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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. After the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others sparked last year's racial justice protests, Governor Cuomo announced that he would require every police department in the state to submit a police reform plan by tomorrow, April 1st. We've talked on this show with mayor de Blasio and City council speaker, Corey Johnson, about New York City's plan. The mayor and the council actually had different competing ones.

Now we'll turn to the drama around the plans on Long Island and what Nassau and Suffolk counties have approved compared to what reform advocates want to see. With the deadline of tomorrow looming, it took until last night for the Suffolk County legislature to pass its plan as Newsday describes the scene. The plan passed in its current form, despite dozens of community advocates, testifying that it needs to be stronger, including the creation of a civilian complaint review board, to hear accusations of police misconduct. They don't have that in Nassau or Suffolk, like the city has.

Maybe you saw the New York Times op-ed the other day about Suffolk called the County where cops call the shots. The Nassau County legislature passed its plan last week. Also over objections to it not including a civilian complaint review board. Both the Nassau and Suffolk plans do include body cams for police officers, a change in who responds to people experiencing mental health crises and collection of demographic data on traffic stops, pedestrian stops, the makeup of the force and more as means of acknowledging and then addressing bias.

With us now are two of the advocates who testified before the Suffolk County legislature last night and the Nassau County legislature last week. Shanequa Levin, founder and CEO of the Women’s Diversity Network and she's also a convener for the group Long Island United. Frederick Brewington and Nassau County-based civil rights attorney and member of Long Island Advocates for Police Accountability. They are both co-authors of an alternative police reform blueprint called the People's Plan. We'll compare and contrast with the county's plan. Ms. Levin and Mr. Brewington. Thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Fredrick Brewington: Thank you Brian.

Shanequa Levin: Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Yours is a 12-point plan. I've been reading it and I'm going to start with point number two, because almost everyone has been there. Traffic stops and transforming traffic enforcement. Your People's Plan includes collecting data on traffic stops to measure disparate enforcement, which I think the counties are saying they will do. I see one of your proposal is to explore options for unarmed traffic enforcement. Ms. Levin, do you want to start and who would do that? Let's say they see me going 90 miles an hour on the LIE, would there be an unarmed traffic unit pulling me over?

Shanequa Levin: Yes, that is what we would like to see. In our plan, we want to reduce the encounters that we have with police officers and reduce the footprint of police officers. Because there is bias in policing, and there is racism in policing as Black drivers are pulled over on a higher rate than white drivers. That I believe it's a four times higher than white drivers, but yet 29% of the time, we are found less likely to have contraband in our cars, but yet we're still pulled over at a higher rate.

One of the ways of doing that, and a lot of times too, when it comes to traffic stops, that's where we see violence happening. If we have officers that are not armed, then we can see less examples of lives being taken. We look and explore options to alternative traffic stops and having armed officers. We would be putting the society, especially our Black people at a lower risk of having their lives taken. There are exact answers on how to do it, but we want to explore what that looks like.

Brian Lehrer: Mr. Brewington do you want to continue on that? Because the police might say that they're vulnerable to who knows what kind of criminal who unlawful driving is sometimes a tell that they're dangerous.

Fredrick Brewington: The statistics actually show that that's not the case. The statistics actually show that even though the traffic stops are counted as being a very dangerous, that the rarity of police officers being injured and/or killed in traffic stops is relatively small in terms of the total number of stops that take place in a given year. I do want to go back to your example because, Brian you gave an example, someone's going 90 miles an hour and you're doing something that may very well require police intervention. In those situations if someone has other clear indicia, we do want to decrease the police footprint, but that does not prevent other police from doing the work that is necessary.

We have been very cognizant in the work that we've done in evaluating what is necessary and what is not necessary. Routine traffic stops, a tail light, not stopping fully at a red light, things of that nature do not require police officers who are armed to be engaged. As opposed to situations we're police are really needed because the arming of police officers increases the likelihood that there's going to be a mishap, particularly when police are not properly instructed.

Brian Lehrer: On more from the traffic enforcement portion of your plan. It calls for ending warrantless searches during traffic stops, warrantless searches. Typically police officers can search a car if certain things lead them to suspect illegal drugs, or guns, for example, in the car. They wouldn't have a warrant from a court in the moment there. Mr. Brewington, I'll stay with you on this one. Do you want those completely banned?

Fredrick Brewington: What we want is the banning on all intrusions that leads to those warrantless and in many cases with no consent searches. That if an officer is stopping you for a tail light and there is no probable cause or reasonable suspicion of any other wrongful act. That they should not be making an inquiry of someone, "Where are you going? What are you doing?" Doing the phishing expedition that oftentimes leads to them saying, "Well, step out the car, I want to search your car."

Then attached to that, we say that if indeed there is a police encounter, there needs to be a record of that. There needs to be not only documentation digitally, but then that person should get what we referred to as a police card, where they have the name of the officer, the time of the stop, the reason for the stop. That they also have all the contact information necessary in case that civilian in a police stop, a pedestrian stop, or a bicycle stop wants to then follow-up. Because as you know in Nassau County, I'm sure you're going to go there, and in Suffolk County, there is no civilian complaint review board. If you want to make a complaint, you've got to have all the information that you need and then you've got to go back to the police department.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, let's go there. Ms. Levin point number three in your People's Plan is transforming police accountability. This as I said in the intro is obviously one of the big areas of dispute between you and the counties in their reform plans. Would you describe what kinds of police accountability system you'd like to see?

Fredrick Brewington: Yes, so definitely we want a civilian complaint review board in office of inspector general. One of the things, because in Suffolk County they did create what they're calling an independent office to do investigations. They're now going to include the office of the human rights commission. Now, the issue with that is that they just are reviweing case.

They're learning how the internal affairs operates and works, and they're going to be giving them more investigators. If you're just reviewing an investigation and you actually do not have the authority to create disciplinary actions that the police commissioner must implement, what's the point? How are we really going to have justice? How are we really going to have true oversight and repercussions for not doing your job correctly and being violent towards someone? That's the biggest thing that we see in Suffolk.

In Nassau they're just going to lie on the Attorney General's office. They're just going to send cases to the Attorney General's office. That doesn't actually do much when it comes for police accountability and making sure that the police are held responsible. We would also like for police officers to carry their own insurance, because taxpayers should not have to constantly foot the bill for these encounters. In Nassau County alone, $55 million has been paid out for police violence and misconduct. Why is this constantly falling on the taxpayers? The police officers to carry insurance, just like other professionals have to carry insurance for when they are found to have been in fault.

One of the big things, again, is that we need independent oversight of these investigations and that these independent oversight organizations are able to actually implement and recommend disciplinary measures and both counties miss that.

Brian Lehrer: Long Island listeners, we can take a few phone calls on your experiences with police or Sheriff's department officers during Nassau or Suffolk County traffic stops. Or other encounters, or what kinds of reforms you would most like to see to reduce police misconduct and mass incarceration while still keeping your community safe. 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280. Frederick Brewington and Nassau County-based civil rights attorney and member of Long Island Advocates for Police Accountability, and Shanequa Levin founder and CEO of the Women's Diversity Network and a convener for the group long Island United. 646-435-7280 from Nassau or Suffolk counties for this segment. 646-435-7280.

Your plan calls for an end to so-called broken windows policing, which involves enforcing against small things like broken windows as a means of stopping the big things like shootings. Many people in law enforcement, Ms. Levin think that was one of the keys to the big, violent crime reductions of the last 30 years, broken windows policing. What's your take? And what's the alternative to broken windows policing that can still be effective at a time when shootings are on the rise?

Shanequa Levin: What we know is that they use these things as phishing expeditions, they stop people for no reason. Then when we have minor infractions, these things sometimes cause people to have life-changing debt. You may have a tail light that is out and you were given 24 hours to fix it, or you were given a ticket and now you can't afford to pay the ticket and if you can't afford to pay the ticket, your license is now suspended. Now, your license is suspended so you cannot go to work, you can't put food on your table for your children.

When we take a look at these policies, they impact minorities at a higher rate and they also just allow police officers to have these phishing expeditions and which they now are starting to go and search your car. They sending canines to come and search your car. Again, Blacks and Latino community, this happens at a higher rate, but yet we are found less likely to have contraband on us.

We need to address these policies that end up serving as like a stop and frisk basically, and broken window policies are one of them. We applaud Suffolk County, because now they're actually going to be giving warnings instead of just giving you a ticket and giving you 30 days to do something about it. That is the type of thing that we need to see. That way, again, we have less encounters with the police and less opportunities for their bias and racism to come into play.

Brian Lehrer: Again, listeners if you're just joining us, both our guests are co-authors of a blueprint for police reform on Long Island called the People's Plan. It goes much further than the Nassau and Suffolk legislatures reform plans that were approved in recent days, and need to be submitted to the state by tomorrow. Mr. Brewington go ahead.

Fredrick Brewington: I was just going to say, first of all, thank you. The People's Plan is a comprehensive holistic view on how to deal with policing in the 21st century both Nassau and Suffolk. Suffolk get some credit because they've admitted it, they have some real problems with regard to the disparate treatment of communities of color. What they have seen and the way we know that, is we look at their own numbers.

Suffolk, for instance, the traffic stops are more than two or three to one of African-Americans and Latinos in Suffolk than they are to white people. Nassau who does not keep good statistics. However, based on the statistics that they have on arrest and I hope your listeners are sitting down, it's 5.31 African-American to every one white person arrested in Nassau County, that's shocking. They still don't want to admit in this situation that there's a racial disparity. Their commissioner and their County executive both have refused to just simply admit that there's a racial disparity and that there's something wrong with those numbers. When you don't admit that, obviously everybody knows it's difficult to try and address it.

The issues of broken windows also allows communities who've been over policed, and over-focused on by police, particularly in Nassau and Suffolk County to have an entrée into those communities for that phishing expedition of that Ms. Levin just spoke about. The reality is that when you go through that process, you have a large police presence in communities like Roosevelt, Uniondale, like Amityville, like Wyandanch on Long Island where the police are overzealous, are very much hands-on. The communities themselves then become a part of occupied community with the police have become an us versus them mentality.

We see that, unfortunately, we just saw the beating of Christopher Cruz on February 24th on video. Where you're watching 12 to 15 Suffolk County police officers refer to him using all types of bad language, but also kicking and beating him while he's handcuffed, while yelling stop resisting when it's very clear that he can't resist because he's being beat. It's those type of things, those types of situations, those type of reactions that we say we need to start to address in both Nassau and Suffolk County and of course, across the country.

Brian Lehrer: Ms. Levin it's interesting to me-- Go ahead, do you want to make a point on that real quick?

Shanequa Levin: I just wanted to add and in Nassau County, like Mr. Burlington said, they're not even adjusting the fact that there are racial disparities. One of the things that their plan wants to do is actually add more cops into communities of color. In particular in Nassau County, they want to add cops on bicycles and as we see the disparities are real. Nassau County passed their plans with all of the Black legislators voting the plan down, and they actually refuse to acknowledge that there's any bias or racism. How are they really going to address the problem if they can't acknowledge it?

Brian Lehrer: It's interesting to me, Ms. Levin, in both of your answers, you seem to be saying that Suffolk County is a little more enlightened here right now than Nassau County. Even though I mentioned earlier, the New York Times, op-ed on the power of the police union in Suffolk County, where a lot of campaign finance money flows to the local lawmakers and many Suffolk police officers make more than $200,000 a year. I feel like the reputation was darker in Suffolk County in recent years.

How do you think Ms. Levin that any of that police union power in Suffolk may have informed where the County executive and legislature landed on their police reform plan, short of what you would have liked to see. How is it that Suffolk is doing better than Nassau right now?

Shanequa Levin: They definitely did better. They were more transparent with their process, and they actually really listened to what the community members were saying and holding listening sessions and meetings with stakeholder after stakeholder. That process was not happening in Nassau County. Some of us were a part of the task force in Nassau County and had to resign and step down, because they went behind our backs and created a plan when we didn't have any input. Whereas in Suffolk County, we had Vanessa Baird-Streeter who was the co-chair of the task force.

I do believe her being the co-chair of the task force and having a Black son, may have had something to do with the fact of why they were more responsible to hearing what we had to do say and making more changes. That definitely plays a part of it when you have people in color in powerful positions to make decisions, you really can be responsible to everyone. Now, did they fall short? Yes, they did. Do I fell that that has something to do with the police department? Yes, I do.

They also have the PBA part of their task force. When you have the PBA, you have the commissioner of police a part of it. We did not get real oversight when it comes to police accountability. They did not get the human rights commission any teeth to actually do their job, just review power. You can't just review an incident and then have no power actually to mandate that an officer is disciplined. We came back at them numerous times, had several meetings with them about this numerous times and they would not budge there.

They also fall short on their traffic stops, they're now going to let pedestrians know why they were, and let pedestrians who an officer was, or a cyclists know who the officer is, their name and their badge number. They're not willing to do that to motorists. You have to actually ask them for a card. Ask them if you can give me some information about who you are, but they are not willing to let motorists know why they were stopped, if a ticket is not issued or warning is not issued.

As we know, people are pulled over for no reason. I've worked with families where that has happened to them and their children were actually beat on a stop, and these children still did not know why they were stopped. This is a result I believe of the police's power, because how hard is it to let someone know in a written way not just relying on verbal communication, because anyone can say that they've said something. In a written way letting everyone know why they were pulled over. Those are big pieces that are missing from Suffolk's plan.

Brian Lehrer: Didrik in Huntington, you're on WNYC. Hello Didrik.

Didrik: Hey. Thank you very much for taking my call. I support this plan because I think that the police in Suffolk County are totally out of control when it comes to persons of color. I had my son arrested, put in handcuffs, taken to jail simply for an expired inspection sticker. I've been followed all the way home to my home, by the police trailing me just to see where I live. I've had the police pull guns on my sons, when they were entering into their own home demanding to see identification. They were unmarked, they were in an unmarked car, with no identification of their own, but have guns on my son's demanding.

I've had to report in front of my house four police cars blocking the street because they had a report from someone who said they saw a Black man running through someone's backyard. I told the police, "Well, whoever called you, go to their yard. Why are you at my yard?: In each one of these instances, when I reported to the local commanding officer, they said, "Thank you very much for your report," and that's the end of it. I have felt terrorized sometimes living in my neighborhood, and I'm not a criminal, my wife is not a criminal, we're both professionals. We do what we have to do, we come and go, we mind our own business.

I also would like to know, what could be the repercussion if for a chance the state just says, "We've shut the Suffolk plan." What can a citizen do? How can a citizen become involved? What kind of pressure can we put upon the governor and the legislature to make sure that we hold these police departments accountable?

Brian Lehrer: Great question. Mr. Brewington, you want to talk to Didrik in Huntington?

Frederick Brewington: Sure. First of all, thank you. I'm so sorry that you and your family have to go through that but unfortunately, we hear that story over and over and over again.The reality is that in Nassau and Suffolk County, there has been and really still is no independent body in which you can make a complaint to make sure that it's going to be aired, reviewed, investigated, and decided. Most of the time when people make complaints in both Suffolk and Nassau, they have to make them and they go to internal affairs or they assign right back to the precinct that they're complaining about, and that means they essentially go nowhere.

Both internal affairs in Suffolk and Nassau County have been ineffective in evaluating, doing investigation, and then dealing with the questions of discipline. Over 90%, listen to me, over 90% of the complaints made against police investigated by internal affairs are determined to be unfounded, unsubstantiated, or undetermined, very few are substantiated. Remember that this is the Suffolk County internal affairs, the Nassau County internal affairs investigating themselves.

When you don't have independence, when you don't have accountability, and when you don't have independent oversight, it becomes difficult because they don't release and tell everything that they did, there is no transparency. For this caller who is in the Huntington community, one of the things that you can do to get involved because this is not a short-term hike, this is a long-term process. We know that that if we're going to bring Suffolk and Nassau County, kicking and screaming into the 21st century with regard to policing. we're going to need people like yourself, like your wife, and like your sons, the young people that are going to be engaged in this to be part of the voice.

There are organizations like LIAFPA and like Long Island united, and you can actually find us on our websites; longislandadvocatesforpoliceaccountability.org, L-I-A-F-P-A or L-I-United, liunited.org. Those organizations will allow you to be engaged in what's going on on police reform on Nassau and Suffolk County because we are working in tandem with each other. We put together a wonderful, wonderful group.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take one more phone call before we run out of time. Fred in Suffolk County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Fred.

Fred: Hi. My mother had an incident recently where her dog was startled by runner. The dog jumped up and scratched the runner. He demanded the cops be called, cops came, they heard his story. They were walking over to my mother. The dog was barking at the police officer and the first thing that came out of his mouth was "Am I going to have to shoot your dog?" It's a disturbing non deescalation. Luckily, she is trained in de-escalation. She escalated the situation, but it's disturbing in general.

Brian Lehrer: Fred, thank you very much. We're going to run out of time in a minute. I want to just touch point number 10 in your 12 point, People's Plan for Police Reform on Long Island, which is about hiring, training, and education. Ms. Levin, among other things, calls for hiring for more diversity which the county plans say they include. How diverse are or are not the Long Island police departments now compared to the population? Do you see the counties as serious about this piece?

Shanequa Levin: I want to address that, but one of the other things I also wanted to bring, I would be remissed if I didn't say it. One of the reasons too the Suffolk County has probably been a little bit more forthright with creating new policies to address disparities is because they are also under the DOJ Department of Justice Consent, and they have been for the last seven years. You can't deny or ignore the disparities in the data that they were forced to collect. That's another big reason of why you see a difference in Suffolk and Nassau County.

When it comes to law enforcement, and how many people are really on the force, the force is very white. It's very white, and we do not see a large amount of minorities that are on the force, especially when it comes to Black people. This year [unintelligible 00:27:50] did recruit a lot more Black people to take the application, but something always happens along the process that they don't allow them to be on the force. That process needs to be looked at, it needs to be modified, it needs to be changed, so that way we can alleviate the barriers that stop Black people from getting on the force.

If we don't change the system, if we don't make systemic changes to the way that policing is done. We're not actually going to have much success by bringing Black officers onto the force, they're going to come into a system that is not made for them. You can take a look at what happened with NYPD 12, which was a group of officers of color, who when they tried to do the right thing, they were disciplined and ultimately filed a lawsuit against the New York Police Department for the way that they were treated and handled.

Adding more officers of color onto the force is not the solution, the solution is fixing the system and creating more effective ways of policing and accountability. That when do create measures that allow for more officers of color to get on there, they're coming into a system that is welcoming and appreciate and will respect them.

Brian Lehrer: Last question, Mr. Brewington. I don't see in your People's Plan the words defund the police. Is this defund the police laid out in detail or would you frame it differently? We've got about 30 seconds left.

Frederick Brewington: 30 seconds, I'll give it to you. We do not mention defund the police. This is not about and that is code, by the way, being used by a lot of people out there to try and say that we're anti-police, we're not. We talk about try and redistribute some resources so that we can knock down the actual footprint of policing in communities. We don't talk about defunding the police because in this situation, we also recognize that police do have a tough job. As a result of that, sometimes they need special care, and we talk about that in the plan as well.

We encourage people to take a look at the People's Plan, but in this situation, defund the police is not anything that we've spoken about. People spread that as a kind of way of trying to create fear around the People's Plan. The People's Plan is really from the grassroots and for the people.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you google the People's Plan Long Island, this will come up. We want to thank co-authors Frederick Brewington and Shanequa Levin respectively, from Long Island Advocates for Police Accountability, and the Women's Diversity Network and Long Island United. Thank you so much for giving us your time today.

Frederick Brewington: Thank you, Brian.

Shanequa Levin: Thank you, and just to add, United for Justice and Policing is also a coalition that was heavily involved in creating the People's Plan.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Shanequa Levin: Absolutely.

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