Editor's note: Several of the seven people now incarcerated at Auburn Correctional Facility who were interviewed requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation. Several family members requested anonymity as well. AUBURN, N.Y. — In late May came the news from Albany: The first day of family visits — suspended due to COVID-19 — would be pushed to August. Cliff Graham, an inmate at Auburn Correctional Facility, an all-men’s maximum security prison, saw the memo, typed a message on his tablet and waited in his cell for his 15 daily minutes of Wi-Fi.
For two months he had been confined to a cell for at least 22 hours a day. There were no more Alcoholics Anonymous courses.
AUBURN, New York — On the day she would see her father for the first time in nearly five months as he bounced among three maximum-security prisons, Julianna Bundschuh, 5, hung on the metal fence of Auburn Correctional Facility as if it were at a playground. Near her stood Kristina Abell, who arrived first at 7 a.m. Wednesday with eight boxes of food for her son. Behind Abell was a woman named Courtney who didn’t want to give her last name. She came to see her fiance and was wondering how long these visits would last. None had seen their loved ones since mid-March, when state-run prisons across New York suspended visitation due to coronavirus.
SCHENECTADY, New York — After an arrest that thrust the Schenectady Police Department into the national spotlight due to another knee-to-head chokehold on a person of color, the front steps of City Hall became the backdrop for the two different responses that would follow. Schenectady NAACP President Odo Butler called for outrage to turn into policy shifts on July 11, standing next to Police Chief Eric Clifford. He was echoing a familiar sentiment in the small city of 65,000, separated from Manhattan by nearly three hours of suburban highway along the Hudson River. Clifford had already approved five preliminary police reforms days before.
Two days later, dozens of protesters from the activist group All of Us marched up those steps and blocked all entrances to City Hall. The group had its own 13 demands, garnered through community input.
NEW YORK — The Alliance of Families for Justice revealed a yearlong project on Wednesday, aimed at educating those who are incarcerated or have incarcerated family members on the importance of voting. Over the last year, the organization partnered with The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP)’s Making Policy Public project to create a large foldout poster.
“When you receive our poster, you'll see that we focus on all aspects of the elimination of felony disenfranchisement so that someone's engagement with the criminal justice system should have no bearing on whether or not they get to exercise the franchise,” said Alliance Executive Director Soffiya Elijah.
The Alliance of Families for Justice (AFJ), which works to end human rights violations inside prisons and jails and build communities and families who are affected, worked with graphic designers Tahnee Pantig and her teammate to create the poster.
The poster’s design is intentionally different from the way anti-mass incarceration and social justice work are usually shown, Pantig said. “Like a lot of the images that we see, representing these communities are often shown from a light that can be very dark, very oppressive, and also one-sided, and we thought it was really important to demonstrate the resiliency, the agency, the activeness of these communities, that is already there,” she said. The designers also wanted the communities to see themselves in the illustrations.
Elijah said the organization made 20,000 posters and hopes to share them across the state.
AFJ has a multilayered plan to challenge felony disenfranchisement, she said, beginning with getting family members impacted by disenfranchisement registered to vote. Parolees in New York state, through an executive order by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, can now register and vote.
NEW YORK — After a viral video surfaced showing plainclothes NYPD detectives forcing an anti-police protester into an unmarked police van, questions remain about why they were allowed to make the arrest. The protester, Nikki Stone, 18, was arrested and given a summons early Wednesday morning after New York Police Department officials alleged she damaged five police cameras at City Hall during demonstrations over the last several weeks.
An NYPD spokesperson also said Stone and others allegedly threw rocks and bottles at police during the arrest, though this was not immediately evident from video at the scene. The warrant squad who arrested Stone is supposed to only respond when an individual has active bench warrants against them for incidents like missing a court date. In this case it remains unclear whether Stone had active warrants. The squad has reportedly targeted protesters in the past, and those most intimately familiar with their tactics said the Stone arrest marks a frightening turning point for detectives.
NEW YORK — NYPD officers clashed violently with protestors again Tuesday night, this time in Madison Square Park in Manhattan, leaving one woman to be taken to jail in an unmarked police vehicle and six others in a transport van. The clashes came a week after New York Police Department officers destroyed a protest encampment at City Hall in New York in the predawn hours. Protests in the city and across the country have reignited as images of federal officers battling with protesters in Portland, Oregon have gripped the nation.
Video shot at the march shows police beating protesters with batons and an unidentified woman being thrown into a silver unmarked van by people who said they were police.
The video, posted to Instagram, shows people believed to be NYPD officers, though they weren’t wearing uniforms, pulling a woman into a tan minivan with New York license plates before speeding off. The sudden hustling of a protester into an unmarked car drew comparisons to the melee in Portland where federal officers without clear identification grab people off the street and toss them into cars. Uniformed bike officers with the NYPD created a wall around the van as if to provide assistance.
NEW YORK — Jumaane Williams, New York City’s public advocate, announced his proposal for curbing gun violence in the five boroughs after a week of at least 64 shootings. Only 20 were reported for the same week in 2019. Williams unveiled his ideas in a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea on Friday. Putting into place CompStat, the New York Police Department’s statistical data tool and a new “Advance Peace” crisis management system were at the top of his list. He also called for changes to the police department’s responses right away but the timeline was unclear.
New York state lawmakers and justice reform advocates are trying to end formal prosecution for all children under the age of 12, in a measure that would steer them toward county-based social services. The bill, sponsored by state Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee and state Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, both Democrats, would raise the minimum age requirement for juvenile delinquency from 7 to 12. This age range made up about 2-4% of the state’s incarcerated population from 2014-18, according to state data. (Twelve-year-olds would still be eligible for juvenile delinquency status under the bill.)
The Legal Aid Society, the Children’s Defense Fund and other advocacy groups helped draft the legislation as part of a New York state black youth agenda, unveiled Tuesday. The three measures in the agenda would regulate how law enforcement agencies can search and charge youth across the state.
ALBANY, N.Y. —A makeshift cemetery created outside the New York State Capitol building was the backdrop to a last-ditch overnight demonstration to push for three longshot criminal justice bills organizers helped write. Organizers for Release Aging People from Prison (RAPP) and the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (#Haltsolitary) had worked on three bills that focused on solitary confinement, paroling certain elderly inmates and changing parole criteria.
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — By 9:10 p.m. the only sound audible between protesters’ chants was the distant buzz of two drones high above City Hall on Monday. One belonged to the Schenectady Police Department (SPD), which monitored over 100 protesters who had locked arms at the intersection of Clinton and Liberty streets. The other belonged to a local photographer who had joined the protest, and monitored the police presence in the surrounding blocks. As Monday night turned to Tuesday morning, the crowd, which had occupied the City Hall area and the surrounding streets for nine hours, prepared for police to come after them. Some wore vests that could stop rubber bullets, others long pants to protect against tear gas.
