SPD: Are You Listening to Our Community?
City Mayor and Police Chief released a statement offering a response to #8cantwait
Transparency Starts here
If the goal is transparency between the community and local government, it is important these meetings are accessible to the public.
Public Apology?
On December 16, 2020 representatives from the Black Scranton Project, Creating Change FTP, and NAACP Organizing Chapter for Lackawanna County sat down with Mayor Paige Cognetti, Police Chief Leonard Neimetka, and other employees of City government to discuss the cancelation of the “Undercover Santa Program,” development of a Citizens Review Board, and the possibility of a public apology for the racist and anti-black behavior of former SPD Officers and address the ways that racial biases are being addressed and corrected within the department. We spent about 30 minutes on the topic and felt it worth sharing. Our request for an apology is something heavily requested from city residents.
Scranton Police Department: Listening to our community -Quote Statement to Citizens & Residents of Scranton
“It is our job to listen to you and take action through better communication and continuously revisiting and revising policies and procedures.”
“It is our job to listen to you and take action through better communication and continuously revisiting and revising policies and procedures.”
Let’s make sure we hold them accountable on this.
Mayor Paige Cognetti and Police Chief Carl Graziano released a statement yesterday on June 5, 2020, offering a response to #8cantwait proposed policy reforms to reduce police violence.
The Black Scranton Project have been behind #8CantWait and did our part to urge our Mayor to enact policies that will actually reduce police violence that results in death in our major cities up to 72%.
The City of Scranton has adopted the Campaign Zero initiative which outlines 10 categories for policy change to end police violence.
The response letter includes this list of addresses that “each of these eight (8) policy elements exist within the policies and training within the Scranton Police Department. A few are defined differently, however, they mirror the context of these points”
A lot of Folx have been asking about SPD and their use body worn cameras. According to the statement: “SPD has both Body Worn Cameras (BWCs) and mobile video recorders (MVRs). MVRs are installed in all of our patrol vehicles. Those recorders automatically turn on every time the vehicles emergency lights are activated and also every time the gun release switch is activated to remove a rifle and/or shotgun from these patrol vehicles.”
The SPD says here that they “are open to exploring” this option of a Citizens Review Board (CRB) and believe that they are effective, but Chief Graziano and the SPD aren’t don’t seem to pressed on organizing a CRB because “Mostly they are in the larger metropolitan police departments because they are expensive to implement and maintain properly.”
We have it in writing, you said “our job to listen to you and take action through better communication.”
Listen…we want the CRB. We want transparency.
