NAACP criticizes Falls officials over racial incidents
Says failure to act let injustice fester
NIAGARA FALLS — Local leaders of the NAACP on Monday charged city officials with failing to act as racial injustice festered within the ranks of city workers and the police force.
Two top leaders from the Niagara Falls branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People urged City Council members to take steps to address a series of race-related complaints in the city.
“You have remained silent on these issues at hand,” said Shirley Hamilton, vice president of the NAACP’s Niagara Falls branch. “You sat there, you said nothing, you did nothing, you failed to speak up on matters which could have been nipped in the bud years ago.”
Hamilton said the problems have “grown into a garden of hate, disrespect, intolerance and injustice for those who are different” in Niagara Falls.
She called on city leaders to work with the U. S. Justice Department and the state attorney general’s office to address complaints of discriminatory hiring practices, hostile work environments and “unprofessional behavior” by police officers.
Hamilton was one of several speakers who addressed the City Council on Monday at the request of the local NAACP.
“Take note of our city and do something,” Fred Chambers told the Council. “Unless you have a concept of a new birth of justice and freedom for all, your city will die and never rise again.”
Bill Bradberry, president of the Niagara Falls branch of the NAACP, said before the meeting that the organization wanted city leaders to stand up along with its members to “do the right thing.”
“We don’t want to fight the city,” said Bradberry, a former city administrator. “We want the city to stand with us.”
Recent race-related incidents that have highlighted the problem, Hamilton said, include:
• A public works employee admitted last year he placed a handwritten “whites only” sign on a public drinking fountain in what he characterized as a joke. The worker, James Curtis, is now eligible to return to work after a State Supreme Court justice last week declined to overturn an arbitrator’s ruling that his earlier firing was “excessive.”
• CityCouncilmanStevenD. Fournier was accused of using a racial slur when he was arrested in May outside a Ferry Avenue bar during an incident in which two officers said he was highly intoxicated and yelling obscenities. Fournier, who has denied using a racial epithet that night, received an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal for two disorderly conduct and resisting arrest charges from his arrest.
Hamilton chastised other city leaders for failing to speak out after the incident.
“It has become apparent that one must not only look at the source of the problem, but one must also investigate the practices that foster an environment of acceptance, injustice, harassment and violation of civil rights,” Hamilton told the Council.
City leaders have said they are taking steps to address human rights and race-related complaints against the city and have worked this year with the New York State attorney general’s office to revise city policies to ensure city hiring practices are fair.
In other business Monday, the Council learned that a city contractor hired to reconstruct Lewiston Road has obtained a required state license to remove radioactive materials in the street.
Michael DeSantis, a project manager for the city’s Engineering Department, told the City Council that the contractor, Man O’Trees of West Seneca, has obtained the license and will move forward with the work.
The $14.6 million project had been on hold until the contract received approval from the state to handle the radioactive materials.
The two-year project is scheduled to be completed in two phases.
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