The Albany Community Police Review Board (CPRB) voted to take more time to consider Albany Common Councilor John Williamson's allegations that an Albany police officer racially profiled him during a traffic stop in May.
A report on the allegations, authored by CPRB Board Member Julia Morris, concluded that all of Williamson's allegations were unfounded based on the available evidence — agreeing with an investigation conducted by the Albany Police Department's Office of Professional Standards.
However, other CPRB members were skeptical of those findings.
"Officers, if they're like that, they need to be corrected," CPRB Board Member Marc Johnson said after hearing Morris' report. "I just don't necessarily feel overly confident about the outcome of this."
The CPRB voted 3-0 to table the report for further discussion at their next meeting. Johnson, James Chaney and Lillian Garland voted for the measure, while Morris and Warren Hamilton abstained. Victor Person and Lani Jones were absent from the meeting.
Williamson, who attended and spoke at the meeting, declined an interview request.
Morris' report considered allegations that APD officers improperly pulled Williamson over on May 18; that they racially profiled Williamson, who is Black; that the officers were "rude, sarcastic, dismissive, arrogant and nasty"; and that an officer gripped his gun during the traffic stop. Morris said she reviewed both officers' body-camera footage and video from a traffic-light camera that captured the scene.
"I was able to watch all of those videos, so I sort of had more of a — I wouldn't say like a firsthand experience — but I was able to see things they were just hearing about it," Morris said when asked why a majority of her fellow board members voted to table her report. "This was quite a long complaint, so they were getting quite a lot of information, and I think they just needed a little bit more time to think on it."
Officers stopped Williamson, who represents the city's First Ward, for turning without signaling twice, which Morris said was confirmed by traffic camera footage she reviewed. Officers also told Williamson that one of his headlights was out; Williamson responded that it was just dim. The officer let Williamson go after giving him a written warning.
Williamson did not file a complaint with the APD or the CPRB. Both groups started investigating the incident after seeing Williamson's Facebook post about the incident, where he first publicly accused the police of racially profiling and harassing him.
In comments to the board after hearing Morris' report, Williamson apologized for telling officers he was a member of the CPRB — clarifying that he is a member of the Common Council's Public Safety Committee. But his apologies ended there.
Williamson reiterated that he and his 16-year-old grandson, who was in the passenger seat, were scared by a police officer standing outside the vehicle with his hand on his gun.
Body-camera footage previously released by Albany police showed Williamson telling this to an officer. Williamson's grandson told the officer he was scared after being asked. The officer apologized, explaining, "This is how we stand.”
"[I'm] Trying not to get too emotional, because this is not about me," Williamson said. "This is about other Black and brown young men that get pulled over."
Morris concluded that the officer "does appear to rest his hand and/or his forearm on the holstered firearm." She added, in response to a question from Board Member James Chaney, that "there is no policy that states they cannot rest a hand as long as the weapon is holstered."
"I only ask that from past traumas where I was stopped at one point, and an officer did rest his hand on his weapon," Chaney said. "So, I'm just saying, it can be intimidating."
Albany Police Lt. Benjamin Peterson, the department's representative at the CPRB meeting, added that the officer was likely keeping his hand near his holster as "a comfort thing" because of the amount of gear on his belt.
"In that case, the officer was not actually gripping his handgun. He was more or less resting his palm of his hand on the holster," Peterson said. "But I can understand where that could be misinterpreted."
Williamson insisted that the "arrogant" officers made rude facial expressions and tried to antagonize him by asking who owned his car, a question he believes they already knew the answer to.
"You guys saw me on a camera. You didn't see what he was doing to me," Williamson said of the body-camera footage. "If you saw what he was doing to me, it would have been a different story."
Several loved ones joined Williamson throughout the meeting. His wife, Alexis Williamson, spoke on his behalf during the public comment period, telling the board that her husband's reaction to the traffic stop was partly due to a prior incident where "a gun was in his face."
"It's been hard being out in the public eye. It's been very hard," Alexis Williamson said. "Don't nobody know what a public servant go through. But when you're doing the job, and you trust in God that you're doing the job right, you do what you got to do for the people."
The three members who voted to table the measure apologized to Williamson for the incident shortly before the vote.
"My heart goes out to you, and I apologize," Chaney told Williamson near the end of the meeting. "I was not there, but as a person that has sat and watched the news, and a person that is aware of different forms of intimidation, I don't feel that that child, for any reason, needed to go through that."
