Organizer Jamaica Miles marches with protesters outside Schenectady police headquarters on July 6, 2020, after a police officer was photographed kneeling on the neck of a man he was trying to apprehend on Brandywine Avenue. While many communities wanted to create civilian oversight boards in the wake of 2020’s racial reckoning, only about half of the proposed boards in the Capital Region and Hudson Valley were actually created.
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
More than five years after New York communities promised greater police accountability, only about half of the proposed civilian oversight boards in the Capital Region and Hudson Valley were actually created. And even where boards exist, some have virtually no online presence, rendering them inaccessible to residents, while others lack the power to independently investigate complaints.
In 2020, amid a nationwide reckoning with police practices, then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo issued an executive order requiring law enforcement agencies statewide to work with their communities to adopt reform plans by April 2021 or risk losing state funding.
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Civilian oversight boards — which independently review and sometimes investigate complaints against police officers — were a popular topic of discussion among stakeholders charged with creating the plans.
Among 173 local governments with police forces in the Capital Region and Hudson Valley — from Warren to Westchester counties — 24 proposed forming a civilian oversight board or similar entity in their reform plans. (Thirteen localities already had oversight boards, or a similar body.)
At least eight governments did not form the boards they proposed, a Times Union investigation found. Five others had no publicly available information about their proposed boards, and did not respond to numerous inquiries about whether they formed them.
Of the 12 governments that told reporters they did form boards, three make no mention of the board on their websites, including who serves on it or how to contact it. Two of the municipalities that created boards dissolved them after only a few years.
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Several governments formed, or committed to forming, entities whose goal was to strengthen relations between law enforcement and community members, but which lack the stronger oversight capacities of civilian oversight boards. For example, the city of Port Jervis and the towns of Bethlehem, New Windsor and Somers formed advisory groups, though the latter two groups are no longer active.
A few other communities in the Times Union’s analysis resolved to continue discussions beyond the deadline in Cuomo’s executive order. In Poughkeepsie, stakeholders discussed creating a civilian review board for six months but could not reach a consensus. Hyde Park, which decided not to form a civilian review board after further discussion, will revisit the topic in 2027.
In other places, such as the village of Ellenville and towns of Saugerties and Clarkstown, the outcome of those discussions remains unclear. Officials did not respond to multiple inquiries and no information is posted about a civilian review board online.
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And even among the agencies that did create — or already had — civilian oversight boards, many lack the authority to independently investigate complaints or hold officers accountable, leaving oversight uneven across the region.
For this analysis, the Times Union included any proposed boards that had at least some civilian members and reviewed complaints in some capacity, regardless of whether the board had investigative power. The board also had to be listed as a recommendation in the reform plan, not merely discussed.
To determine if boards were actually formed, reporters contacted government and law enforcement officials and examined government websites. Inquiries about the status of boards were frequently passed from police chiefs to town supervisors and mayors, and vice versa, and confusion reigned about what exactly was proposed and who was responsible for implementing the recommendations, though Cuomo’s executive order did not legally require agencies to enact every recommendation of their plans.
A promise of accountability
Protesters make their way up Congress Street toward the Troy Police Department during a Black Lives Matter rally on June 7, 2020.
Paul Buckowski/Times Union
While civilian oversight boards have existed in cities, even locally, for decades, they were a relatively new concept for counties in 2020. As of that year, only 11 counties nationwide had civilian oversight boards, according to the National Association of Counties.
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There are three main types of civilian oversight boards, according to the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement: review-based models, which review internal investigations already completed by the department; investigation-based models, which hire professional, outside investigators to conduct independent investigations; and auditor-based models, which focus on creating systemic change in law enforcement agencies through policy and trend analysis.
The composition and function of civilian oversight boards vary widely: some have police officers or government officials, while others are strictly civilian. Many are volunteer-based, but some offer stipends.
While some boards can receive and investigate complaints directly from the public independent of the police agency they’re charged with overseeing, others review complaints that have already been investigated internally. Some boards can recommend disciplinary actions, while others are limited to policy and training recommendations. Some boards even have subpoena powers.
But for many local agencies in the Capital Region and Hudson Valley, civilian oversight boards never became more than a talking point.
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Greene County was one of only two counties in the region whose plan explicitly called for the creation of a body to review complaints. But asked about its status five years later, County Administrator Shaun Groden said he was unfamiliar with the proposed “Community Advocate Committee.”
“If Community Advocate Committee means Police Review Board, I believe the committee did not feel that was warranted,” Groden said in an email. “The presentations by the various law enforcement agencies to the community describing operations, trainings, protocols, satisfied the membership.”
The town of Woodstock and villages of Catskill and Mamaroneck also did not establish oversight boards as proposed in their plans.
Meanwhile, in Catskill, the Village Board began to oversee complaints regarding the police department — though it has received none, Village Board President Natasha Law said.
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Although White Plains does not have a board yet, the city’s Department of Public Safety is reviewing potential guidelines for a board that “would provide service fair to both the community and the police department members,” Commissioner Wade Hardy said.
‘A thorn in our sides’
But creating a board was only the first hurdle.
Some communities struggled to get their boards operating; others failed to keep them operating, while several provide residents little indication online that civilian oversight exists at all.
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Saratoga Springs, whose police department has been criticized in recent years for its treatment of protesters, established a civilian review board in 2023. But by the time members received mediation training, their terms had expired, and new members had to be appointed. Since the board became operational last year, it has received one complaint, Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Coll said.
Since Saratoga Springs’ civilian oversight board became operational last year, it has received one complaint, Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Coll said.
Jim Franco/Times Union
New Rochelle’s civilian review board has faced similar challenges getting up and running. Established in 2024, the board didn’t hold its first meeting until this July. Initially, city officials told the local publication Talk of the Sound that the board couldn’t meet until members had been trained, but emails the publication received from a records request revealed the board could meet, just not review cases until training was complete.
Co-chairperson Damon Maher reported at the July meeting — a recording of which was uploaded to the city website — that members still had about 12 hours left of training to complete. City Manager Wilfredo Melenez did not respond to an inquiry about why the board’s training is not complete.
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One reason communities have a hard time establishing boards is due to pushback from police unions, New York Civil Liberties Union Assistant Policy Director Michael Sisitzky said. “It takes a lot of political will, sometimes political courage, to push for the establishment of these boards.”
Michael O’Mera, president of the Police Conference of New York, which represents 150 law enforcement unions comprising some 150,000 members, described civilian oversight boards as “a thorn in our sides.”
“They serve no good purpose except to inflame public sentiment against police officers,” O’Mera said. “I think they’re a detriment to good order, and they should not be empowered to oversee any police officers.”
But other law enforcement officials see the potential benefit in review boards — as long as their authority is limited.
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“Civilian review boards can be an effective tool to increase public confidence and promote transparency and accountability by providing independent oversight of police conduct,” New York State Association of Chiefs of Police Executive Director Patrick D. Phelan said in an emailed statement.
To Phelan, the best type of review board is one that maintains “professional law enforcement expertise in the investigative process,” gives officers due process, complies with labor laws and sets “appropriate limits on the board’s authority.”
Shadow boards
In some communities, boards exist on paper but can be difficult for residents to find, raising questions about how effective a civilian oversight board can be if no one knows it exists.
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Internet searches for Columbia County’s Citizen Review Panel point to a 2024 news release about the panel’s formation two years earlier, but no information about the panel appears to exist on the county’s or the sheriff’s office’s websites.
Former Hudson Police Commissioner Gary Graziano, who chairs the board, said in an emailed statement that the four-person panel has received one complaint, but it was for an outside agency. The panel handles complaints regarding the sheriff’s office, the village of Philmont and the towns of Greenport and Stockport police departments.
Similarly, no information could be found about the boards for Hoosick Falls, Windham or Port Jervis.
By contrast, all Kingston police commission meetings are livestreamed to the city’s YouTube channel. The five-person board, comprising four civilians and the mayor, has been active for at least 30 years. In addition to reviewing complaints, the board looks at every use-of-force incident and periodically reviews and updates the Kingston Police Department’s policies and procedures, Police Chief Egidio Tinti said. The police department receives about six or seven complaints per year, the majority of which are unfounded, Tinti said, or lead to the accused officer’s exoneration.
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Kingston Police Chief Egidio Tinti with Gov. Kathy Hochul during a news conference on Aug. 25 at the Capitol in Albany. Tinti said the Kingston Police Department’s policies and procedures are informed by its police commission.
Will Waldron/Times Union
In the years since George Floyd’s murder, public outcry about police misconduct has died down, and some of the boards created with the promise of holding police accountable have dissolved.
Originally established in 2003, New Paltz’s civilian police commission was disbanded in 2015 before being reconstituted in 2022. But the revival was short-lived.
In July 2025, the Town Board abolished the police commission following the advice of its attorneys. At the time, then-Town Supervisor Amanda Gotto told Hudson Valley One that the board intended to reestablish the commission and, in the interim, the Town Board would provide police oversight. In April, Town Supervisor Tim Rogers said the Town Board would serve in that capacity for six to nine months.
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In December, the Dutchess County village of Millbrook repealed its 2021 law establishing a community review board, replacing it with a personnel complaint policy drafted by Lexipol, a private company that provides state-specific policies for law enforcement. The new policy is noticeably absent from the village website, and the review board had never “been utilized,” Mayor Peter Doro said at the December meeting.
Doro and Millbrook Police Chief Keith Dworkin said they could not elaborate on what they meant by the board not being in use, as it predated their appointments.
A patchwork of laws and disappointment
For boards that made it past inception, legal battles and political pushback have left some of them unable to function as powers are stripped away and disheartened members resign in protest.
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A civilian board that oversees Albany Police Department internal affairs investigations has existed since 2000. But a law approved by city voters in 2021 empowered the board to conduct its own investigations and issue subpoenas — even if a complaint has not been filed.
Questions about the board’s autonomy began to rise when the Albany Common Council voted to make it a city agency and moved the body from the Albany Law School to the council’s chambers. The power struggle has led the board to file lawsuits against the city and pushed several board members to resign.
Resignations from frustrated board members are not uncommon, said Michael Gennaco, an attorney with OIR Group, which consults with local governments and community members on police practices and the civilian oversight of law enforcement.
“They get discouraged about what they’re able to do, and what they’re able to do isn’t much,” Gennaco said. “They start to feel like what they’re doing is just window dressing.”
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Nairobi Vives, former chair of the Albany Community Police Review Board, speaks at a news conference on April 27, 2021, about police actions against protesters who had been camping outside the South Station.
Paul Buckowski/Times Union
Frequent turnover and attrition among Albany’s nine-member board have often left it without the quorum necessary to review some complaints. The board has 120 days to review a complaint after the police department’s Office of Professional Standards finishes its review. In August, the board had 153 open complaints, nearly three-quarters of which cannot be reviewed because the 120-day window has closed.
Saratoga Springs’ review board has also struggled to maintain its independence. Coll, the public safety commissioner, recently proposed stripping the board of its subpoena powers, which he argued will “increase efficiency and effectiveness.”
But board members worry it will instead severely limit their ability to conduct independent investigations. After public pushback, Coll included a provision that the board could refer the matter to another law enforcement authority or the Saratoga County district attorney.
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Boards that lack subpoena power may have their investigations stonewalled if the police department refuses to produce records or allow officers to be interviewed, said Sisitzky, the NYCLU assistant policy director.
But members of some of the region’s longest-standing boards disagree that a more powerful board is a more effective one.
Troy’s Police Objective Review Board, first established in 1997, was defunct for several years before being reconstituted in 2021.
Troy’s board reviewed 16 cases in 2024, according to its annual report. In all but one, the board agreed with the department’s findings that the officer(s) involved should be exonerated or that the complaint was unfounded.
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“Troy does a good job in terms of making sure the punishment for the officer fits the crime — they make sure they get the training they need and get the discipline they need when there’s an incident,” Board Chair Pete McCorkle said.
Similar to Troy, Schenectady’s review board does not have investigative powers. Established in 2007, it comprises nine civilians who are nominated by community organizations. Complaints are investigated by the police department’s Office of Professional Standards and then turned over to the board for review.
Former Vice Chair Deneen Palmateer could not recall any cases in her eight years on the board in which the board believed a violation should have been sustained but was instead exonerated or considered unfounded. Instead, she said the Office of Professional Standards had actually discovered violations that weren’t in the original complaint through its investigation.
But public perception of civilian oversight boards is often that the boards should be “policing the police” or that they aren’t doing enough, Palmateer said.
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“What I’ve heard is that police just investigate themselves and we just rubber stamp it,” she said. “That couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Troy Police Objective Review Board Secretary Farrah Fiacco, an attorney, said disciplinary measures are best left to the police departments.
“I think it’s actually a problem when boards intervene and conduct their own investigations and recommend discipline,” she said. “(Collective bargaining agreements) are with unions and the municipality. Having discipline decided by a third-party board is often a violation of CBAs.”
But the contract issue is even more complex than that, Sisitzky said.
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While state Civil Service Law generally requires localities to negotiate with unions on discipline, some local governments, such as New York City, have laws predating the state law that prohibit disciplinary provisions in union contracts.
“There is a real patchwork of laws around the state that deal with how far a locality can go in setting up their rules, which makes it confusing for a town that’s interested in setting up a board,” Sisitzky said.
Despite all the legal challenges and pushback, the mission of civilian oversight boards remains important, Sisitzky said.
“Civilian oversight plays a pivotal role in shining light on misconduct and bringing transparency to police actions in communities,” he said. “Without some kind of external check, you run the risk of real abuse and misconduct being swept under the rug by police departments and other law enforcement agencies.”
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But the uphill battle, political turmoil and even legal challenges many boards face can harm their credibility with the community, especially with police departments.
“Disappointment on any effective oversight board is worse than no oversight board at all,” Gennaco said.
For Sisitzky, the imperfections of civilian oversight don’t discount the need for it.
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“We’ve seen what happens when police investigate and hold themselves accountable,” he said. “They simply don’t.”