“All Police Advisory Boards Hit As ‘Forced by Minorities’,” has no author. The article was published in the Democrat & Chronicle on October 23, 1965. Fraternal Order of Police president John J. Harrington was in Rochester at the request of Citizens for Abolition of the Police Advisory Board to speak before a crowd of 100 or so people explaining why the review boards are bad. George Jost (the paper reports, but I’m wondering if it isn’t Lawrence Jost) shouted the speaker down saying “I’m no Communist and you people ought to produce facts. I am for the advisory board.” He and several others opposed to Harrington’s nonsense were shouted down by police out of uniform. The clipping can be found at the Local History Department of the Monroe County Library Downtown Branch.
While the Police Advisory Board became law on March 26, 1963 to address complaints against officers who used “excessive and unnecessary force” against civilians, the Locust Club police union did everything in its power to thwart it from actually accomplishing anything. Two injunctions were slapped on it by the court preventing it from conducting independent investigations and forwarding recommendations to the chief of police–it’s primary functions. By the mid-1960s, new appointments to the board were needed to meet quorum in order for it to do its work. But neither Democrats nor Republicans appointed anyone to the board after it was found constitutional by the courts in 1969. It was then defunded and abolished in 1970 by the new Republican Party-lead Rochester city government.
