One year of police reform in Nassau

                                                                                       

As mourners gathered in Manhattan for a New York City police officer killed in the line of duty, Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder on Thursday gave his first report on police reform efforts in Nassau County.

The headline was body cameras.

"As of Jan. 1, (2022) as we promised, every officer on patrol has a body-worn camera,  every supervisor on patrol has a body-worn camera; all the management team have a body-worn camera, " Ryder told members of the legislature's Public Safety Committee.

Except for undercover officers and recruits in the police academy, "everybody is wearing a body camera," Ryder said.

Body cameras for police was one of the steps taken to reform policing after George Floyd, a black man, died under severe restraint by white police officers in Minneapolis in May, 2020.

Protests--that sometimes turned into violent riots -- erupted out throughout the nation. Black Lives Matter organizers and their supporters demanded police defunding and reforms.

Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered all law enforcement agencies in the state to adopt reform plans by April of last year. The Nassau legislature approved a plan despite complaints from some members of progressive and minority communities that they had not been adequately consulted.

Ryder presented reform efforts and statistics from Jan. through Dec. 2021.

Meanwhile, outside of Nassau in 2021,  880 people across the country were shot to death by police, including 25 unarmed victims. That is a drop from 2020 when 1,017 were fatally shot by police, including 55 unarmed victims, according to statista.com

At the same time,  there was a sharp rise in the number of police shot on the job throughout the country.

The National Fraternal Order of Police reports that a "historic" 346 officers were shot in the line of duty last year, including 63 killed.

That's up from 312 officers shot in 2020  (47 fatally), and 293 shot in 2019, (50 fatally), the organization reported.

Thousands of police and mourners turned out today for the funeral of NYPD police officer Jason Rivera, who was fatally shot last week responding to a domestic disturbance. His partner Wilbert Mora also was killed in that ambush.                                   

   Rivera mourners outside St. Patrick's Cathedral (from NYPost.com)

News reports say seven officers have been shot across the country in the past two days.

Ryder said Thursday that no Nassau officer had fired a gun in the past one and a half years.

He said complaints against Nassau police had gone down as body camera program was slowly rolled out last year.  He said there were a total 491 complaints in 2021, but didn't give total numbers for previous years.

Ryder said police are required to turn on the cameras during any interaction with the public. The officers must identify themselves when they approach a suspect and announce that they are wearing a body camera. "By announcing that, that's a form of de-escalation," Ryder said.

"Our complaints have gone down," he said. "The reason our complaints have gone down: Body cameras. On both sides"

Reform advocates at the hearing questioned whether the new policies were adequate and wanted different sets of numbers while one accused Ryder of putting a positive spin on the crime statistics. 

"Cops are still killing unarmed civilians throughout the nation," he said.

Legis. John Ferretti (R-Levittown) then asked Ryder how many unarmed citizens had been killed in Nassau in the past two years.

"Zero," Ryder responded.

"In the past 20 years?" Ferretti asked.

"Zero," Ryder replied.

Here is Ryder's report on complaints against police from Jan. through Dec. 2021:

                                                                          

Here are summons issued; (VLT stands for Vehicle Traffic Law)