Five Years After Police Reform Push, New York Prosecutions Remain Rare

Five years after the murder of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests and sweeping calls for police reform, a new Times Union investigation finds that significant barriers to police accountability remain in New York.

Times Union reporters Nora Mishanec and Sarah Trafton examined the work of the New York Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigation, or OSI, which investigates deaths involving police officers and people in police custody.

Over the past five years, the office has reviewed roughly 1,400 deaths. But Mishanec told Radio Catskill’s Jason Dole that prosecutions remain uncommon and investigations can take months or even years to complete.

“The big takeaway here” is that not much has changed, Mishanec said.

The investigation found that while the state created mechanisms to independently examine deaths involving law enforcement, prosecutors still face a high legal bar when deciding whether an officer’s use of force was criminally unjustified.

Mishanec said that of more than 100 cases involving situations such as fatal police shootings, vehicle incidents or the use of Tasers, 11 resulted in prosecutions and seven resulted in convictions.

A central issue is New York law governing police use of force.

Officers can argue that they used deadly force because they reasonably feared for their safety. Mishanec also noted that police officers do not have the same obligation to retreat from a confrontation that civilians may have in some situations.

That can make it difficult for prosecutors to prove that an officer’s actions crossed the line from legally justified force to a criminal act.

The Times Union investigation also focused on the families left waiting for answers.

Mishanec said some families wait years for the Attorney General’s Office to determine whether charges will be filed. When prosecutors ultimately decide not to move forward, families can be left questioning what the lengthy investigation accomplished.

Attorneys representing some families have argued that prosecutors are applying too high a standard before bringing cases forward, saying a grand jury should sometimes be allowed to determine whether charges are appropriate rather than prosecutors deciding beforehand that a case is unlikely to result in a conviction.

The issue has particular significance in the Hudson Valley, where several fatal encounters involved people experiencing mental health crises.

Mishanec discussed the case of Daniel McCalpin in Ellenville. His mother called 911 seeking a wellness check while her son was experiencing a mental health crisis.

Police and a mental health crisis team eventually attempted to take McCalpin into involuntary custody. During the encounter, McCalpin was Tasered and fell down a staircase while holding a knife. An officer then fired five shots, four of which struck him.

His mother later questioned why the encounter had escalated to deadly force.

“He needed care, instead he lost his life,” she said, according to the Times Union reporting.

Mishanec also discussed the fatal shooting of Christopher Van Cleek in Middletown.

Van Cleek had a history of mental illness, and the officer who responded had previously been called to the home and was aware of that history. Dispatchers also had an alert connected to the address warning responding officers about a possible mental health crisis.

Despite those warnings, Van Cleek was shot within seconds of the officer arriving, Mishanec said.

Cases like those have renewed questions about whether police should be the primary responders during mental health emergencies.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has previously called the legal standard for prosecuting officers accused of excessive or deadly force extremely high and has proposed changes to state law governing police use of force. Mishanec said those proposals have not gained significant momentum in the Legislature.

One area where the state is moving forward is behavioral health crisis response.

The Daniel’s Law Task Force is examining alternatives to traditional police responses during mental health emergencies. The state is also supporting pilot programs in selected municipalities aimed at creating more robust behavioral health crisis response teams.

Mishanec said the concept remains in its early stages, but the goal is to create better-trained mental health response systems that can reduce the need for police involvement during certain crises.

For families who have already lost loved ones, however, changes may feel slow.

Five years after New York responded to calls for police reform with new investigations, proposals and promises of greater accountability, the Times Union investigation suggests one of the central questions remains unresolved: how to prevent encounters with law enforcement from becoming fatal and what accountability should look like when they do.