Oswego Mayor Billy Barlow said he not only supports the Black Lives Matters movement but also thinks that systemic racism is present in every police department, even locally. It's one of the reasons all city employees - not just the police - undergo annual anti-bias and anti-racism training. Yet, he's starkly opposed to calls for abolishing or defunding the police.
"I actually believe the opposite may help," Barlow said. "Getting the police officers out to the neighborhoods, in our downtown area, walking the streets, riding bikes, I think is a way to build relationships and improve communication. I think that’s what we need."
To that end, Barlow is mandating that the Oswego Police Department spend 80 hours of patrols each month on foot and bike so officers can better get to know residents. Additionally, Barlow announced that the city's Neighborhood Engagement Team is going to get underway, which permanently assigns two officers to focus on quality of life issues and outreach in Oswego neighborhoods. It was a $90,000 investment that the Oswego Common Council passed last year.
"I’m prepared to give the police department the tools they need to build relationships and improve communications and be visible in the public," he said.
These efforts are being criticized, though, by some who participated in the march. Several people responded to Barlow's Facebook posts announcing these efforts by saying he missed the message, that they don't want officers with guns interfering in more civil matters. Instead, they advocate that the city treat the source of the issues, rather than policing them. One of the organizers of the recent marches, Omar van Reenen, an international student from Namibia, Africa who's studying at SUNY Oswego, said that means spending public dollars elsewhere.
"Defunding the police doesn’t mean dismantling it, it means reallocating resources to where we need it the most," Reenen said. "We cannot expect the police to be mental health professionals. We cannot expect the police to be ones who can improve the lives of the drug-addicted in our city. That is up to our leaders to fund resources into those health sectors that will empower these residents to become part of our community. But instead, the mayor has chosen to continue criminalizing poverty, to continue criminalizing people with mental health issues, to continue criminalizing people who are drug addicted."
Barlow said he's for spending more public dollars on anti-poverty and mental health programs, just not taking away funding from the police department to accomplish that.
