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Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch released an independent review of the Department of Public Safety on Monday, which outlines 23 recommendations for improving the department.

The 97-page report is the product of a year-long investigation into how the department interacts with members of the Syracuse University community and how officers interacted with students during protests on campus this past year.

Lynch served as attorney general under former President Barack Obama and is now a partner at the Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison law firm. She and her team spoke to students, DPS officers and university administrators and examined more than 20,000 documents in their review, she said in an interview with The Daily Orange.

Here’s a breakdown of Lynch’s findings and the recommendations she and her team made for DPS:

Community policing

Community policing — in which departments pursue strategies to build relationships with community members and implement problem-solving — should be the “guiding philosophy” for DPS officers, Lynch’s report states. Officers must build trust with the campus community, and all officers should rotate through the Community Policing Services Unit, which operates separately from the department’s patrol unit, Lynch’s team said.

“There’s a number of incidents people recounted to us, in addition to the incidents last year, that have definitely created a perception of the Department of Public Safety that it is not as supportive of the campus community as it should be,” Lynch said. “We did find that there was a serious erosion of that trust between DPS and the campus community.”

DPS should also reinstate community engagement programs, such as the Adopt-a-Hall program, where officers partner with different residence halls to attend floor meetings and activities. Many of these programs were paused due to the pandemic.

Maya Gooseman | Design Editor

Lynch’s team also recommended that DPS revive the Student of Color Advisory committee, which informally disbanded when members said DPS hadn’t taken concrete action to meet their recommendations.

The committee, which was first established in 2019, did not successfully complete its goal of improving the relationship between DPS and students of color, according to the report. Though DPS Chief Bobby Maldonado plans to retire before the next academic year, the next chief could help revamp the committee, Lynch and her team said.

Lynch and her team also recommended that DPS make all policies and procedures public on its website. Though the department employs sworn officers who can carry lethal weapons and arrest people, the department does not have to comply with public information laws because of its relationship with the private university.

“People should see how they operate,” Lynch said. “There’s no law against it.”

Communications

DPS should develop a new strategy for communicating with the SU community about how it conducts its investigations — particularly bias-related incidents, Lynch and her team said. DPS should also work with SU’s communications team to streamline the process of communicating public safety information to the campus community and should develop strategies to effectively use social media when communicating with students, they said.

Lynch and her team also recommended that the department provide information on the jurisdiction of DPS and the Syracuse Police Department to students, specifically those who live off-campus.

Complaints and accountability

The department should consistently update complainants on the progress of investigations and should notify them when a decision has been reached.

The DPS website should be updated to clarify how to file a complaint against DPS or specific officers, and it should also include directions for appealing a finding to the Citizen Review Board.

Responding to bias-related incidents and other sensitive calls

DPS should periodically review officers’ body camera footage to ensure they’re empathetic in their interactions with students, especially in the case of bias-related incidents and other sensitive calls, Lynch and her team said.

Lynch and her team also recommended that DPS adopt the term “hate incidents” to refer to bias-motivated incidents that cannot be characterized as hate crimes, and officers should be trained to know how to identify both. The department should also make its process for investigating hate crimes public, including the limits of its authority when it comes to making arrests and prosecuting suspects of hate crimes.

Hiring, the academy and ongoing training

DPS should make changes to its training academy to specifically train new officers about community policing and problem solving, as well as the investigation of hate crimes and bias incidents, Lynch and her team said. The academy should also incorporate training about victim and witness engagement, they said.

Officers should also receive regular anti-bias training that addresses interactions with students from different backgrounds, according to the report. Officers in the department should be evaluated based on elements of community policing, such as problem-solving capabilities and knowledge of procedural justice.

Addressing campus protests

The university needs a well-defined protocol for how it will respond to student protests, the report states. The protocol should be publicized to the campus community, and the university should share how DPS will react to a protest before it begins.

Lynch said the Student Activism Engagement Team, which SU established in August in response to the recent campus protests, will provide a “helpful foundation” for the university’s response to future protests.

“People just don’t have clarity into the operations of DPS or why they do certain things,” Lynch said. “When you don’t have that basic understanding of why someone is operating in a certain way, it definitely leads to mistrust, and it has here on the campus community.”

When a demonstration occurs on campus, DPS should respond with the lowest level of authority or force, Lynch and her team said. The response to protests shouldn’t include armed officers unless the department has a specific safety concern, they said.

Members of #NotAgainSU, a movement led by Black students that twice-occupied university buildings to protest SU’s response to racist incidents on campus and its treatment of students of color, have objected to the Student Activism Engagement Team, as well as the decision to contract with Lynch for the review of DPS. Some students and faculty have asked that an impartial third party, which protestors and SU officials agreed upon, should have conducted the review instead.

Maya Gooseman | Design Editor

The review does not support fully disarming DPS, one of the demands made by #NotAgainSU.

Operations

DPS should stop sending officers in plain clothes to protests or other events, Lynch and her team said. Lynch said the practice is unsafe and that students may sometimes interpret officers in plain clothes as a way for DPS to infiltrate protests or gatherings.

“The core mission of the Department of Public Safety is the safety and security of the campus and security of campus members,” Lynch said. “They can’t fulfill that mission if people don’t trust them. It is as simple as that.”

Lynch and her team suggested that DPS officers use “soft” uniforms, or less formal apparel that still identifies them as officers, to de-escalate tense situations.

The team also recommended that DPS implement a new program that tracks crime statistics, dispatch calls and officer activity. The data shouldn’t only be available on the DPS website but also on social media and other channels that are accessible to the campus community, they said.

DPS should also stop operating the campus safety escort service, which provides rides to students, as it has been the source of many negative interactions between officers and students, Lynch and her team said.

The department should also evaluate whether there are certain types of calls that do not require an armed officer to respond, they said.

“It doesn’t mean that these conversations are easy,” Lynch said. “It doesn’t mean that these conversations aren’t difficult or people won’t get upset or disagree. But you have to have these conversations.”

Published on February 22, 2021 at 11:20 pm

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