Politics & Government

Cuomo Announces 'Say Their Name' Police Reform Plan Amid Protests

The reforms include outlawing chokeholds, making false race-based 911 calls hate crimes and increasing transparency of disciplinary records.

Cuomo's reforms include outlawing chokeholds, making false race-based 911 calls hate crimes and increasing transparency of disciplinary records.
Cuomo's reforms include outlawing chokeholds, making false race-based 911 calls hate crimes and increasing transparency of disciplinary records. (Darren McGee/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo))

NEW YORK, NY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing New York to pass a "Say Their Name" package of police reforms next week in response to ongoing protests against police brutality across the state and country.

The reform agenda, announced by Cuomo during his daily briefing Friday, will include legislation elected officials and activists have long sought to hold police more accountable, including making their disciplinary records more public, having an independent review of police killings and criminalizing police chokeholds like those used in Eric Garner and George Floyd's deaths.

It will also make false 911 calls based on race a hate crime, a rule first proposed in 2018 that has gained renewed attention following a viral video of a woman calling police on a black birder in Central Park.

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Cuomo said the legislative package is named for a "long list" of deaths that were the result of police abuse, of which Floyd's was the "breaking point."

"Mr. Floyd is just the last name on a very long list," he said Friday. "Enough is enough. Change the law, take the moment to reform."

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The New York State Legislature is set to meet next week.

The statewide push for reform comes after similar bills were proposed in New York City Council. Council Speaker Corey Johnson announced three more pieces of legislation Friday.

Earlier in the week, the speaker introduced a bill to make already-banned chokeholds by the NYPD a crime, along with legislation that would require the NYPD to create a uniformed set of disciplinary guidelines meant to fix disparities in how police are reprimanded.

The New York City chokehold bill, first introduced after Garner's death in 2014, will be revised to include placing a knee on a person's neck, as the since-arrested officer did in Floyd's death. The officer who placed the fatal chokehold on Garner in Staten Island was fired but never charged.

The City Council also has resolutions in the works to support the statewide legislation.

Here are the four parts of Cuomo's plan:

  • Revise a law known as 50-a, which shields police officers' disciplinary records from being released to the public. Cuomo did not specify whether he would repeal the law, as many have called for.
  • Banning chokeholds.
  • Make false race-based 911 report a hate crime.
  • Make the Attorney General an independent prosecutor for matters relating to the deaths of unarmed civilians caused by law enforcement.

The reform agenda came as New York City and the country entered the ninth day of protests against police brutality following Floyd's death at the hands of police in Minnesota last week.

Cuomo specifically pointed Friday to a video of police pushing a 75-year-old man down in Buffalo on Thursday night, which he said made him "sick to his stomach."

He said the officers involved have since been suspended and later warned that similar swift action would be taken in similar incidents in the future.

"My point to the police and protesters is whatever you do, just assume it’s going to be video-taped and assume the attorney general is going to look at it tonight," he said. "That’s where we are...If there’s any potential liability it will be immediate."


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