The state Legislature on Wednesday put the finishing touches on a package of police reform measures approved over the last three days. 

The bills are meant to strengthen oversight of police in New York, criminalize the use of choke holds and boost transparency. And the measures passed with relative ease in two chambers led by black lawmakers. 


What You Need To Know


  • Stewart-Cousins says the police reform measures give her hope.

  • The bills deal with police accountability and transparency.

  • Stewart-Cousins spoke about her brother, a police officer.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the first black woman to hold the top post in the chamber, said the week had deeply personal meaning to her. Her brotherwas a police officer himself. 

"I often talk about the discrimination my father faced as a heroic World War II soldier in a segregated army but I don’t often mention my brother, a Marine, who served honorably in Vietnam," Stewart-Cousins said in her remarks on the floor of the state Senate. "When Bobby was 24 years old, he became a transit cop in New York City. When he was 30, he left. He told me two things when we spoke last night. He told me he became a Police Officer because he wanted to help people in our community, and he left ultimately because he was convinced that the system was created to give young Black men a record. He told me how he watched two white kids fighting who were brought down to the station and their parents called. While two Black kids fighting were arrested for assault and stained with a record that would follow them their whole lives."

Stewart-Cousins said her brother was a good cop and worked with good cops. 

"But Bobby did not think that he alone could change the system or that the system could change itself," she said.

And Stewart-Cousins is also a mother and grandmother of black sons and black grandsons. They, too, have interacted with the police.  

"I also think of a night years ago when I got a phone call, my youngest son who was only 18 was with his friends on the other side of town. They were stopped and frisked and by the time it was over Steven was in the emergency room with a fractured nose. And let me tell you Steven would never resist," she said. "And now with four grandsons I worry that they face many of the same issues."

The bills approved this week came after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, who died when he was pinned by an officer's knee at his neck. Protests and unrest in cities around the country and in New York followed amid a societal reckoning surrounding the interactions of law enforcement and people of color. 

New York is one of the first states to act on the issue. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said he plans to sign the legislation. 

But there are calls to go further, including a push to fundamentally overhaul what is expected of police officers to do. 

"However, I do have hope," Stewart-Cousins said. "Because here I am remarkably in this historic position at this historic time able to be part of a movement that started with the blatant and horrific murder of George Floyd. Something all of us have seen, and as a result of that, people have taken to the streets."