Monthly Archives: January 2023

January 30, 2023

Sheriff Akshar today issued a press release celebrating a return to full visitation hours.  If only this were true.

Here is the real situation:

In 2019 the jail offered 45 hours of visitation hours every week as documented in the jail’s own handbook.

Sheriff Harder eliminated visitation completely in 2020 and refused to reopen visitation even as nursing homes, jails and prisons reopened their doors to family visits. In response to our lawsuit, he was forced to reopen visitation—but then dictated but 15 hours (and far fewer for women for example in select jail units).

Sheriff Akshar now proposes that families of the incarcerated have 30 hours a week to visit their loved ones.

This is unacceptable: there are still 50 % fewer hours than available before COVID.  The county needs at the very least to return to pre-covid jail visitation hours with a full  five days and 45 hours as posted in the jail handbook in 2019/2020.

The county also needs to remove new limits on visitation that the Sheriff does not mention but family members and people awaiting trial know all too well. These include new rules that cut 50 % of visitation hours as a punishment for alleged disciplinary infractions, and the imposition of new hour-long visitation blocks (versus earlier 30 minute blocks) which limits the numbers and hours family may visit. There are no weekend hours as well.

Visitation under current conditions makes families rely on expensive video and telephone calls that generate super-profits for the Sheriff and his corporate contractor.  We endorse what families of the incarcerated repeatedly demand:  that they be paid back the excess $millions they have spent due to these restrictions.

Why do these problems continue, year after year?

The Sheriff continues to maintain control over the mechanisms of mass incarceration, independent of community control.  Operating with an ever-growing county budget and over 200 employees, there is no effective oversight of the Sheriff, jail conditions, or financial operations. Unilaterally reducing visitation further removes and isolates the jail from public observation. It allows the county to continue past patterns, despite legal rulings and lost lawsuits, in covering up wrongful death and abuse, while ignoring even the minimal state regulations on the operation of jails, in sum, denying basic human rights.

New first on the Binghamton Bridge community newspaper:

https://binghamtonbridge.org/broome-countys-arpa-bonanza-who-captured-the-37-million/

A Joint Press Statement on Binghamton’s Derek Chauvin

Press Conference: January 10, 2023, 2PM, Binghamton City Hall

Shortly after 3AM on January 1st, 2023, Binghamton Police assaulted Hamail Waddell, 24, on State Street. Waddell, who is Black and Asian, was a bystander attempting to de-escalate a fight when police seized him and threw him to the ground. Officer Brad Kaczynski then proceeded to kneel on the back of Waddell’s neck, employing the same hold Derek Chauvin used to murder George Floyd in Minneapolis in May of 2020. Kaczynski’s restraint is illegal under New York’s Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act, which makes aggravated strangulation a class C felony. The maneuver is also clearly barred in BPD’s use of force policy. Waddell sustained injuries to his face, head, neck, and back, and required stitches in his chin.

Waddell, a young father in our community who has never before been charged with a crime, was not under arrest at the time he was attacked by police. Nevertheless, in an all too familiar abuse of power, Waddell was charged after the incident with “resisting arrest,” and police added a charge of “disorderly conduct” to cover up the fact that there had been no arrest for Waddell to have resisted in the first place. Police also confiscated hundreds of dollars worth of belongings and cash from Waddell and have refused to return them. When Waddell went to the police station on the morning of Monday, January 2nd, to file a complaint, officers locked the doors in a blatant attempt to prevent him from entering the public building. After Waddell and a number of his supporters finally obtained access, officers went so far as to threaten a mass arrest.

As if these outrages were not galling enough, it turns out that Kaczynski, a school resource officer (SRO) at East Learning Center, had been an SRO at Binghamton High School when Waddell was a student there. For years, whenever school board members, City Council representatives, and the mayor’s office have insisted on having police in our schools despite overwhelming public opposition, they claim that SROs help ensure the long-term safety and stability of the community by forging lasting bonds with the children who grow into the adults who interact with police in Binghamton. Let the image of SRO Kaczynski kneeling on a Black former student’s neck in the street put that hollow fiction to rest once and for all.

In the summer of 2020, following George Floyd’s murder, public officials were compelled to face the grim reality of policing in Binghamton. After thousands marched in Binghamton in a historic protest against police brutality, an Executive Order required cities and counties across the state to “reform and reinvent” policing. Hundreds gave feedback in public meetings, demanding that police power be constrained, oversight increased, and portions of their budgets reallocated to things like housing, mental health services, and youth programs. 

Yet political leaders have steadfastly refused even to consider making any substantive changes to policing. Mayor Jared Kraham, like Mayor Rich David before him, and the City Council majority continue to dump funding into the Binghamton Police Department. Funds meant for critical COVID-19 relief from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), for example, were funneled into “police retention.” Their own city-funded reports found people of color are overpoliced and the use of force is underreported. In a city run by and for landlords, who leech off the Binghamton University resort economy and drive locals out of secure housing, police routinely harass our unhoused neighbors while servicing the more affluent and predominantly white student clientele. They lock police station doors on frigid nights to prevent unhoused people from coming in to warm up, and conspire with the code office, water department, sheriff, and other public entities to protect slumlords and dismiss, disempower, and displace tenants.  

There is no injustice or social misery in our community that is not perpetrated or enforced by the BPD. In response to yet another outrageous incident of police brutality in Binghamton, we the people make the following demands:

• We demand that all charges against Hamail Waddell be immediately dropped, and that his confiscated belongings be immediately returned to him.

• We demand that Brad Kacszynski be immediately fired from the Binghamton Police Department, and promptly charged with aggravated strangulation (class C felony).

• We demand that officers who were present and did nothing to stop the illegal chokehold be investigated and forbidden from serving as SROs in BCSD schools. 

• We demand the immediate removal of all SROs from BCSD schools.

• We demand that the State of New York immediately discontinue any state funding to the City of Binghamton used for policing, in accordance with Executive Order 203 of June 2020, which authorizes the state budget director to withhold state funding from localities failing to adopt meaningful police reforms.

• We demand the immediate closure of the Law Enforcement Academy operated by the Broome County Sheriff’s Office.

We are also calling on all concerned members of the Greater Binghamton community to join us in holding police accountable by attending the following upcoming events:

• City Council Speak-Out, Wednesday January 11th, 5:30PM, 38 Hawley Street

  • Challenge the Council’s unconditional legislative support for BPD brutality

• Pack the Court for Hamail, Wednesday January 18th, 9:00AM, 38 Hawley Street

  • Show up to Hamail’s arraignment and demand all charges be dropped

• School Board Meeting, Tuesday January 24th, 7PM, 164 Hawley Street

  • Insist on getting SROs out of our schools NOW

Follow our orgs on social media for updates and any scheduling changes. #JusticeForHamail 

No Justice, No Peace. 

In solidarity,

Divestment, Accountability, and Reinvestment in Our Community (DAROC)

Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier (JUST)

Stakeholders of Broome County (SBC)

Binghamton Tenants Union (BTU)

Citizen Action of New York, Southern Tier Chapter

Riot Act Books

Binghamton University Student Tenants Union

Zero Hour Binghamton

Intellectual Decisions on Environmental Awareness Solutions (IDEAS)

Powerful United Ladies Striving to Educate (PULSE)

Relevant Links

Video of Assault:

www.tinyurl.com/BPDAssault

Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act:

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/S6670

Police Reform & Reinvention Collaborative: https://www.binghamton-ny.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/998/637581533902630000

BPD Use of Force Policy:

https://www.binghamton-ny.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/2926/637605553987130000

Executive Order 203 Letter:

https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/GAMC_Reimagine_Policing_Letter.pdf