Police departments and local governments in New York will be tasked with developing local-level reforms over the next year and enacted them into law under an executive order signed Friday by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. 

The changes -- which will include use of force, crowd management, community policing and restorative justice -- must be in place by April 1, or a local government faces the loss of federal funding. 

What You Need To Know


  • Cuomo signed a package of police reforms

  • He also is approving an executive order to push for more changes on the local level.

  • The order comes as advocates want to see a reinvention of policing on the local level.

The order was announced by Cuomo as he signed a package of police reform bills into law alongside Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Speaker Carl Heastie, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the NAACP's Hazel Dukes. 

"We are a state of action," Cuomo said. "That's us at our best."

The reforms in New York were approved by the Legislature include ending secrecy for police disciplinary records, requiring State Police officers to wear body cameras, a codification of the state attorney general's power to investigate police-involved deaths of civilians, criminal penalties for using chokeholds as well as filing a false, race-based 911 report.

Cuomo's order also comes amid a push for broader changes to police departments in the wake of the protests. Some advocates have called for a "defunding" of the police to redirect spending to more service-based government services and end over policing in communities of color. 

"We've gotten to a place where people thinking talking is enough," Cuomo said. "It's not enough. How do you transition that to action and change?"

Lawmakers moved swiftly over three days this week in Albany to approve the changes after days of protest in New York and around the country following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. 

Floyd's death after he was held down by his kneck under the knee of a white police officer, Cuomo said, was only part of a broader pattern.

"Police reform is long overdue. Mr. Floyd's murder is just the most recent murder," Cuomo said. "It is about a long list that has been all across this country that always makes the same point: Injustice against minorities in the criminal justice system."