New Haven Independent

The Jamaican-born recruit’s name is Gregory Fraser. He’s black, and he’s 41. He decided to become a cop after getting laid off from his job as a United Airlines technician in the post- 9-11 industry contraction. “I wanted to do something good for my community,” he said outside Tuesday night’s hearing, which he attended wearing a black Uomo suit.

So Fraser applied to the New Haven police training academy. He got in, graduated with the rest of his academy class in April. Then he, like all recruits, had to complete a four-part “field training” program in which recruits spend 12 weeks on the job with officers on the force, who further train and then evaluate them. Fraser passed the first two phases. He and four other recruits were sent back to repeat the third phase. The others eventually passed and became cops. Fraser kept receiving unsatisfactory evaluations until the deadline passed for when he could become a certified officer on the force.

His plight captured the attention of the Guardians, a group of black New Haven officers which formed this year in the ashes of the old Silver Shields organization. The Guardians say that five recruits have failed to make the force in recent years, and they’ve all been black or Latino. In most cases, the recruits failed in the field training phase, which the Guardians claim is biased.

The officers showed up in force Wednesday night, along with Aldermen Drew King of Dixwell and Charles Blango of Newhallville; and representatives of the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officials.

They seized on a comment repeated in Fraser’s evaluations, that he’s not “assertive” enough on the job.

Is This About Bias?

“If you have an officer who is overly aggressive, you end up with what you just had in New Orleans ,” said Charles Wilson, the national association’s vice-president. He traveled from Rhode Island for the hearing. “This is a situation we see on a national basis.”

Fraser was represented at the police commission hearing by attorney Carolyn Smith Stewart. Stewart used to chair the police commission during the heyday of community policing. She was the commission’s first-ever black female chair.

“Hiring practices and employment are changing,” Stewart said before the hearing. “In the past there was a commitment to improve the cultural diversity of the department in hiring women and minorities. We see a trend downward. There was an emphasis on community policing. That emphasis has changed.”

Alderman King said he wants the Board of Aldermen to investigate why “so many black officers tend to fail at the end of their” field training.

During the hearing, Stewart and police union President Louis Cavalier asked the commissioners to certify Fraser but place him on another six months of probation so he could improve on his report-writing and other weaknesses. Cavalier called those weakenesses minor. Reviewing the thick pile of evaluations from the field training program, Cavalier argued that Fraser received generally passing marks. He called the weaknesses minor and within the ability of Fraser, a college graduate and former airline technical worker, to master.

Commissioner Ted Brooks agreed with Cavalier. Brooks expressed outrage that he and other commissioners know so little about the field training portion of training recruits. It sounded dangerously subjective to him.

Or Is This About Standards?

Sgt. Joseph Witkowski explained the field training program to Brooks and everyone else in the room under questioning from police department attorney Will Clark.

The program is called “The San Jose Model.” New Haven has used it for 35 years. Witkowski runs it these days.

By the time recruits advance to later stages of field training, the officers supervising them let the recruits do most of the work. The officers step in only if they have to.

They had to step in too often with Gregory Fraser, Witkowski testified. In one case, he said, Fraser patted down a suspect and found no weapons; an officer subsequently found a knife. Other times, Witkowski said, Fraser arrived late to the scene of a crime to back up officers. He continually had problems completing paperwork, according to Witkowski. Witkowski said he and others worked with Fraser. He testified that they would see improvements for a while, “peaks and valleys,” and then Fraser would slip back into poor performance on the same issues.

“His performance seemed to be deteriorating,” Witkowski said. “Virtually every day the [field training officer] was stepping in because Officer Fraser couldn’t do [tasks] on his own.”

The officers involved in evaluating recruits include whites, blacks and Latinos, Witkowski said. Fraser was the only one of 21 recruits in the current class who ended up not making it through the program.

“To pass somebody who is not able to meet the standards negates the whole purpose of the program,” Witkowski said. He took exception to Cavalier’s point that Fraser qualifies for the force because he scored satisfactorily in most categories of his evaluations. “That violates the whole concept of the program,” Witkowksi said. “The officer needs to be proficient in each of the 23 performance categories.”

Under questioning from Commissioner Brooks, Witkowski said three recruits have failed the field training program during the past couple of years. Two were African-American, one Latino.

What Next?

After hearing all the testimony, Brooks and the other commissioners decided it was too late in the process to gather enough information to decide Fraser’s fate. So they let stand, without voting, the staff recommendation to terminate him. Recruits, by law, have to finish the academy and the field training program and become certified as officers within a year, or else be terminated. Fraser’s year runs out this Thursday.

Commissioner Brooks was dissatisfied with the outcome. He was convinced by Fraser’s side that his shortcomings may not have amounted to more than the usual weaknesses most recruits have to work on. But Brooks said the commissioners had no choice but to allow the termination to stand.

“They gave it to us too late” to evaluate, Brooks said. “We’re going to look at that.” At the next meeting, he plans to ask for a synopsis of how every recruit performed in the program. Brooks also said he plans to push for the commissioners to receive reports earlier in the field training program about recruits in danger of failing.

The commissioners predicted that, even though their body couldn’t make a decision on Fraser’s case, it might go to arbitration. Then a court would have the final say.

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