Black community leaders, including the Ulster County Commissioner of Human Rights, a former police commission member and a pastor who has worked to improve relations between the community and law enforcement, appeared before the Kingston Police Commission this week to implore them not to promote a KPD officer to the rank of detective sergeant. The delegation did not name the officer publicly but offered commissioners a damning assessment of his legacy on the streets of Kingston, one that one speaker likened to the 2001 corrupt cop drama Training Day.

The unusual public comment on what is usually a routine discussion among Police Commission Chair Mayor Steve Noble and the panel’s three commissioners happened Wednesday as the body met for closed-door interviews with four candidates for the detective sergeant’s job. Prior to the interviews, half a dozen speakers addressed the commission with several expressing shock that the officer in question was even considered for the supervisory role.

“It’s such a smack in the community’s face,” said Ulster County Human Rights Commissioner Tyrone Wilson. “It’s such a smack in law enforcement's face to even consider this.”

The allegations leveled at the unnamed officer go back years, speakers, said and include sexual misconduct, brutality, drunk driving and more. Former police commissioner Minya DeJohnette said that during her time on the body the same officer’s name, and the same ugly stories, came up repeatedly.

“I don’t have proof of any of those things,” conceded DeJohnette. “But I do have a consistency over and over and over again that I didn’t hear about any other officer, and that is something you have to listen to after a certain point.”

The Rev. G. Modele Clarke said he began holding police-community forums at New Progressive Baptist Church back in 2016 partially in response to complaints about the officer’s conduct from parishioners. Clarke added that he felt intimidated when, in response to the meetings, the officer in question and another city cop showed up at his home — armed and on duty — to make the case that the complaints against him were either false or blown out of proportion.

“I said to myself how can this be true, this is Kingston?” recalled Clarke of the stories he heard from church members. “This was like something you would see on TV.”

All of the speakers said that they saw real progress in rebuilding trust between the city’s Black community and the KPD in the years since Mayor Steve Noble announced that the department would focus on “community policing” by instituting foot patrols and working to establish friendly relations between cops and residents. Several said they see hope in a new generation of young Kingston cops who shared their belief in equitable policing.

But Monique Tinsley, who criticized a couple of the officers on the promotion list as representing an older, more hard-edged policing model, said all of that progress would be endangered if the commission chose to promote an officer whose name in Kingston’s Black community is synonymous with brutality and injustice.

“We have been trying diligently in this community to make a brand-new day, a brand-new life and get away from how things are,” said Tinsley. “And I think that you would be doing this community a disservice by giving him this promotion.”

Following the public comments, commissioners entered a closed executive session to interview all four candidates for the detective sergeant’s post before deciding on Patrol Division veteran Andrew Zell. On Thursday, Clarke confirmed that Zell was not the officer addressed by the speakers at the commission meeting.