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Final Report DECEMBER 2020 RACIAL BIAS AUDIT OF THE ALBANY, NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT Zoë Thorkildsen, Bridgette Bryson, and William “Bill” Taylor ---PAGE BREAK--- i Executive Summary Over the last decade, the Albany Police Department (APD) has pushed forward to engage the community in a positive manner, moving towards a mission that is focused on community policing practices. During this time, the Community Policing Review Board and the Common Council have recommended police reforms and legislation changes to further improve the police department, and they have called for change to addressed perceived disparate treatment of minority communities. Following recent high-profile events, including the First Street Incident and the shooting of Mr. Ellazar Williams, APD has struggled to improve their transparency and implement initiatives to increase community trust. Both of these incidents, along with the eruptions of public protests across the country, led the City of Albany to recognize the need for an evaluation of policy, procedures, and practices of the police department. In August of 2020, the City of Albany, through a competitive bid, selected CNA to conduct a racial bias audit of the APD. The objectives of CNA’s racial bias audit included: • Assess and monitor APD’s internal operations, policies, procedures, and practices to detect the presence of implicit bias and systemic racial bias. • Collect and analyze data related to traffic stops, use of force, and other police officer/civilian interactions and determine the effect on Black community members. • Assess compliance with existing police reform policies initiated by APD and enacted by the Albany Common Council body-worn cameras (BWCs), Right to Know Identification Legislation, and Citizen Police Review Board). • Provide actionable recommendations for reforms that eliminate racial and implicit biases in policing deployments, strategies, policies, procedures, and practices. Such recommendations must: Promote community engagement, transparency, professionalism, accountability, community inclusion, fairness, effectiveness, and public trust; and Be guided by evidence-based best practices and community expectations. Based on CNA’s review of policy, procedures, and practices, as well as data provided by the APD, our key findings included: • Improved data collection procedures for traffic stop data are needed. • Prior to the deployment of BWCs to detective personnel and future units, BWC policy should be updated to reflect emerging best practices. • Statistical differences by outcome are present in arrest data when comparing white people to people of color, further fueling community concerns about resisting arrest charges. ---PAGE BREAK--- • Black community members initiate the majority of external complaints and civil rights lawsuits filed. • APD personnel do not fully understand the complaints process and how or when possible disciplinary actions could take place. • The community complaints process is convoluted and poorly understood by community members, leading to mistrust and a lack of procedural justice. • Use of force policy should be updated and be more clear for officers to know when they can or cannot use various forms of force. • Annual reports detailing use of force incidents should be made publicly available to community members in the city. • APD’s philosophy and culture have a strong focus on community policing practices, but this message needs to be reinforced to all personnel. • The structure of the Neighborhood Engagement Unit and School Resource Officers should be reviewed for efficiency and effectiveness. • APD’s website could benefit from a modern reconstruction so that each embedded page is easily accessible and allows community members to find current information on the organization and projects they are working on. • The diversity of APD personnel does not reflect the racial makeup of the City of Albany. • Recruitment and hiring practices should be reviewed, and the department should begin releasing annual reports on this data. • The promotional process is of concern to personnel and should be tracked in a database, and the performance evaluation process should be standardized. • Annual reports of data designated in various General Orders should be completed and housed on the APD website for all community members to easily access. • APD participates in a long list of programs and should seek evaluations of these programs to determine their effectiveness and help allocate resources among the programs. • There are community concerns that past proposed reforms have not been implemented, along with concerns that officers do not live in the City of Albany. • Annual in-service training curriculum should be updated to include various topics, including but not limited to racial bias and cultural sensitivity training. • Training is not consistent across the department, and personnel feel they need more training to sufficiently do their jobs. Over the next year, APD will work with the City of Albany and community leaders to understand, prioritize, and implement the recommendations proposed in this report, reflecting their dedication ---PAGE BREAK--- iii to improving community trust. We recommend that APD and the City of Albany seek an independent firm to help implement these recommendations and track APD’s progress.