Rise Up Kingston, a local community group, is condemning Ulster County DA Holley Carnright's recent comments in the Kingston Times calling for proactive policing in the city. Carnright blames rising anti-police sentiment for a lack of community cooperation with police investigations. 

"The op-ed in the Kingston Times is just a traditional fear tactic that's been put out by people for a really long time to move away from the goals of actually supporting a community and trying to criminalize people," said Callie Jayne, the executive director of Rise Up Kingston.

Carnright telling the Kingston Times "the political environment in Kingston, that anti-police environment, has impeded the work that we do.”

"My understanding of what he said is that the police are unable to go out and try and support the community and do their 'proactive policing' if they're not able to shake down and harass and beat people in our community," said Jayne. 

The mayor of Kingston is also frustrated. 

"I think that he was out of touch you know with our community and really out of touch with how we do policing," said Kingston Mayor Steve Noble. 

For the last year Rise Up Kingston has worked on a platform to reform the city's police commission, which is a body of 5 including the mayor. 

"Right now our police commission has the power to hire and fire and set policies for the police department but right now there's no accountability process or transparency process for who is appointed to our police commission so right now everyone is just hand-picked by the mayor and there’s no guidelines," said Jayne. 

Rise Up says that can make it difficult for community members to file complaints against police officers.

"We’re trying to make a complaint process that is less threatening than the one now because right now if you want to file a complaint you have to go head to head with the police chief, the mayor for the city of Kingston, and the lawyer for the city of Kingston," said Jayne. 

"It's hoping to introduce legislation to reform the police commission in the common council. Mayor Noble says he's open to change.

"One of the proposals is to be able to create a more independent commission one that is appointed by the common council instead of by the mayor’s office and again that's something that I’m very supportive of and I think there are opportunities to be able to diversify the commission and have more voices," said Mayor Noble.  

And on the DA's charge that the community has been uncooperative with recent police investigations. 

"I think people in general are scared people are scared of government they’re scared of the police,” said Mayor Noble. "One of the things we try to do is by having these anonymous tip lines by having these anonymous tip apps for your phone, we do want to try to make it as anonymous as possible so that you don't have to have that fear of retribution." 

Rise Up says that isn’t enough.

"There is distrust in the community," said Jayne. "Police officers will not go out of their way to keep someone safe if they do speak."