New York governor signs police accountability legislation

ALBANY, New York (AP) — New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law on Friday a sweeping package of police accountability measures that received new backing following protests of George Floyd’s killing, including one allowing the release of officers’ long-withheld disciplinary records.

The measures were approved earlier this week by the state’s Democratic-led Legislature.

Some of the bills had been proposed in years past and failed to win approval, but lawmakers moved with new urgency in the wake of massive, nationwide demonstrations over Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis.

“Police reform is long overdue, and Mr. Floyd’s murder is only the most recent murder,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said.

Cuomo was joined at the signing ceremony by the Reverend Al Sharpton, Valerie Bell, the mother of Sean Bell, who was killed by an officer in 2006, and Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who was killed by police in New York in 2014.

“It was a long time coming, but it came,” Carr said.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins thanks Carr and Bell “for being brave and strong.”

“We are at a moment of reckoning. There is no doubt about it,” she said.

The laws will ban police chokeholds, like the one used on Garner, make it easier to sue people who call police on others without good reason, and set up a special prosecutor’s office to investigate the deaths of people during and following encounters with police officers.

“These bills mean some substantive change so that we won’t be sitting here going over this after the next funeral and after the next situation,” Sharpton said.

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