KINGSTON – The Ulster County Legislature has postponed voting on a local law that would place restrictions on law enforcement covering their faces in certain public forward-facing situations.
County officials began discussing the issue earlier this year after incidents around the country – including in the Hudson Valley – that involved masked ICE agents scooping people off the streets in their drive to arrest undocumented people.
The state budget adopted in May includes a law that in many ways is similar to the proposed one. And Deputy Ulster County Executive James Amenta said county officials want to compare the two before coming up with their own plan
“Our local law was proposed to be an administrative process for which an office, when receiving complaints, would conduct a civil investigation, request information from any potential offenders, and then come to conclusions at a civil hearing,” he said. “The state law is invested in civil rights law, and it creates a potential criminal penalty for people who are in violation.”
Amenta said the county must massage its local proposal meshing it with the state law.
In the meantime, he said the federal government has secured a preliminary injunction on the state law as it applies to federal employees, not state or local employees.
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