Community Police Board Discuss Crisis Response Team

By Matt Dougherty

During the February 22 meeting of the Community Police Board, Shirley Kane was re-appointed as the chairwoman of the board.

Following Kane’s appointment, Common Council member George McGonigal updated the CPB on the work of the reimagining public safety committee, which he said should be done with their final report which will be presented to the Common Council in April.

When asked if the reimagining public safety committee report would be data driven, McGonigal said “I would say no because it’s about recommendations. Certainly some of the recommendations are to collect more data…but the report itself I would say is not based on any data.”

Kane followed up by asking McGonigal to explain what parts of the “Rochester Model” the committee is considering. The Rochester Model has been developed as part of the city of Rochester’s attempt at improving relationships between the police and minoritized communities. It involves a separate department of unarmed responders that work closely with the police but are not housed within the police department responding to situations that don’t call for an armed response. In Rochester, the department is housed within Parks and Recreation.

McGonigal said that the exact Rochester Model “won’t happen here” but that the city is looking at doing something similar by focusing on creating a “crisis response team.”

While the Rochester model calls for the unarmed department to respond instead of the police, Ithaca’s crisis response team model calls for unarmed responders and police to respond to the scene together.

“It hasn’t been totally decided whether these people will be trained social workers,” said McGonigal. He continued saying that there are other ideas to hire people with “lived experience and people who may or may not be interested in becoming police officers” from within the community.

According to McGonigal, “if it’s clearly a non-violent situation that does not require continuing police presence the IPD officer can leave and the crisis response person can stay at the scene and help the victim connect with other social services they might need.”

Current Acting Chief of Police John Joly has told the reimagining committee that one of the things that crisis response teams can help with is doing follow up calls because IPD is so short staffed.

McGonigal said that the crisis response team will initially be a pilot program that will begin with three to five responders “depending on what gets budgeted for it.” He continued saying that the committee hopes the crisis response team “will not be housed within IPD” and that they’re thinking about housing the unit at GIAC.

However, Community Police Board member Shari Korthuis questioned whether or not it was a smart decision to house units separately if they’re going to be responding to calls together anyway.

McGonigal responded saying that the city’s exploring, building a new public safety building and when that happens both units could potentially be housed in the same building.

“It’s my understanding that there is no room to put [unarmed responders] at IPD and there’s no more room left in City Hall really,” said McGonigal.

Kane also said that a location in Ithaca’s West End should be considered for the future station of the unarmed responders.

Continued on Page 15

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X Local artist William Deats will be hosting a painting exhibition at the Ithaca Bakery located within the Triphammer Marketplace on Wednesday, March 8th, from 1:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. The exhibition will be open to the public for the entire month of March.

X In other news: Viva Taqueria & Cantina is moving across the intersection! After 28 years on the NE corner of

State & Aurora in Downtown Ithaca, Viva is relocating to the SW corner, into the space that was formerly Pasta Vitto and Madeline’s. Viva will be operating in its current location until later this spring and is open Tuesday thru Thursday 12-8 and Friday and Saturday 12-9.

Viva Taqueria opened as a small burrito shop on the corner in July of 1995 and has grown along with Downtown Ithaca and

“restaurant row”. The past 3 years have been turbulent for restaurants and the people that work in them. The restaurant industry has evolved and Viva must also.

We will miss the sunny side of the street. Moving allows us to have room to grow. We are excited for the future in our new location so we can continue to serve fresh healthy Mexican food and margaritas in downtown Ithaca.

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