Tina Luongo, Attorney-in-Charge of the Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense Practice, has penned a joint op-ed with leaders from other area defender organizations in the New York Daily News slamming the de Blasio administration’s shifty response to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s August executive order requiring police departments to come up with plans to reform policing.

The piece – co-authored with representatives of Neighborhood Defender Services, NY County Defender Services, Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn Defender Services – takes aim squarely at Mayor de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, who have rolled out a “smoke and mirrors” show to placate the Governor while reinforcing the status quo in reality.

In defiance of the governor’s executive order requiring that community stakeholders be part of developing plans to reinvent policing, de Blasio’s committee to lead the effort includes none. Nor does it include any of the city’s DA’s or public defenders. Instead, the mayor has “ceded complete control of the process to the police department, the very entity whose actions lie at the heart of the current problem of policing.”

“[We’re] calling on the mayor,” the op-ed closes, “to bring transparency to the process and the City Council to support the work of grassroots organizations who are conducting authentic listening sessions, centering the voices of directly impacted individuals, and working on their own recommendations,” the op-ed reads in part. “Only then it will be possible for this initiative to result in a true plan to reform and reinvent the police.”

Read the full piece here.