purposes of clarity, Strongly Agree responses have been combined with Agree, and likewise with Strongly Disagree and Disagree to examine responses by race/ethnicity:

Virtually every group feels safe calling 911, and largely agrees that policing is headed in the right direction in Ossining – a critical proxy measure of the public’s confidence in leadership and governance.

In several other areas, however, there are wide disparities between white respondents and other groups – particularly Black respondents.

• 80% of white respondents agree that if an OPD officer did something wrong, they would be held accountable (a 60-point gap), but only 51% of Black respondents agree – a gap of only 2 points. For such a fundamental measure of trust that OPD will hold itself accountable, this is a striking finding.
• Likewise, more than one-third (37%) of Black respondents do not agree that filing a complaint against OPD wouldn’t result in retaliation against them. This I compared with just 10% of white respondents and as many as 28% of Latino respondents.
• Similar degrees of sentiment are expressed toward trust in OPD officers to make fair decisions, as well as whether complaints would be appropriately investigated.

(3) Community Engagement

The responses are shown in the following table, showing the percentage of respondents that answered the question selecting strongly agree (SA), agree (A), disagree (D), or strongly disagree (SD):

Clear majorities agree with all statements, indicating high levels of community support for the department’s interaction and engagement efforts.

Although each category has 70+%, and generally 85+% support, of note is the divergence of support for the last two questions, which deal with questions of whether concern and respect are given to all members of the community.

Interestingly, this divergence in the latter two questions is not expressed among the Black community, as in the questions under the trust and accountability category, but rather among white respondents (to a degree), and significantly among Latino respondents:

Overall, responses are largely consistent across the category, with about a 20-point gap among Black respondents. 4% of white respondents disagree that OPD is engaged with the community, while as many as 37% – though still far less than half – of Black respondents feel the same.

(4) Overall Safety and Satisfaction

Three questions were asked regarding overall favorability of OPD’s performance, as well as the respondent’s own perception of their safety, both at night and during the day.

Responses were highly favorable across all three statements, as shown in the following table:

Only 2% of respondents do not feel safe during the day, compared to 16% at night. Differences across racial groups were, with some exception, favorable as well:

Two findings emerge from this outside of the otherwise very positive responses to this category:

• Far fewer Black respondents are satisfied with OPD’s performance.
• Latino respondents feel significantly less safe at night compared to their peers.

3. Multiple Choice Questions

Respondents were presented with several multiple choice questions on issues of responsiveness and progress in improving community safety:

The vast majority of respondents (88%) believe that crime is either staying the same or getting better, with very few people thinking that it is getting much worse (1%).

OPD’s responsiveness was also rated extremely highly:

94% of respondents say that OPD is either very or somewhat attentive in addressing public safety issues that the community brings up – an extremely high appraisal of the department’s performance.

The survey also asked about filing complaints, with an additional option (not shown) for respondents that do not know how to file a complaint:

Most who know how to file a complaint say that it is easy, with more than two-thirds of respondents saying that it is very easy to do so.

4. Service Level Satisfaction

Respondents who have had contact with OPD were asked to rate their satisfaction with the service they received. This was done across three Yes/No questions that also had an option for “Not applicable”, although that option is omitted from the statistics in this subsection.

Among respondents reporting at least one contact with OPD in which they requested service for either an emergency or non-emergency event:

The responses demonstrate high levels of service, with the vast majority of experiences involving the officer acting respectfully, addressing the problem, and explaining their actions or procedures – a core element of procedural justice.

5. Open-Ended Responses

Three questions were asked at the end of the survey that provided respondents with the opportunity to write open-ended responses into text boxes, allowing for their viewpoints to be more freely expressed. The exact text of the prompts given to respondents were as follows:

• (Optional) What are some of the foremost positive qualities or strengths of the Ossining Police Department?
• (Optional) What are some of the most significant opportunities for improvement in the Ossining Police Department?
• (Optional) Please provide any additional information on any of the topics covered in the survey.

The project team conducted a sentiment analysis of the written responses, using a set of criteria to subjectively categorize each set of responses – i.e., the totality of sentiments expressed across all three prompts.

• Very Positive: Highly favorable, enthusiastic support for OPD.
• Fairly Positive: In general, positive attitudes toward the police department and how it operates.
• Neither/Neutral: Equally balanced positive and negative attitudes, or responses that are neither favorable nor critical.
• Fairly Critical: Has specific criticisms of OPD that, on balance, outweigh any positive sentiments expressed by the respondent.
• Very Critical: Strong disapproval of OPD and how it operates.

If a respondent expressed wanting to see more staff added to the department or more staff deployed to specific enforcement issues, this feedback was not characterized as being critical, This is because these types of sentiments are still supportive of police in that the respondent wants to see more of it.

The breakdown of responses across each set of open-ended response questions are shown in the following table, both overall and by race/ethnicity:

Overall Sentiments Expressed in Open-Ended Responses

In general, the sentiments expressed in the open-ended responses are highly positive, with the positive appraisals and ideas far more commonly and more vigorously offered than those that could be characterized as more critical or negative. The sentiments are also more or less consistent across different races/ethnicities, in contrast with the response to the multiple choice questions.

The most common sentiments involved community outreach and the chief’s presence on social media, whereas opportunities for improvement often focused on either a need for greater presence in the community or racial bias issues:

The following sections provide the results of over four months of effort by the Working Committee and the Matrix Consulting Group team to develop short term and longer range initiatives for Police Reform in Ossining. To reach this point took many hours of work on the part of Working Committee members in meetings and background research in support of the Committee’s work as well as its various Subcommittees. Reaching this point in the process is also heavily reliant upon the contributions of the community.

Subcommittees of the Working Committee were created so that there could be greater focus on key areas of police reform outlined in Executive Order 203. Subcommittee meetings were held in December 2020 and January 2021 to discuss a wide variety of issues and propose reform initiatives to the Working Committee as a whole and ultimately to the Village Board and the community. The subcommittee areas of focus were:

Governance, oversight and transparency

Internal operations and practices

Policies and procedures

Hiring and training

A goal of the Working Committee was to create a Police Reform and Reinvention plan that is implementable within a reasonable period of time. While a comprehensive review of police services was performed, the creation of mostly higher priority initiatives which could have the greatest impacts received the most focus.

The structure of the reform initiatives for each area of policing is to:

• List an issue
• Discuss the need for change and how a reform can be implemented
• Identify its priority, cost factors, and implementation period
• Identify outcomes or improvements associated with the change

The sections of the report, which follow, provide the results of the input from the community and the work of Working Committee members.

Oversight, Governance and Transparency

Governance

Transparency

Policies and Procedures

Internal Operations and Practices

Mental Health Issues

Police Officers’ Mental Health

Community Policing Improvements

Relationship with ICE

Hiring and Training

**This message can be translated into over 100 languages by clicking the "Select Language" option on the top of this page. PDF of this document is linked above**