PLATTSBURGH — The Plattsburgh City Police Department’s shortcomings in recent years can be attributed to a “lack of stable leadership,” a recently released investigation report into the department documented.
“Lack of stable leadership over many years has led the department to fall behind modern, best practices in law enforcement across a wide range of subjects,” the report, completed by the agency Bond, Shoeneck & King and M M. Rusin Consulting LLC of Syracuse, stated in its summary.
“Policies are outdated, overly dense, and often not followed … There is no comprehensive training strategy to ensure officers and leaders are being trained throughout their career on best practices. Officers are promoted into leadership with only the bare minimum of supervisory training, and left to their own devices on how to manage the office under their leadership … all of these shortcomings can be described as ‘systems level’ failures.”
This investigation report was released to the media Monday.
The probe was first approved by the city of Plattsburgh Common Council in February and began soon after.
The final report, which was the culmination of an extensive document review and interviews with several officers and administrators within the department, outlined recommendations to the city for how to improve the police department going forward.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The recommendations included creating a leadership program that “trains all supervisors on the missions, vision and values of the department and updates their skills on critical issues such as citizen complaints, disciplinary processes and use of force.”
The recommendation came after taking issue with the department’s outdated policies, which, with the exception of a couple, had not been updated since former Chief Desmond Racicot’s tenure. Racicot has not been chief since 2017.
The report also outlined major issues with the department’s training practices and called some current procedures “troubling.”
Suggestions to increase the department’s current training budget of $12,500 and revisit the requirement that City Council approve any overnight travel for training were made as well.
“The review revealed a significant void in the area of ongoing training and education for officers after they complete the academy and field training,” the report stated.
Additionally, the city was advised to update its orders for discipline and implement its body-worn camera program.
The city had purchased the cameras a couple of years ago, but they had not been put into regular service yet.
Mayor Wendell Hughes said the department needed to wait until a permanent police chief was appointed before the program could begin. After Hughes appointed Jarrod Trombley as chief in May, the body-worn camera program was immediately made a priority, he said.
“We’ve been sitting on these body cams for how long? and everybody’s saying, ‘oh, we should have done this. We should have done that.’ We didn’t have a chief. The chief dictates those policies,” the mayor said in an interview Thursday. “These last couple weeks, we had a pilot program (for the cameras). We’re going to roll them out. We have a chief now.”
NEXT STEPS
During the course of the investigation, the city, in addition to appointing Trombley as chief and Joel Vassar as captain, was working concurrently by taking several steps to improve the department already.
This is because Hughes, who said the findings of the report were not surprising, knew the department needed help. That’s why he sought out the agency’s services in his first month as mayor earlier this year.
Some recommendations, like the need to overhaul the department’s training practices, are currently being addressed and have been, Hughes said. Whether or not the training budget is increased will be up to the council, the mayor said.
“My new police chief has been addressing this from day one before the report came in. He has made an effort to make better trainings,” he said.
Still, the mention of a “lack of leadership” stood out to Hughes the most in the report. However, that criticism is applicable to the city of Plattsburgh as a whole, he said.
“In my lifetime, I can name four supervisors in the town of Plattsburgh, there’s been a couple county administrators in the last 40 years. How many mayors has the city had?” Hughes said, referring to the continued turnover in the city’s highest office. “How do we fix that at this level? I don’t know. Down there (at the police department), hopefully we have fixed it.”
TROMBLEY ALLEGATIONS
It was previously believed the investigation report would include findings about Trombley, who was suspended and placed on administrative leave in September 2024 by former Mayor Chris Rosenquest for two charges relating to misconduct, incompetence, insubordination and falsifying the numbers of hours worked, according to city documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request.
However, the report only stated an interview with Trombley — who was initially brought back to the department as a lieutenant in January before being named chief — took place and did not specifically say if the allegations made against him were found to be true or not.
Asked why Trombley and his allegations were not a focal point of the report, Hughes said there should have been more information in there. He did not clarify what additional information he would have liked to have.
“It was supposed to entail a little bit more, yeah,” he said. “We did have a cap on what we could spend … We hit the cap a lot faster than what we thought, and that’s what delayed a lot of the outcome.”
Hughes said the agency was initially supposed to receive a $30,000 payment for its services, but due to the city’s dissatisfaction with the amount of work done, they came to an agreement recently to pay out $15,000.
‘GOOD BASIS’
But, despite any qualms about the scope of work done, Hughes said the agency provided them a “good basis” for where they should start improving the department.
“These are two very talented people we had here, and going forward, there’s a lot of information in that report that … they really put the spotlight (on),” he said. “I’m going to sit down with the chief, the captain, corporation council, and we’re going to go over a lot of these things, and we’re going to continue going over them, and we’re going to start reviewing them.”
LAWSUIT
As previously reported by the Press-Republican, the city was facing two civil lawsuits filed by two Clinton County residents, one regarding the appointment of Trombley as police chief and the other for not yet releasing an investigative report into the police department.
Residents Joan Janson and April Wood, represented by local attorney Frank Zappala, filed the lawsuits in Clinton County Supreme Court on June 16.
It’s unclear what will happen with the one lawsuit now that the report has been released.
Asked about the lawsuits, Hughes said, “it’s in the attorney’s hands,” but he was hoping to see a resolution soon.
Hughes added that he stands by his decision to appoint Trombley as chief “100%.”
“He’s been doing an amazing job. I love the way we’re getting back to community policing,” he said. “There’s a lot of good initiatives that he wants to bring through, so we’ll see.”