This NY city has an undue rate of police discipline. What’s being done?
This NY city has an undue rate of police discipline. What’s being done?
Geneva Mayor Steve Valentino says his city’s high number of police disciplinary records is a positive reflection of the department’s transparency.
A joint investigation between the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Central Current and USA TODAY Network-New York.
The city of Geneva, New York, is not a place someone could get lost in. Its police station is housed in a modest brick building, inside which a five-by-five display case carefully preserves pieces of the department’s history. A few blocks down the street, the northern end of Seneca Lake is visible.
Yet in spite of this vision of idyllic tidiness in this small community of 12,000 people, a number of its police officers seem to be failing to perform even the simplest of responsibilities.
Out of dozens of police departments that have complied with New York state law releasing disciplinary records, as per a USA TODAY Network-New York record-gathering project, the Geneva City Police Department ranks fourth in the number of discipline records. Out of these 84 total incidents, 51 of them — 60% — involved an officer’s “failure to perform duty,” or neglecting to follow proper protocol during a shift.
The department holds the highest number of incidents from this disciplinary records category in the collected records.
Performance of Geneva police officers has been in the news this spring thanks to the arrest of now-former officer Michael Tapscott in connection with the sale of a form of Aderall and the related placing on administrative leave of two others, Sgt. David Felice and Officer Nathan Jacon.
Interviews with Geneva officials showed city leaders are wrestling with the challenges of managing a police force made up of mostly newer officers, amid challenges in recruiting and retaining officers.
Still, Geneva Mayor Steve Valentino said in an interview conducted before the Tapscott case emerged that his city’s high number of police disciplinary records is a positive reflection of the department’s transparency, rather than a weak point.
“I can’t compliment our police department enough for their ability to maintain security in the city of Geneva,” Valentino said. “What that indicates is that we have a strong structure in our police department, and anything that does go awry, they’re under control, and they take care of that in a timely manner.”
The disciplinary records were made public through the 2020 repeal of section 50-a of the New York state Civil Rights Law.USA TODAY Network-New York’s “Good Cop Bad Cop: Inside Police Discipline in New York State” project created a database of these records through Freedom of Information requests and information made available on police departments’ websites. Through reporters’ work to collect, document and publish decades of disciplinary records, stories are being published to reflect the challenges and opportunities facing local police departments.
Have questions about how to access police misconduct records from your New York hometown? Submit your questions to our online form.
Disciplinary rate per 10,000 residents high in Geneva
Geneva’s police department has the state’s highest rate of failure on duty incidents, both in raw count and when compared to the city’s population that each department resides in, our Network’s database shows. When broken down, Geneva has 38 recorded instances per 10,000 people of officers neglecting their duty. That’s 12 times the New York statewide rate of three recorded instances among police departments that have released disciplinary records.
The disproportionate rate of instances in Geneva is apparent, especially when considering all of the disciplinary records made public by the department only cover 16 years, the shortest time range of any department with recorded “failure to perform duty” incidents.
One Geneva officer, Richard Baskin, had seven disciplinary actions against him between 2015 and 2021, six of them being categorized as “failure to perform.”
On Dec. 26, 2015, Baskin failed to obey orders from a superior officer, leaving Officer J. Lloyd alone during a scene of a violent crime, which included a fight and assault as well as six knives, records show. The superior officer asked Baskin to stay and support Lloyd “because of the seriousness of the crime involved, the lack of any street lighting and the subjects involved.”
Instead, Baskin left early and was found standing in dispatch, while Lloyd was left alone at the scene of a violent crime.
On Nov. 23, 2017, a disciplinary report involving Baskin detailed “Officer made vulgar post on social media about O.J .Simpson” which resulted in a verbal warning.
According to the records, Baskin posted a photograph on his Facebook account that pictured “OJ Simpson holding a plate of turkey with the caption ‘Carvin’ up that white meat’ and captioned the photo by saying, ‘Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!'”
Baskin could not be reached for comment.On Dec. 31, 2020, Baskin was reported to have been watching videos on the computer in his patrol car while on duty. According to a disciplinary record, Baskin said that he listened to a podcast during his shifts, but tried to minimize his viewing time. This incident was classified as “neglect on duty,” and Baskin received a verbal warning.
USA TODAY Network-New York reached out to Geneva City officials about the amount of disciplinary records. City Manager Amie Hendrix said she has authority over the operations of the Geneva city police department. Because of that role, although any police disciplinary records go to both human resources and to the chief, she has the final authority over these records.
Geneva city manager: ‘We’re a smaller city than some of our peers’
In Hendrix’s view, the department has not seen a “skyrocketing of discipline.” A key goal is to properly train and prepare a mostly young police work force for their duties, Hendrix said.
Since the start of the decade, the pool of candidates has become increasingly smaller for police departments nation-wide, Hendrix said.
“I will say it’s increasingly challenging because different departments are using different recruitment strategies,” Hendrix said. “And so you have some departments that are doing large stipends, so hiring new bonuses or incentives, we don’t have those resources. We’re a smaller city than some of our peers.”
Ronald Eveland is a fourth-generation police officer and has been Geneva’s police chief since June 2024. He said he is confident in his officers’ ability to perform their duties. Eveland said that he meets with Hendrix monthly during a private one-on-one meeting in which the two discuss how to best manage the police department. He considers Hendrix one of his “strongest crutches.”
Eveland said he believes it is not the small size of his department that causes the high rate of failure to perform duty actions. He says that larger agencies make it easier for these failures to go unnoticed due to less oversight. While it is true that larger police departments like Rochester and Syracuse yield more overall disciplinary records, Geneva police account for the largest tally of failure to perform duty incidents.
“I think the biggest struggle that I have in my current position is, just the change in policing from like hiring practices and just the quality of applicants,” Eveland said. “The number of applicants has certainly changed since the 2020 era.”
After Tapscott’s arrest and the placing of Felice and Jacon on administrative leave, Eveland posted this statement on Facebook:
“This is an extremely difficult time not only for our police department family but for the Geneva community and for any innocent parties involved,” Eveland said. “We remain committed to providing the highest level of service and will continue working to ensure safety, security, and transparency in Geneva.”
Geneva police provide greater scrutiny for handling of crimes like burglary
Valentino, the mayor, said that Geneva’s police department has become more aware of the national climate surrounding the relationship between officers and the public since the pandemic and the racial justice movement that emerged following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“I think that another component of the police department is that they make sure that they run a tight ship, and they make sure that they are acting out the proper procedures and policies in place,” Valentino said. “And I think that that bodes to the lack of major issues inside our city police department; every organization has some issues.”
Eveland cites particularly notable cases of failure to perform duty as reasons to create new policies or procedures that help mitigate these issues in the department going forward.
For instance, now most burglaries to which officers respond must be forwarded to the Detective Bureau. A detective then reviews the case to make sure it is thoroughly checked and investigated. This procedure was implemented at the department during the administration prior to Chief Eveland, when Matthew Colton was chief from July 2023 to March 2024.
“They make sure that if there’s more to a certain call, that the officer’s not kind of brushing things under the rug. Not saying that that happened intentionally. A lot of the time it’s just a lack of knowledge,” Eveland said.
Former-Chief Colton himself had several disciplinary actions against him in the years before he became chief. Between 2009 and 2011, Colton had five against him, three of them being for “failure to perform,” records show.
Colton resigned from his chief’s role last March and was placed on paid administrative leave, according to an April 4, 2024, article in the Finger Lakes Times.
Hendrix says Colton resigned on March 29, 2024, and that the resignation was a mutual agreement between the department and Colton. Hendrix did not answer whether or not there was a non-disclosure agreement signed in this matter, and did not state why Colton resigned.
Colton could not be reached for comment.
Geneva police training hours exceed state minimum, chief says
On a more immediate level, Eveland says he stresses with his sergeants that they should be thoroughly checking each of their calls for service every day, which are issue and emergency calls made by the public.
Police departments that participate in New York state’s voluntary accreditation program mandate their officers to complete at least 21 hours of in-service training annually, which includes firearms training and legal updates. Eveland says his officers complete 115 to 120 hours of training on average, far exceeding the state accreditation minimum.
Officers at the department also go through crisis intervention training, which was a new initiative over the past five years as the department noticed an increase in mental health calls.
Just because a police officer might have many disciplinary actions written down against them does not necessarily mean that they are committing actions outside of policy, professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice Christopher Mercado said.
Mercado is a retired New York Police Department lieutenant and currently works for the Tennessee Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission.
Ex-NYPD leader: ‘What are you doing…to make sure your cops are in compliance?’
“From a police chief point of view, from an executive, you have a tough job, you have to manage public expectations, you have to provide public safety,” Mercado said. “You have to decide how much you are going to involve the community in the day to day practices of policing.”
According to Mercado, real change was made within the NYPD after years of critique surrounding policing tactics. He says that while discipline should be transparent, it is just as important to take the context of the incident and the background of the officer into account.
“What programs are you running for training, for interdiction, application of narcotics offenses or policy and procedure, what are you doing on an annual basis, quarterly basis, to make sure your cops are in compliance with the law, and also to follow department policy?” Mercado said.
This story is part of a series investigating police disciplinary records across New York State. USA TODAY Network-New York, Central Current and students from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications have teamed up to reveal records that remained hidden through 2020, when New York politicians repealed laws hiding police officers’ disciplinary records. USA TODAY Network-New York obtained the records through the Freedom of Information Law.
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