The Broome County Sheriff's Office, Deputy Sheriffs and Detectives held a listening meeting over Zoom Wednesday evening, inviting community members to share their thoughts and suggestions on police reform.

This comes after Governor Cuomo's Executive Order in June 2020 requiring all counties and municipalities to come up with police reform and reinvention plans due this coming April. Cuomo's order was in response to last summer's nationwide Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd, a black man, died while in police custody.

The Broome County Sheriff's Department held this Zoom public hearing to receive comments and suggestions from the community, to take into account when planning their police reform over the next eleven weeks.

County council members, local politicians and Sheriff's Dept. employees were met with several dozen residents who had a lot to say.

Residents who volunteered to speak were given three minutes to talk, and suggestions ranged from police training for mental health emergencies to the ongoing opioid crisis to racial injustice and how police officers handle situations involving people of color.

One topic that was brought up by several people was the Broome County Jail. Deputy Broome County Executive Kevin McManus said that the jail was not to be a part of the new policing initiative, but this did not deter speakers from expressing their concerns for current and future inmates.

Alexis Pleus, a known activist and director of Truth Pharm an addiction resources center, spoke up on behalf of the community.

"What the community really wants is less arrests and less incarcerations. We would like to not be number one in the state in all of these areas," Pleus said. "and what the community wants is the funding to be moved from the Sheriff's Department into the community. We are sick of this ever-expanding budget for the sheriff. Don't build trust through words, build trust by shifting that money and power back to the community where it belongs."

Those who attended the meeting said they were upset with the way the police reform task force was put together 'from the top-down' and without community input.

Speakers posed many questions throughout the public hearing, but the nature of the conference call was to let people speak rather than to answer questions. Some residents pointed out that the community was given only a short warning that the Sheriff's Office would be holding the public forum, and wanted better opportunities for residents to be heard.

The meeting ended after about an hour and 15 minutes without the promise of a second listening session.