Graffiti and damage along South Pearl Street in Albany Sunday May 31, 2020 after rioting Saturday night.
Mike GoodwinALBANY – City officials conceded on Thursday evening that the city’s police department may have not followed its rules when it deployed tear gas two weeks ago during violent confrontations between protesters and police, and that officers may not have been prepared for using it on residential streets.
Mayor Kathy Sheehan and Police Chief Eric Hawkins made the admission during a roughly one-hour Zoom forum with the neighborhood group A Block At a Time. The forum was billed as a discussion on how the city moves forward but much of it focused on the police department’s conduct in the recent past.
District Attorney David Soares, Common Council President Corey Ellis and Councilman Jahmel Robinson also joined the discussion.
The city was jarred when two peaceful daytime protests on May 30 and June 1 prefaced violent late-night confrontations between police and residents. City officials said protesters, some of whom they cast as agitators from outside the city, threw bricks, Molotov cocktails and fireworks at police, who responded with tear gas.
The peaceful protests before the unrest in Albany were part of a larger national backlash to police brutality, sparked by the death of George Floyd during a police confrontation with Minneapolis police on Memorial Day.
Since then, Sheehan and the Common Council have taken several steps to push for police reform, including an executive order banning chokeholds and other police tactics and proposing granting more powers to the city’s police review board.
A Block At a Time co-founder Danielle Hille, who moderated the event, asked city leaders why Albany’s protests turned violent given the department’s work toward strengthening ties with residents and other area protests didn’t.
“We by far, have worked harder in this city to change that relationship, so what happened?” she asked.
Hawkins said he spoke with Schenectady's and Troy’s police chiefs on why their cities responses were so different than Albany’s. The biggest differences were those cities had more time to prepare and their protest leaders saw what happened in Albany and made a strong effort to self-police their crowd and remove agitators early, Hawkins said.
Hawkins said the police worked with the FBI to gather intelligence ahead of the May 30 protest and none of their information indicated it would be a violent protest. In fact, the first protest that day was peaceful, and police did have lines of communication with protest leaders. But that evening, a group of protesters broke off and headed toward South Station, which eventually devolved to the point where protesters lit fires, broke into businesses and assaulted police officers, Hawkins said.
That group in the evening of May 30 had no clear leaders for police to work with to pacify the crowd, he said. During Troy’s protest, organizers had people who removed anyone who tried to agitate the crowd.
“We didn’t have that luxury of having that in our city,” he said.
Hawkins called the violence and damage in the city a, “unprecedented type of event” and that the department was still working through its after-action reports to determine how it could learn from them.
“Considering the circumstances, our officers did a great job,” he said.
Hawkins also explained how and when the department can use tear gas, which he said is limited to either when officers are being assaulted or there is imminent danger to private property or residents. The other option was to send officers directly into the crowd to confront them, which would have possibly jeopardized officers and protestors’ safety, he said.
“The use of tear gas during the demonstrations we had was not deployed until officers were under assault from members in the crowd,” he said. “If someone is actively assaulting police officers … our goal is to stop that threat.”
Hawkins did not give specifics in many of his answers, including who had directly authorized the use of tear gas on either night. Hawkins was not in the city when Saturday’s violence erupted. But he said he had discussions with command staff on the use of tear gas and understood residents’ concerns about using tear gas in their neighborhoods.
“My direction going forward is that it is to be used only under very, very narrow circumstances where there is an imminent physical threat to officers or members of the public,” he said.
Sheehan said she had heard calls for banning the police department from using tear gas again, as other cities have but noted even those cities are still allowing it to be used in narrow circumstances. She said she understood the pain its use caused residents, recalling meeting a woman on Central Avenue after a June 1 protest turned in to a second violent night. The woman had been forced to take her five children to her sister’s house because her house had filled with tear gas.
“I’m confident that this command staff understands, that after reviewing where tear gas was deployed in some places on Monday night as well as on Saturday night that we have to do better for our residents,” she said. “I feel confident they understand we let people down.”
Councilman Robinson, who was among several council members in the protests who was tear-gassed, tried pressing Hawkins on why the city had not provided ambulances to give medical assistance for anyone overcome by the gas. That directive is part of the city’s use of force policy when it comes to tear gas. He also asked if the city police department could work with community leaders to help them alert residents in their homes before the gas is used so they can close their windows.
“I think the policy around tear gas usage has to be much stronger before it is used,” he said.
But Hawkins indicated the department, which regularly deals with protests around the state capitol, was not fully prepared to deal with a protest turning violent in city neighborhoods and was looking at additional safeguards if it had to use tear gas again.
“This is something that was new to the Albany Police Department,” he said. “We had some unprecedented events that required some tactics that hadn’t been used before. And so now we understand the impact and there needs to be some other safeguards and controls.”
Hille also brought up an accusation that police officers shot tear gas down an empty street in Arbor Hill, gassing residents who were sleeping in their homes. She said the gas entered her home a block away from where it was dropped.
Hawkins did not directly confirm or deny whether that had happened but said officers are not directed or trained to do that.
“There should not have been any tear gas deployments on any unoccupied streets or in an area where there wasn’t an imminent threat,” he said.
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Did tear gas use in Albany breach police rules? Sheehan and Hawkins concede it may have - Times Union
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