A Good Start

Fresh off his statement that he saw no police hitting people with nightsticks, Andrew Cuomo as said that he will sign legislation speeding through the New York State legislature enacting major police reform:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday urged Americans to stay the course in the massive protests which have been held in cities and towns across the U.S. for the past two weeks, pointing to New York State lawmakers passing long-awaited legislation to classify chokeholds as a felony as evidence the pressure is working.

The Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act passed in the New York State Assembly with a vote of 140-3. The bill now heads to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is expected to sign it into law.

"Stay in the streets," tweeted Ocasio-Cortez. "It's working."

Stay in the streets. It’s working ⬇️ https://t.co/XoDiQ0dLJK

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 8, 2020

The bill was passed two weeks into a nationwide uprising over police brutality and racial injustice sparked by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless other black Americans.

Additionally, the state legislature has passed a bill repealing New York Civil Rights Law section 50-A, which made police disciplinary records secret, makes the state Attorney General a special prosecutor in the event of possible police misconduct, require police departments to report statistics on the ethnicity of people arrested, requiring officers to immediately report when they have discharged their weapons in the line of duty, repealing the requirement that police disciplinary proceedings be run by police, and other reforms.

As I noted in the hed, it's a good start.