We call upon Mayor Jennings, the Search Committee, and the Common Council to: • Ensure that Albany’s next Police Chief is an individual who throughout his/her career has demonstrated the belief that the life of each citizen is as valuable as any other, regardless of race or socioeconomic status. • Ensure that the next Chief is deeply committed to Community Policing and ready to work with all communities as equal partners in the continuous process of developing a comprehensive public safety strategy. We advocate for the following policies in creating successful Community Policing: assign community beat cops throughout all urban neighborhoods in the city; utilize curriculum to promote community/police forums facilitating dialogue and mutual respect, as well as using other resources to retrain beat cops and all officers in Community Policing; implement an Albany Police Department (APD) pay structure compensating police officers for excellence in Community Policing and peace-keeping as their primary responsibilities; create APD programs and performance targets to aggressively recruit inner city youth to become Albany police officers. More important than any of these individual recommendations, we must ensure that the next Police Chief is fully committed to working with communities to revitalize trust and partnership between neighborhoods and their police officers. Empty promises concerning such initiatives would be an unacceptable failure to the citizens of Albany.

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