[JK: I am currently working on a post detailing the report by the law firm that carried out the independent investigation of the Saratoga County pandemic raise debacle. In contrast to the endless testimonials at the August 18, 2020, meeting praising the “genius and dedication” of County Administrator Hellwig, the details of the report paint a picture of a simply stunningly inept administration ignorant or oblivious of state law and incoherent in their stumbling and often contradictory policies. I found it quite amazing to the point of embarrassing that the Supervisors who supported Hellwig at this meeting would publicly proclaim that they found nothing in the report of any consequence. God help this county!]
[Correction: The original article an inaccuracy. The original resolution to terminate Hellwig was made by Todd Kusnierz.]
At the August 18, 2020, meeting of the Saratoga County Board of Supervisors a resolution was put forward by Moreau Supervisor Todd Kusnierz to in effect terminate County Administrator Spenser Hellwig.
Hellwig is an “at-will” employee. Theoretically that means he can be terminated at the simple discretion of his employer which in this case is the Board of Supervisors. In our litigious age that does not mean that an employee cannot challenge the decision in court. Hellwig has worked for Saratoga County for some thirty-two years so it is reasonable that a court would give any appeal from him a sympathetic ear.
The resolution offered by Schopf was brief. It offered no particulars as to why Hellwig should be terminated. The apparent assumption was that as an at-will employee, it was not necessary. The resolution’s supporters assumed that the devastating, independent report on the pandemic raise debacle proved their case and that nothing more was needed. It appeared to me that they assumed that arguing over the contents of the report would simply involve them in endless argument. During the very long meeting, they refused to discuss the particulars as to why Hellwig should be fired.
What ensued was an ordeal of blather. In terms of the numbers of Supervisors present, supporters of the resolution were in the minority. There were about seven of them as compared to sixteen defenders of Hellwig. Due to the weighted vote system, however, it appeared that the supporters of the resolution had the votes originally.
What followed were hours of chaos as Hellwig’s allies challenged the resolution’s supporters to explain why their Administrator should be fired. This loyal blogger had to endure hours of these people going on about how cruel and unfair it was to fire a dedicated employee who had served the county brilliantly. They berated the resolution’s supporters for their unwillingness to explain why this man who they described in saintly terms should be fired without due process [JK: A process for “at will” employees that was never described]. The Board of Supervisors has a rule meant to limit the time individuals can speak on any resolution. This time limit was simply ignored by the Chair in spite of protestations from Hellwig’s critics. Basically Hellwig’s supporters took up about eighty-five percent of the talking time.
The meeting was as poorly run as the County. It was not surprising because the meeting was chaired by Preston Allen, the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors. This whole mess happened on his watch. Because the County has a weighted vote system it can create a very distorted picture. It only takes seven supervisors from the municipalities with the greatest populations to form a majority even though there are twenty-three supervisors. So the dynamic was sixteen Supervisors berating seven Supervisors. They accused the supporters of the resolution as playing politics. As they are pretty much all Republicans, this seemed like a very strange attack but logic and prudence were not in evidence at the meeting.
In the end a committee was set up with half being supporters of the resolution and half being opponents to review Hellwig and come back with recommendations.
Our own Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner is a co-sponsor of the bill that would institute this regulation . The bill is being promoted by the salon trainer industry which would greatly benefit from those who wash hair having to attend their schools to get certification.
Todd Garafano served as president of the Saratoga Convention and Tourism Board (rebranded as Discover Saratoga) before becoming the executive director of the Salon & Spa Professionals of NYS, a nonprofit representing cosmetology schools that would benefit from this new law. Garafano’s wife, Hollene, previously served as a director of the organization.
Significantly, Todd Garafano’s son, Chris Garafano, is Assemblywoman Woerner’s legislative director.
In tempered and lawyerly prose the law firm Jones, Hacker, Murphy. LLP paints a picture of Saratoga County management as oblivious or indifferent to state law and acting unchecked beyond their legal authority. It describes bumbling administrators oblivious to the need for essential record keeping. It raises serious questions about the credibility of statements made by County Administrator Spencer Hellwig and Human Resources Director Margaret McNamara.
The report was commissioned by the County under pressure by a group of insurgent Supervisors. The report was delivered to the County on August 6 and distributed to the Supervisors on August 7. The document was drafted by the law firm as a “privileged and confidential document” and Supervisors were advised by Preston Allen, the Chairman of the Board, that it should remain internal until the Board decided otherwise.
At its August meeting the clique that has basically run the County as a fiefdom argued vigorously to withhold the report from the public. The County has a voting system where the votes of Supervisors from the more populated municipalities carry more weight. It became clear that the insurgents had the votes to approve its release and in the end the vote to release the report was unanimous.
In its executive summary the law firm warned:
The report confidentially discusses some potential exposures under the New York Labor Law, and it would be highly irresponsible for any one person, acting unilaterally, to break the privilege attached to this discussion without action by the board as a body.
External Report
Nevertheless, the report in its original and unredacted form was leaked. It has been circulated and this post is based on the full original report.
In a subsequent post I will be discussing in detail the report’s specifics. They are really quite extraordinary, but for the purpose of this post, I will just summarize the findings.
On Sunday, March 15, 2020, County Administer Spencer Hellwig and Human Resource Director, Margaret McNamara convened a special meeting of department heads. At this meeting they announced that all employees operating on site (as compared to remotely) would be paid time and a half for their regular hours. Referencing New York State Municipal Law, the report asserts that “Neither the County Administrator nor the Human Resources Director had legal authority to announce additional compensation on March 15.”
The five member Covid 19 Oversight Group was created by resolution by the Board of Supervisors and empowered to determine staffing and wages independent of the Board. According to the report, this committee “…was a ‘public body’ within the meaning of the New York Open Meetings Law.” This meant that their meetings were required to be:
Open to the public
Properly noticed to the public
Contemporaneous minutes of the meetings were required
The report notes:
In fact, the meetings were held in private, and there are no minutes, or any other record, of business conducted during the meetings.
External Report
In fact, according to the report, all of the members of the committee told the investigator that they didn’t even keep any notes at the meetings.
[JK: In a later blog I will go into this in more detail but I wrote to all the members of the Board and their Attorney way back on April 1 that they were violating the Open Meetings Law to no avail.]
The Human Resources Director Margaret McNamara is considered to be a “County Officer” and “…as a matter of law, changes in her compensation require local law amendments subject to permissive referendum.” She along with quite a few others are considered “officers” and should not have received these time and a half raises because of their special status and yet checks were issued to these “officers.” Ms. McNamara asserted that her receiving the money was a clerical error but the investigator reported on evidence that raised doubts about her claim. She subsequently returned the money making the issue mute. As I will describe in a future post, the handling of her pay and her memory of events raised additional issues.
The COVID Oversight Group claimed that they decided to reverse the time-and-a-half payments at a meeting on March 19:
The group says it made the decision during a meeting on March 19, but there is no contemporaneous documentation of the decision, and the first public notice of it did not materialize until March 31. In the intervening period there were internal and external communications by some County personnel which are inconsistent, and justify confusion about whether this change was definitively adopted on March 19, or sometime later in the affected pay period. Some evidence strongly argues that this decision was not definitively reached until after March 19, or at the very least the decision remained largely unknown until well after March 19.
[Later in the paragraph]
Consequently, there is some risk of exposure to unpaid wage claims under the New York State Labor Law, by employees who might assert that they had already earned the extra pay for that period by the time the County announced that it was ending.
External Report
So the report appears skeptical of statements made by the members of the COVID Oversight Group. As the Group met in private and without minutes or notes the members of the group offered a variety of explanations meant to establish that they made the decision on March 19. The investigator found that many of these explanations did not stand up under scrutiny [JK: This will be explored further in a later post]. This takes on greater importance because if they did not advise employees that the policy had been discontinued they created serious legal liabilities for the County.
This issue is quite important. When they decided to reverse the decision and to recapture the money retroactively, they failed to follow New York State Labor Law which involved timely notices to employees and an appeal process. The failure to have followed these procedures makes the County particularly vulnerable. The investigator noted that many of the department heads claimed that they did not want the money. The problem is that no records were kept of any of this so it is unclear how many County employees have potential legal options to receive the recovered wages.
With a six year statute of limitations for employees to file claims for underpayment of wages, there is a lingering possibility aggrieved employees could assert claims for unpaid time and a half for the March 20-April 2 pay period. Margaret McNamara’s alleged oral notice of the change to the unions on or about March 19 is undocumented and too contestable for us to give it much credit for the purposes of mitigating potential liability.
External Report
As interesting as this general summary may be, it is the details of how management tried to explain all of this as compared to the record that makes really interesting reading.
It will take me a while to compile all of this as the reports runs some one hundred and eleven pages.
What it exposes is the utter ignorance by County Administrator Hellwig and, I assume, County Attorney Dorsey of New York State Law regarding the limits of authority of the County Administration. Aside from the ethics of open government, the failure to even keep proper records at all is simply stunning. There is also the issue of the Human Resources Director’s apparent ignorance of New York State Labor Law.
The overall impression this report creates is of a kind of small club of insiders that became untethered to the laws and management principles that insure the integrity of public institutions.
This blog has written a number of stories about past incidents of mismanagement and self dealing at the County. What this report exposes in terms of ineptitude is chilling. One has to wonder what a thorough audit of the County would uncover.
I have received a number of emails about my last post from the students campaigning to have two Skidmore faculty members fired.
They were quite upset and indignant that I had not redacted all their names and monikers from the Instagram postings I published.
Apparently when you publish something on Instagram, the name of the individual posting (or their on-line moniker) appears in the upper left of their document.
I had overlooked the actual name of one of the authors of two posts. As a courtesy I redacted that person’s name.
In the other cases where those complaining had posted using aliases I made no changes.
The persons making these demands emailed me through the WordPress web program I use. I would not characterize the emails I have received as a charm campaign. One of them advised me that he would be consulting a lawyer regarding the matter.
All of them asserted that I was violating their privacy and that I was putting them in danger. The implication being I guess that someone from the right might be motivated to hurt them.
It seems odd to me that they should be so insistent on anonymity. The documents I published that included their names or their aliases are already on the web and available to anyone with a computer. I do not see myself as “outing” them. In the case of actual names, I redacted as a courtesy because I was hoping that on reflection they might reconsider the wisdom of both the purpose of their campaign (the firing of faculty based on simply attending a rally) and the manner by which they are running their campaign (it includes information that is demonstrably untrue).
There are a number of things striking about their emails to me. The first is the presumption that they can order me to remove their names.
Given the tone of their Instagram posts, I would have thought that they would be proud to have their names associated with their remarks. I am also surprised at their claim that having their names or monikers appear on the blog is suddenly a cause for fear. After all, they have already put their names out on the web in spite of the fact that they apparently believe that publicly taking on what they see as the alt-right may put them in danger. I am unclear why my posting should significantly increase the risk, if any, that they have already willingly taken on.
Ironically they have not been reluctant to post the names and pictures of their faculty targets. They attempted to get the faculty members’ names up on my blog by emailing them in a comment they wanted posted (I didn’t). They have broadcast where their targets work, and most importantly, they have contacted the employer of their targets and asked that the two be fired. They seem oblivious to the contradictions between their demands for privacy and safety for themselves and the real dangers they are willing to create for others.
Rethinking What All This Is About
It is disturbing how many of the letters and documents created and passed along on social media by these students contained allegations that are demonstrably untrue. In the private correspondence I received, one writer admitted that neither she nor the author of the original letter were ever students in the department of the the faculty members they were condemning nor had they taken any of their classes. Another student admitted that they were not at the July 30 protest but had passed on information about what happened that night. That information simply wasn’t true.
I am struggling to understand the behavior of these students. My impression is that they truly believe that events they describe actually occurred even though the allegations they make are demonstrably untrue. They seem to be untethered to reality.
What makes them construct these fantasies and pass them on? Is it the quest for celebrity status by being on the front lines of something exciting that is happening? Is it an attempt to exercise some sense of power and control in an increasingly hostile world by constructing one’s own reality?
Sadly it is not just students who exhibit this behavior, though. Their actions appear to be part of a disturbing national trend and not exclusive to any political party, age group, or social class .
It is unproductive to simply denounce these people, and I really do not have any easy answers as to why all of this is happening or how to change this behavior.
My personal response to this trend is to publish this blog. This blog tries to make sense out of events and create a space where people can comfortably and intelligently consider local issues.
As those who follow this blog know, it can be sharply critical of people and institutions but it is not mean spirited. People who have posted comments on this site using real email addresses, using language that is too strong, are accustomed to hearing from me with a request that they edit their submission and “dial it back.”
My hope is to create some space, however small, for honest and civil conversations.
In a troubling development, a recent graduate of Skidmore College is organizing a campaign to fire two faculty members for attending the Back the Blue rally. The letter this recent student is circulating has many highly inflammatory statements that are demonstrably false.
Please note that I have redacted both the names of the faculty members and the name of the person promoting the firing. I redacted the names of the faculty because I did not want to see them subjected to anymore abuse than they are already experiencing. I redacted the student’s name because I would like to think that their misrepresentations were the result of immaturity rather than malice.
This is the letter being circulated:
These are graphics they have posted on the web as part of their campaign.
The following are excerpts from their letter along with my commentary.
From the letter:
“…it is unacceptable for faculty members…to publicly voice their support for a hateful cause that directly challenges the right of black students to exist, live, and breath in America.”
Letter
The following is from the Back the Blue Facebook page soliciting public participation in their event.
We want to humanize these officers and remind people they are spouses, children, parents, brothers, sisters, friends, neighbors, etc.
Things to Bring: Signs of support, Blue Line flags, your friends and family that are pro police. Kids are welcome as this is a family friendly event.
Things to leave at home: Any political signs, flags, etc. We want to keep this a positive, all inclusive event and do not want this to turn political or negative in any way. This is a peaceful, purely pro-police event. We hope to see you there!Please practice social distancing and wear masks when not possible. Thank you!
From Back The Blue Facebook Page
Conspicuously absent from this Back the Blue text is any reference to Black Lives Matter. It is clearly evident that the organizers of this event went out of their way to make the focus on “purely” supporting the police.
I have a dear friend who attended the Back the Blue demonstration who did so to support relatives who are police officers who share her anger over racism in America and who were appalled by the killing of George Floyd.
The idea that the attendance of faculty at the Back The Blue rally is proof that they oppose the right of people of color to live is just stunning. It is hyperbole on steroids.
That is not to say that other people who attended the event may not have had other agendas but to reduce the event to a campaign for the extermination of people of color in our country is itself rather scary.
But the Saratoga Springs Police stood with their back (SIC) to the white supremacist, alt-right, counter protesters and faced us, as if defending them and looking for potential attacks from us.
From the letter
Back the Blue had arranged for their march and rally with the Saratoga Springs Police. The All of Us group simply announced over social media that they were organizing a counter demonstration and showed up. It is not surprising that the police were deployed around the sanctioned event.
Meanwhile, our side of the protest wore masks, while the anti-Black lives side was mostly mask free, a potential threat to our lives.
From the letter
Whatever threat that the maskless Back the Blue demonstrators may represent to each other and to the police protecting them, in the video they are more than six feet away from All of Us.
After defending the white supremacist until they got bored and went home, the Saratoga Police donned riot gear, camo, and army fatigues, and brought a tank into downtown Saratoga Springs.
From the letter
Repeating myself, the Back the Blue group may very well have had white supremacists among them but characterizing the group as a white supremacist gathering is a reckless exaggeration.
More specifically, the law enforcement officers wearing military type gear were with the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department. They were dressed this way during the entire evening. All of the Saratoga Springs Police were dressed as they would normally. They did not gear up following the Back the Blue event.
The vehicle was deployed by the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department. Not to put to fine a point on it, it was not a tank but an armored personnel carrier. A tank has a cannon and machine guns and this armored personnel carrier did not. I have in previous posts expressed that I think the deployment of this vehicle was unnecessarily provocative.
It is a mis-characterization that the Back the Blue people went home because they were bored. They had previously reached an agreement with the police on the schedule of their event which included ending before dark.
Officers…pointed loaded, automatic weapons, at a group of about fifty unarmed protesters…
From the letter
Of all the misrepresentations in this letter, this is the most reckless. It is hard to be temperate in writing about this claim. Based on the extensive video, there were no automatic weapons in evidence at the event. The idea, as put forward by this letter, that there were such weapons present and that they were aimed at All of Us is inexcusable. Bear in mind that the Saratoga Springs Lieutenant managing the event was continually among the demonstrators reflecting the non-threatening effort put forward by the Saratoga Springs Police. If automatic weapons fire had been employed by the police, he would have been among the first casualties.
Protecting Academic Freedom
Institutions like Skidmore College have processes for addressing behavior by faculty members that is deemed to be materially destructive to individual students.
To characterize the participation of the two faculty members in the Back the Blue event as proof that they are an actual threat to students of color is abhorrent and reminiscent of Joe McCarthy’s reign of terror against people on the American left in the 1950’s.
I have to wonder whether the new President of Skidmore College, Dr. Marc C. Connor, will have the courage to come to the aid of these two faculty members who will now be the target of a general campaign to shame and humiliate them. In an age of “cancel culture” one would hope that President Connor would see the need to address this ugly business by countering this campaign of disinformation using the best of the academy to both correct the record and to reaffirm that faculty are not fired based on holding opinions that may not be popular.
JK:Addendum
Someone identified as bokk_choi posted an entry shown in this blog which states “…in attendance today at the blue lives matter (white supremacy protest) were…..Firemen who drove alongside blue lives matter protesters in their fire trucks…” I had not seen fire trucks in any of the videos but checked with Public Safety Commissioner Robin Dalton who confirmed that the only fire truck on the streets that night was one returning to the station from a call.
The comment period at the August 4, 2020, City Council meeting was full of sustained, emotional condemnations of the city’s police, the Commissioner of Public Safety, and the Mayor for the events of July 30, when conflicting demonstrations ended with arrests and the release of pepper balls on All of Us protesters.
It is time for a more thoughtful and measured assessment of the events of that evening.
A Consideration Of The Protesters’ Perspective
While the leadership of the All of Us demonstrations in Saratoga Springs are people of color, the vast majority of the participants seem to be quite young and overwhelming white as indicated by the ages and race of the three arrested at the July 30 demonstration (16, 17, and 19 years old).
For many this was no doubt their first involvement in social movement activities. Outraged by the police excesses they see on television they are passionately motivated to create a better America.
Their organizers have led them repeatedly to occupy the city’s intersections. The youthful participants see these actions as somehow ending racism and police excesses. How exactly doing this repeatedly will end racism and police violence appears not to have been carefully thought out. A simple passion for justice seems to have carried the day.
With few possible exceptions these are young people who abhor the idea of violence. Imbued by a passion for social justice, they view violating the law by occupying the streets as an entirely justifiable action. It seems that they are innocently unaware that there might be any real problem with these actions. Any effort by the city police to restrict them is seen as a hostile action by a threatening force. This belief is reinforced by the All of Us leadership that promotes a narrative that the police in Saratoga Springs are part of a monolithic organization that, in an undeclared policy, routinely harasses and unnecessarily arrests people of color.
In such an atmosphere any forceful gesture by a law enforcement officer regarding their free flowing demonstrations is seen as a reaffirmation that the police are simply an occupying force in our city.
The Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department’s release of pepper balls to clear the intersection of Congress Street and Broadway on July 30 was the final proof to many that the city is managed by an authoritarian force out to suppress their movement.
Any verbal abuse that is then hurled at the police by the demonstrators is seen as perhaps regrettable but justified in their eyes given that anyone who would become a member of this authoritarian organization embodies the racism and violence that they are trying to end.
Police officers find themselves in a profession that is under attack.
The coverage of the death of George Floyd and the subsequent defense by the police union of the four officers charged in Floyd’s death has been prominent in national news. This has added to the narrative that racism and violence among the police is a systemic problem and not a matter of a few “bad apples.”
In addition to the critical news coverage, the fiscal crisis brought on by the COVID19 pandemic and calls to defund the police have put additional pressure on police departments. The Saratoga Springs Public Safety Department has the largest personnel budget in the city, and the potential for layoffs of officers is a grave threat. Local police are facing the real possibility that they may lose their jobs.
It is not surprising then that groups like Back the Blue have formed nationally to demonstrate support for the police. On July 30, the families and friends of local officers organized a Back the Blue march in Saratoga Springs.
Although coverage of the Back the Blue march graphically displayed the very angry behavior of some individuals in exchanges with members of All of Us in Congress Park, their Facebook call to action displayed a very different tone. Like most groups they are not monolithic.
We want to humanize these officers and remind people they are spouses, children, parents, brothers, sisters, friends, neighbors, etc.
Things to Bring: Signs of support, Blue Line flags, your friends and family that are pro police. Kids are welcome as this is a family friendly event.
Things to leave at home: Any political signs, flags, etc. We want to keep this a positive, all inclusive event and do not want this to turn political or negative in any way. This is a peaceful, purely pro-police event. We hope to see you there!Please practice social distancing and wear masks when not possible. Thank you!
From the Back The Blue Facebook Page
Nevertheless the reality is that some of the participants in Back the Blue felt real anger at the Black Lives Matters movement and the All of Us demonstrators for what they viewed as grossly unfair allegations against the local police and for threatening the livelihoods of people they care about.
The Perspective Of The Police
The Chief of Police is responsible for the safety of the citizens of city of Saratoga Springs.
For the city to ignore the real danger of harm when people occupy a street would be a dereliction of duty and pose a liability for the city. In fact, the police have rigorously protected protesters in the streets for several weeks, declining to make arrests. They have regularly intervened to redirect traffic to minimize the risk of anyone being hurt during these last weeks of demonstrations.
It would take just one disturbed driver to ram into a crowd (as has happened in other cities) to create a tragedy.
The restraint of the Saratoga police is in mark contrast to other cities in the country where the police have taken a very aggressive approach to enforcing traffic compliance. There is graphic footage all over the web of the resulting violence between the police and protesters leading to serious injury.
The announcement by Back the Blue to demonstrate in Saratoga Springs in support of the police made managing the actions of All of Us far more challenging. Back the Blue promoted their event encouraging people from the greater Capital District to attend. The decision by a New York State Senator and Assembly woman to participate added to the potential size of the demonstration.
All of Us then went on social media calling for people to join them in a counter demonstration against Back the Blue. One of the comments in support of this asserted that All of Us had to show Back the Blue that “we mean business.”
People need to put themselves in the shoes of Police Chief Shane Crooks. Any reasonable person would know that the Back The Blue group could include some very angry and belligerent types. A video of All of Us leader Lexis Figuereo included in an earlier blog post documents that explosive anger was also present in the BLM ranks.
These two groups were about to converge on the city and the question facing Chief Crooks was how to insure that these events did not devolve into violence.
Chief Crooks and his staff had to speculate as to how large the two groups might be and what kind of resources would be needed to manage this potentially dangerous situation.
I can only conjecture that the chief decided to marshal as much support as he could get. This would explain the presence of the city police, the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department, the New York State Police, and the New York State Park Police.
The optics of this would be problematic. For many of the young people who made up the All of Us contingent, the mass of law enforcement cars, the legions of police officers, and the presence of mounted police might well have conjured up the image of a police state. In contrast and for obvious reasons the Back the Blue demonstrators would not have felt threatened. For one thing, Back the Blue had gone through all the required procedures for registering their event and for receiving assistance from the police.
I was not there on the evening of July 30. This blog is based on the review of extensive web videos and news articles documenting the event and conversations with some of those involved. What I found was documentation that appeared to show the successful separation of Back the Blue and All of Us by the police. According to news reports there was only one event where allegedly someone from Back the Blue struck a demonstrator from All of Us.
At around 8:00 PM, at the urging of the Saratoga Springs Police, the Back the Blue contingent ended their rally, vacated Congress Park, and went home.
Urged by their leaders, the remaining All of Us participants exited the park and occupied the intersection at the gate to the city park where Congress Street and Broadway intersect. According to published reports many of the participants laid down in the street.
The protesters continued to chant. One chant led by one of the apparent leaders of All of Us was “How do you spell murderer? SSPD”
Mostly the protesters held up their hands and chanted “Hands up! Don’t Shoot!” and “Whose Streets? Our Streets?”
As darkness descended Chief Crooks decided that for safety reasons the intersection needed to be cleared.
According to the Times Union, at around 8:30 the police approached Keni Zoeli [JK: TU had name wrong, Ken Zeoli] who is from Troy and one of the leaders of All of Us [JK: there is some question if he is a member of All of Us]. They asked that the protesters move to the sidewalk or risk arrest.
This is what I told the sargeant, “You are a law enforcement official. I will make them aware. But I don’t have the equipment to broadcast that statement across the street. You do. He nodded and walked away.”
Keni Zoeli, Times Union, August 4, 2020
Zoeli told the Times Union that right after that at 8:48 the police initiated the arrests (3) and fired pepper balls.
All the video clips of what followed are very confusing, and it is hard to make out precisely what happened. None of the videos pick up any amplified command from the police alerting the protesters that they had to vacate the street. All of a sudden there is a scuffle, people are seen running in all directions and puffs from pepper balls appear hitting the street surface. In one clip a voice can be heard telling officers to shoot down at the street, referring to the pepper balls.
There is video of a group of approximately five Saratoga Springs Police officers piled on an individual and shortly afterward the person is seen in handcuffs being led away. Another person is seen pinned against a police car being handcuffed.
[JK: This is a video of the arrest, the release of pepper balls, and the withdrawal of the All of Us demonstrators out of the intersection. I would ask the readers to pay special attention to the police officer managing this operation. My understanding is that his name is Lieutenant Jason Mitchell. In a highly charged situation he shows extraordinary composure as he tries to keep things from spiraling out of control. He engages the leaders of All of Us in what I see as a calm and nonthreatening manner as he tries to convince them to move their people out of the intersection. I think much of the success in keeping anyone from being hurt is attributable to his leadership.
Also note Alex Figuereo a leader of All of Us moving a provocative young demonstrator out of the street and harm’s way]
Things calm down and a group of protesters can be seen still in the street. A police officer is seen talking to people who appear to be leaders of the protesters. Following that a phalanx of Saratoga County Sheriff deputies and Saratoga Springs Police officers moves across the intersection with the protesters withdrawing to the sidewalk.
Following this, an apparent leader of All of Us with a bull horn urges the protesters to go home. He tells them they have made their point and that he does not want to see anyone arrested or hurt so please go home. His imploring does no good. People continue to mill about.
Following The Arrest And Clearing Of Street, Organizer Urges People To Go Home
Finally about twenty minutes later with the intersection free of any protesters but with an estimated 150 people still in the entrance of the park, the police withdraw. The many vehicles from all the branches of law enforcement, including the armored personnel carrier, drive off.
No protesters return to the street and slowly they disperse.
My Take Away
There is a Facebook page called “The Fulton County News” that covered the event on a live stream that was recorded. There are several hours of video which comprehensively recorded the event [Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four]. Much of my assessment relies on what was posted on this site.
I know that the All of Us people saw the police as a hateful group intent on crushing their effort to protest racism and police violence.
As someone who has been in demonstrations that exploded into confrontations with the police, however, I have a different view. I saw a lot of people in the park and in the street and a highly disciplined police presence trying to manage the situation. There is no question that some of the protesters were extremely provocative yelling at the police. I dismiss much of this as immature behavior rather than an effort to start a riot. These young people simply have no idea what a potential disaster they were courting.
I know that most believe that they are entitled to berate the police because they feel the police are unnecessarily trying to intimidate them.
What they don’t understand is how riots often happen. My experience has been that if an altercation occurs between a demonstrator and a police officer suddenly there is a rush from the crowd to 1) see what is going on, 2) come to the moral aid of the person being grabbed or arrested, 3) or in a few cases actually trying to physically free the individual. The rush of protesters precipitates a rush of police as they go to the defense of their colleague who they view as under attack. BOOM!!!
As far as can be seen from the available video, the Saratoga police respond with stoicism with most of them simply standing unresponsive to taunts from the crowd. I see the officers on horseback asking people to step back and interposing their horses between the crowd and places that they do not want people to go. I am amazed at the placidity of the horses that are clearly well trained.
When the police finally do make arrests, there is a scrum and an almost simultaneous firing of pepper balls at the street in front of the incident. I will discuss pepper balls but let me also observe that the crowd pretty much retreats. I think that this is a testament to the basically peaceful nature of the protesters. Let me assure the readers of this blog that hardened and veteran street people would not have simply retreated. The air would have been full of projectiles of some sort directed at the police and the onslaught would not have been nullified by pepper balls.
Police have adopted pepper balls because they have a very limited impact area. Basically when they hit the street they disperse a limited puff of irritant. This is in contrast to tear gas that creates an uncontrolled cloud of noxious fumes that can be potentially lethal for people with compromised lungs. They also create an opaque cloud that only adds to the chaos.
This is not to say that utilizing pepper balls is without risk. Just that they are among the least hazardous devices for “crowd control.”
There is also the optics of five officers piled on top of someone they are attempting to arrest. For many people this appears to be excessive and disturbing. What people need to consider is the difficulty in subduing a person. This is simply a problem with no easy solution.
Jane, my wife, taught at the Burnt Hill-Ballston Lake High School for thirty-four years. There were not many fights, but in one case a female teacher who attempted to intercede was struck violently on the jaw and experienced ongoing medical complications from the blow. She never returned to her job.
As I understand it, the basic strategy with police is to overwhelm the person in order to minimize their ability to strike and to minimize the potential harm to both the police and the target. I think if, dear reader, you think about it, you would not want to try to subdue someone by yourself.
Let me offer another way of thinking about the police response that night. Think of the range of personalities of people you may have worked with. Think of them being subjected to sustained insults and taunts over several hours. Consider what they might do if they were backed up by a group whose raw power greatly exceeded those subjecting them to verbal abuse. What are the possibilities that one of your colleagues might react badly?
Virtually no one was hurt on the evening of July 30, 2020. The restraint demonstrated by law enforcement was not because they were all choir boys devoid of machismo or of racism. The restraint was rooted in both their training and their leadership. Their leadership obviously communicated to them that they were not to react unless in actual danger and to otherwise limit their actions to the orders given them.
On the other side, in spite of their provocative behavior, the protesters were really at heart not interested in hurting the police or having a riot. Most of them were truly committed to being peaceful.
My concern for the future is really with what appears to be the recklessness of the people who are currently in the leadership of All of Us. They need to think through carefully how to organize their protests in a way that minimizes the risks to those who participate.
Civil disobedience requires training, discipline, and thoughtful leaders. The struggle for integration in the South was not a matter of people just going out in the streets. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Martin Luther King had extensive training for its people in non-violent protest. There was thoughtful and careful leadership. They knew the risks. They made sure that every person who chose to participate knew those risks.
Occupying an intersection in Saratoga Springs is both against the law and also a risk to everyone associated with such actions. The leadership of All of Us needs to communicate with the police not out of fear or obsequiousness but to insure that if there are to be arrests that they be done in a manner that does not risk the lives and well being of those involved.
In spite of the discipline of the police on July 30 and the good intentions of the protesters, we were very lucky that no one was hurt. We cannot depend on luck to protect us in the future.
The Public Safety Department issued a press release and supporting videos which are available on the city website [JK: There is an additional video not in the press release that that the “supporting videos” link goes to]. The release and videos are meant to supplement the original July 31 release regarding the events of July 30 involving All of Us and Back the Blue.
The release clarifies a number of outstanding issues:
Back the Blue had submitted the required documents for a rally and for a march down Broadway. I interpret this as a response to criticism by All of Us that the Back the Blue was allowed access to the streets whereas they were not.
Prior to the Back the Blue rally the police were monitoring social media and found that All of Us planned to counter demonstrate. The release refers to a post in which the group asserted “It’s time to show them we really mean business. ” The release makes apparent that the department viewed potential clash between All of Us and Back The Blue as grave. They cite this concern as the reason they sought assistance from the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department, the New York State Police, and the State Park Police.
By 6:30 the opposing groups were in Congress Park. “From 6:30 to 7:45 tensions were high, words were exchanged, but the groups were separated by a wall of police officers and two SSPD horses.”
The sheriff’s department vehicle that was referenced by some as a “tank” is a “…light tactical vehicle used as a personnel and equipment carrier for the tactical team.” The vehicle has been positioned at events including “…large protests, large special events, and all emergency management details such as the Whitney and the Travers (Saratoga Race Course Races). The release notes that the city police rely on outside available resources to supplement them to deal with large events.
Three persons were arrested. The release does not indicate what they were charged with.
a. 16 year old female from Saratoga Springs was arrested at 8:48. “…Issued an appearance ticket, and released to her grandfather at 9:43 PM when he arrived at the police station.”
b. 17 year old male from Saratoga Springs was arrested at 8:48. “…refused to cooperate with police. Once his age and identity were determined he was transported to his parents at 11:59 and issued an appearance ticket.”
c. 19 year old Male, Andre Simmons from Schenectady. “…arrested 8:49 and released 9:24 on an appearance ticket.”
7. The release asserts that intelligence collected by “outside agencies” reported that “one of the protesters associated with ‘BLM’ and ‘All of Us’ was armed with a handgun and agitators from out of the area were going to be involved.” They note that some of the “protesters were wearing bullet proof vests and duty belts containing pepper spray.”
8. The release contains a run on sentence which appears to address the ordinance carried for the purpose of crowd control. “The use of OC Spray [pepper spray in an aerosol bottle] and pepper projectiles is on the lower end of the Use of Force Continuum and may be used to bring an individual or group of individuals under control when they are about to or are engaging in violent behavior.”
9. “The chief of Police authorized the use of pepper projectiles once the situation started turning violent as shown in video 7.” (Labeled “Protest Arrest”).
10. “Zero injuries were reported from the events detailed above.”
Some Analysis
I will be posting an analysis of the release and videos in another blog shortly.
This is a very disturbing video that contains some very ugly language that some people may find difficult to listen to.
Lexis Figuereo confronts Pastor Earl Wallace of the Liberty Christian Fellowship Church who was part of the Back the Blue demonstration on the evening of July 30. The video shows the Saratoga Springs police officers trying to get between the minister and the crowd in order to avoid an escalation. In the background Mr. Figuereo is shouting through a bullhorn.
On July 31 Mr. Figuereo addressed this incident in a video on the All of Us Facebook Page. He says he regrets his earlier remarks and asserts that the behavior exhibited is not who he really is but that his anger over injustice clouded his judgement.
He makes no reference to apologizing to Pastor Wallace.
Saratoga Springs Politics 