Justin Hubbard, Missy Paterniti

Jamestown City Council voted down Mayor Eddie Sundquist‘s citizen appointments to the Board of Public Utilities as well as the reappointment of Justin Hubbard to the Human Rights Commission.

City Clerk Jennifer Williams read a letter from the Human Rights Commission advocating for Hubbard’s reappointment, “We feel it is our duty to try to convey to our elected representatives how much we value Mr. Hubbard and the ideas, thoughtfulness, and passion that he brings to our group. As a teacher, he brings a point of view regarding education that helps us better understand and address human rights issues in our schools.”

Resident Missy Paterniti spoke out against Hubbard being reappointed, saying he publicly attacked her at an HRC meeting by calling her a racist and a bigot in response to her creating a petition to the school district to keep the “Red Raiders” name, “I contacted Elliot Raimondo [City Corporation Counsel] and nothing happened. I wrote to the mayor. And I’m just asking you, as the city council, that have the ability to remove this gentleman from the commission, please do so because he doesn’t belong there.”

Hubbard, speaking at privilege of the floor, said he was approached by Mayor Sundquist following rallies he helped organize after George Floyd‘s death in 2020 about serving on a reinstated Human Rights Commission. Hubbard said while on the HRC, he was approached by members of the community regarding issues on discrimination in relation to religion, race, and sexuality, “Even though I knew that some of these complaints were about members of council and that would make some members of this council unhappy with me for bringing them to the table, I knew that it was my duty to do so. I also believe that the passion I brought to this position made it so that people could feel free to contact me when dealing with very stressful issues.”

Council voted 2 to 6 not to reappoint Hubbard with Brent Sheldon, Marie Carrubba, Andrew Faulkner, Kim Ecklund, Randy Daversa, and Jeff Russell voting no.

The appointment of Sean Conner and Sabrina Gustafson to the BPU Board to replace Jim Olson and Greg Rabb failed 4 to 4 with Brent Sheldon, Andrew Faulkner, Kim Ecklund, and Randy Daversa voting no.

Council President Tony Dolce said while he supported the appointments to the BPU board, he doesn’t know why other council members did not but he guessed it may have come down to qualifications, “In the past, there’s always been a kind of.. not going to say controversy but discussion over replacing long time members that have experience with newcomers. And this mayor wanted to put his people in just like the previous mayor did as well. And so I don’t know specifically why those two individuals were voted down by specific council people.”

Jim Olson and Greg Rabb will remain on the BPU board as holdovers until new appointments can be made.

The plans are the result of a mandate issued by Gov. Andrew Cuomo last summer in the wake of the George Floyd death at the hands of police in Minneapolis, and which resulted in national protests against law enforcement. Under the governor’s directive, every police agency in New York state is required to access its operations and prepare a reform plan, based, in part, on input from the public. As part of his mandate, Gov. Cuomo said that any police agency that doesn’t present a reform plan could risk losing state aid.

Locally, Chautauqua County Sheriff James Quattrone announced last week his office’s draft plan was completed. That plan is now being reviewed in a series of public input sessions taking place this week and next week. A deadline for written input is March 10.

Meanwhile, the Jamestown Police Department has also completed its draft plan. During a conversation this with Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist, the mayor said that plan will be released to the public in the coming days, while also explaining the process for collecting input for the plan.

“The police reform committee, which is comprised of the public safety committee, as well as our police department and some other components of the city, worked diligently to draft a reinvention program and looked at different portions of what we currently do in the city and where we should be going, in conjunction with the multiple stakeholder group meetings they held through the city and with the survey information we got from folks across the city who supplied that survey information,” Sundquist explained.

Video of the input sessions can be found at the city of Jamestown website.

Sundquist also said now that a draft plan is in place, it will now be put before the public for a final round of input before being passed along to state officials.

“We’ve taken all that information and put into a draft, and that will be released to the public for comment. Then the City Council’s Public Safety Committee will host an information session and an additional public input session later this month. The plan will then be finalized and voted by the City Council for approval by the end of this month, and then submitted to the state,” Sundquist said.

No date has been selected yet for when the public safety committee will review and discuss the plan, but the next two scheduled meetings are for March 8 and March 22.

Meanwhile, the Sheriff’s office held its first streaming input session for its plan on Tuesday, with the next one scheduled for Thursday at 6:30 p.m.  All meetings are being streamed at Facebook.com/ChautCoSheriff.

George Borrello

ALBANY – Chautauqua County’s Senate representative in Albany says there’s already been unintended consequences of the recent repeal of a state law that protected members of law enforcement from disclosing disciplinary records.

Earlier this month both the State Senate and Assemblyman approved the long-stalled reform of the state’s 50a statute — which since the 1970s had routinely been used to keep the public from learning about police misconduct and disciplinary actions taken against police officers, correction officers, and fire fighters.

The repeal of the statute came in response to protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black Minnesota man who was killed when a white police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes. But even before Floyd’s death, a 50a repeal effort had been gaining steam in the legislature. The law became a point of contention in New York City following the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner at the hands of then-NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo, whose disciplinary record was shielded in secrecy.

With the State Senate falling to Democratic control after the 2018 Elections, and with the Floyd’s death gaining national attention from protesters and demonstrates calling for immediate reforms, the effort was made in Albany at the start of this month to repeal the statute. The bill ultimately passed along party lines in the Senate by a vote of 40-22 and in the Assembly by a vote of 101-43. It was signed by governor Andrew Cuomo at the start of last week.

Sen. George Borrello (R-Irving), who represents all of Chautauqua County in the upper chamber in Albany and who was one of the 22 Republicans to vote against the repeal, released a statement this week denouncing the repeal and pointing to what he says are unintended consequences that will impact the budgets of local governments across the state.

According to Borrello, officials in the Town of Cuba recently received a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request from an out-of-state organization called MuckRock, demanding copies of all police personnel files that contain complaints of misconduct, including accusations that were found to be groundless after investigation. The request is for information dating back to the 1970s. MuckRock has stated that they have made this request of every policing agency in New York State.

“This is why I voted against the repeal of 50-a,” Borrello said in his statement to the media. “At a time when localities are struggling to meet their regular expenses because of the crushing impact that COVID-19 has had on their budgets, it is outrageous that they will now be required to devote precious staff time and taxpayer dollars towards searching, copying, faxing and emailing decades-old personnel files containing groundless claims, even those where the officers involved have been deceased for decades.”

Borrello said that for many police departments across the state, the small reimbursement that they are entitled to collect from a requesting organization won’t even begin to cover the costs with researching, assembling, and sending out the requested information. He also said that services to the public may even be impacted due to the time and resources required to fulfill the FOIL request.

“What good will this information serve?” Borrello asked. “It will wrongly tarnish officers who had unsubstantiated complaints lodged by vengeful criminal defendants and serve as fodder for lawsuits by trial lawyers looking to line their pockets. Taxpayers will be picking up the tab for this phishing expedition. That’s why a thoughtful analysis that included the potential financial impact and unintended consequences should have been done.”

“This is another example of why knee-jerk reactions for political reasons are costly,” he added.

•  AUDIO ALSO AVAILABLE AT SOUNDCLOUD

Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist talks about a series of protests that took place recently in Jamestown – one of which he participated in – involving the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by a Minneapolis police officer. Sundquist also gives an update on the COVID-19 situation in the city and the reopening effort – including trying to accommodate downtown businesses that want to reopen.

Eddie Sundquist

•  AUDIO ALSO AVAILABLE AT SOUNDCLOUD

Conference Call on June 3 with Rep. Tom Reed (R-Corning, NY 23), who discussed the murder of George Floyd by an officer in the Minneapolis department and subsequent protests, demonstrations, and riots that have broken out across the country afterward.

Rep. Tom Reed (R-Corning)

Chuck Schumer (left) and Kirsten Gillibrand

WASHINGTON – New York’s two U.S. Senators are joining their Democratic colleagues in condemning President Donald Trump’s threat to use military force to combat demonstrations and protests that had grown into riots in some areas of the country.

While the demonstrations have remained large but mostly without the violence both Tuesday and Wednesday, that wasn’t the case earlier in the week and over the weekend. President Trump responded on Monday by threatening to use the military to “dominate” the streets where Americans are demonstrating following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died when a white police officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes.

Trump had urged governors to call out the National Guard to contain protests that turned violent and warned that if they do not, he would invoke the Insurrection Act and send in active duty military forces.

The response by the president led to U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand to join other Senate Democrats in condemning the Trump administration’s threat. In a letter to U.S. Department of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, Sen. Gillibrand expressed deep concerns over the use of the military to restrict what they are calling peaceful protests, which fall under rights given to Americans by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“Rather than listen or acknowledge the legitimate pain of protesters and the black community, President Trump has sought to divide us further, eagerly inflaming tensions and sowing anger and fear,” said Senator Gillibrand. “His continued threats to use violence against peaceful protesters and deploy our military to states is outrageous and deeply troubling. The Department of Defense must immediately answer whether the Department would deploy federal troops outside of the use of the Insurrection Act and I demand that combat units are not used to impede on Americans’ civil liberties in the fight for racial justice.”

Defense Secretary Esper reportedly angered Trump when he said he opposed using military troops for law enforcement, seemingly taking the teeth out of the president’s threat to use the Insurrection Act. Esper said the 1807 law should be invoked “only in the most urgent and dire of situations.” He added, “We are not in one of those situations now.”

President Donald Trump holds up a bible while taking a photo outside of St. John’s Episcopal Church, near Lafayette Square in Washington D.C. Prior to the photo being taken, peaceful protesters were forced by authorities dressed in riot gear and who were wielding shields and using pepper spray .

Former Defense Secretary James Mattis, a retired Marine general, also lambasted both Trump and Esper in an essay in The Atlantic for their consideration of using the active-duty military in law enforcement — and for the use of the National Guard in clearing out a largely peaceful protest at Lafayette Square near the White House on Monday evening.

According to Gillibrand’s office, the Insurrection Act, last used in 1992 during the L.A. Riots, is an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act to be invoked only under extreme conditions. The legislation allows states to request support from the federal government, and would allow the President to activate federal troops independent of a state’s request – under specific and limited conditions that Gillibrand argues are not currently met.

In the letter, Gillibrand urges the Department of Defense provide information by Friday, June 5 on whether the Department would deploy federal troops outside of the use of the Insurrection Act, if deployments would ever include combat designated troops, how troops would be trained and prepared, what the mission, scope, and rules would entail for the use of force as well if they would be authorized to perform arrests.

Schumer, meanwhile, tried to force action in the U.S. senate on Tuesday for lawmaker to approve a symbolic resolution to condemn both the violence and Trump’s actions at Lafayette Square. But Majority leader and Sen. Mitch McConnell objected, chiding Democrats for pushing a measure that he said addressed neither justice for black Americans nor “peace for our country in the face of looting.”

“Instead, it just indulges in the myopic obsession with President Trump that has come to define the Democratic side,” Mr. McConnell said.