Documents provide new details regarding the partnership between the City of Ithaca, Tompkins County & Center For Policing Equity (CPE) on Reimagining Public Safety (RPS.)
‘Center for Policing Equity’s Scope of Work for the City of Ithaca Public Safety Redesign,’ signed by then-Mayor Svante Myrick & CPE co-founder Tracie Keesee, delineated CPE’s role into ‘Working Group Operations,’ ‘Administrative’ & ‘Project Design.’
Among CPE’s Administrative responsibilities was ‘Distribution and collection of Non-disclosures from CPE and Working Group members.’
A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is defined by Cornell Law School as “an agreement in contract law that certain information will remain confidential. As such, an NDA binds a person who has signed it and prevents them from discussing any information included in the contract with any non-authorized party.”
City of Ithaca Chief of Staff Faith Vavra and City of Ithaca Human Resources Director Schelley Michell-Nunn received email invitations to a February 10th, 2022 ‘RPS Working Group – Meeting.’ The invitation indicated that the meetings were recurring on a biweekly basis.
Eleven members of Center For Police Equity were invited to attend the meeting, including Joshua Young, Michelle Stack, Atiba Goff, Hans Menos, Lillian Hua, Lydia Imani, Niles Wilson, Price Nyland, Rob Kenter, Tomasa Aponte and Tracie Keesee.
Sarah Tofte and Nasir Husain of Understory.info were also invited to attend. Understory is a research and policy consulting firm.
The invitation and list of attendees for the February 10th, 2022 meeting is similar to the one accidentally sent to Common Councilperson Cynthia Brock by Community Justice Center Director Monalita Smiley on April 29th, 2022 for a meeting scheduled on May 2nd, 2022.
This mistaken invitation and unanswered questions surrounding the meetings would go on to form one of the underpinnings of Brock’s ethics complaint.
Brock, having received the meeting invitation by accident, asked acting mayor Lewis and City Attorney Aaron ‘Ari’ Levine to explain the purpose and role of CPE in the meetings.
Brock received a response from acting mayor Laura Lewis early the next morning, just before 8 AM on a Saturday.
In that email, Lewis states she decided Wednesday the 27th, two days before the invitation was sent to Brock, “that the City will not participate in any meetings with CPE in the coming weeks, as we evaluate the City’s future, if any, with CPE.”
Brock responded to Lewis about an hour later thanking her for the response, while noting it was inadequate to satisfy her questions.
Attendees and invitees for the May 2nd ‘RPS Collective Weekly Project Management Meeting’ included eight members of Center For Policing Equity. They include Tracie Keesee, Hans Manos, Rob Kentner, Lydia Imani, Lillian Hua, Emma Decker, Paula Ioanide and Sean Eldrige.
Also sent the meeting invitation or listed as attending on the agenda were City of Ithaca employees Jennifer Greenawalt, Schelley Michell-Nunn, Faith Vavra, Melody Farady as well as acting mayor Laura Lewis.
Tompkins County was to be represented in the meeting by now former Chief Equity and Diversity officer Deanna Carrithers, Community Justice Center Director Monalita Smiley, Tompkins County Communications Director Dominick Recckio, in addition to Tompkins County legislators Travis Brooks and Shawna Black.
Page 5 of Brock’s ethics complaint states that when the Ithaca Common Council raised concerns regarding CPE’s involvement, they were “informed by Myrick that CPE’s role was to be strictly administrative.”
Former mayor Myrick’s People For The American Way is promoting a “handbook” for elected officials giving guidance on addressing police accountability and stopping police violence.
“All Safe: Transforming Public Safety” is a 209 page report that cites Ithaca among “Models for Systemic Restructuring,” and cites “The successful reform efforts in Ithaca” as a model for other communities to emulate.
The report states, “The goal of All Safe: Transforming Public Safety is to provide concrete policy proposals for the transformation and implementation of public safety programs at the local level.”
Common Councilperson George McGonigal was recently appointed to lead a new ‘Reimagining Public Safety Special Committee.’
The new committee will be open to public participation and subject to records disclosure.
The original ‘Reimagining Public Safety Working Group’ functioned as a ‘Task Force’ and was not subject to public records disclosure or public participation.
“I think that’s what the problem was originally,” Ithaca Community Police Board Chair Shirley Kane said at the board’s August meeting. “That group is in secret, and they were just making all kinds of decisions and choices without the folks that are going to be actually doing the work. There was no real engagement.”
“It sounds like the committee, this committee partly is to try to attempt to rectify some of the mistakes that might have occurred in the last review session or so. But is that going to be the same situation in the future? Is there going to be another committee in the spring if they look to correct a particular, you know, some sort of direction from the past?” Ithaca Community Police Board member Richard Onyejuruwa asked at the meeting. “How is this a sustaining endeavor?”
Police board member Michael Simons expressed gratitude for the new committee. “I was appreciative of the attempt to kind of clean up the mess that..that the process had created. Particularly with transparency about; let’s involve more people and let’s look at data. Let’s look at the situation. What’s actually happening. Which I found completely lacking from the big process, the secret process that was going on.”
“I think most people probably read my op-ed that I put out in April talking about the Ithaca Police Department Reimagining Plan, and lamenting not being involved in that despite my efforts to be involved, ” Tompkins County District Attorney Matt Van Houten said at the August County Public Safety meeting. “I was just asked by a journalist, or media member today, ‘Hey, since that date, has anybody circled back with you and included you and gotten your perspective?’ and I had to answer, “No.”
“Although I do think that now that the city has a new panel that George McGonigal is the chair of that, that maybe he’ll want me involved. I know he did before,” Van Houten concluded.
“When the recommendations came out, a lot of them were a complete shock to me. And I wasn’t involved in conversations surrounding them,” Tompkins County Sheriff Derek Osborne said.
Further document releases are expected following the next meeting of the Tompkins County Ethics Advisory Board inquiry into Reimagining Public Safety on September 12th at 11 AM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article attributed a quote from Ithaca Community Police Board Chair Shirley Kane to a Vickie Rogers, who is not on the police board.