On July 8, 2020, following months of contentious public debate, the Kingston Common Council unanimously passed Resolution 116: “Authorizing the Adopting of Guide Lines and Practices for Police Accountability Process and Community Representation on the Police Commission of Kingston, New York.” The resolution including a sweeping overhaul of the bylaws governing the city’s four-member Police Commission which oversees and provides policy guidance to the Kingston Police Department.

Hailed by Mayor Steve Noble and councilmembers as the start of a new era in local policing, the bylaws offered a streamlined process for civilian complaints, mandated routine review of all use-of-force incidents and barred current or former members of law enforcement and their family members from serving on the commission. The new bylaws also gave the Common Council a role in appointing members to the commission and included provisions to improve its transparency.

Two and a half years later, on Feb. 15, 2023, the commission quietly voted to amend the bylaws to loosen restrictions on people with connections to law enforcement serving on the commission and to enact new guidelines for reporting use-of-force investigations. The changes, put forth by Noble, who serves as chair of the Police Commission, were made with no discussion, no public comment and no vote by the Common Council.

The reason the commission was able to unilaterally alter the bylaws is a point that was lost on many members of the public back in 2020 — the new rules for the commission were simply guidelines, lacked the force of law and could be amended or ignored at will by the current or any future mayor.

“There’s nothing illegal about it,” said Common Council President Andrea Shaut of Noble’s move to change the commission rules without seeking approval from lawmakers. “That document doesn’t have any teeth.”

Those guidelines lack the force of law because they are superseded by the City Charter, which gives the mayor exclusive authority over appointments to city boards and commissions. To become a binding document, the commission rules would require amending the charter, a laborious process that must be approved in a public referendum. Shaut said many members of the public seemed unaware of that distinction amid an intense community conversation around race and policing following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. Indeed, in the July 2020 zoom meeting where Resolution 116 was approved several lawmakers refer to the document as “legislation” — signaling that it represented an actual law rather than a non-binding resolution.

“One of the reasons [Resolution 116] didn’t pass more quickly was because it didn’t have anything concrete that we could stand behind,” recalled Shaut. “And that’s unfortunate because it gives the impression that it does something that it really doesn’t do. It gives false hope.”

Minya DeJohnette is a former member of the Police Commission who worked on the changes to the board’s bylaws. DeJohnette said she believes the confusion over the meaning of Resolution 116 was compounded by the intense atmosphere in the summer of 2020, as large and sometimes violent protests over Floyd’s murder swept the nation and put elected officials under pressure to address systemic racism in policing. Locally, protests remained peaceful but activist group Rise Up Kingston ramped up a two-year long campaign to address alleged racism in the KPD. The group was vocal in pushing for Resolution 116 and found Noble receptive to the plan.

“The pressure from Rise Up was so great that the mayor wanted to present it as a law,” said DeJohnette. “Between Rise Up and the mayor continually saying legislation, legislation it got into people’s heads that this was a law, and that was misinformation.”

Later that year, DeJohnette served on a task force appointed by Noble in response to an executive order from then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo directing communities statewide to study and come up with plans to combat systemic racism and excessive force in policing. In her report to the task force, DeJohnette pointed out the toothlessness of the resolution and recommended going through the process to add the reforms to the City Charter. Her proposal was included in an outline of the task force’s final report but never made it into the main body of the text.

“The stability of the guidelines is dependent on the current mayor; a newly elected mayor, if they chose to do so, could rescind the guidelines,” DeJohnette wrote. “A more permanent solution would be adding them to the charter, if they pass the vote it will ensure that they continue to be the baseline that the Commission abides by.”