New Haven Independent

To hear some city residents (like Reginald Lytle, pictured) tell it, the New Haven Police Department could be based on Mars, for all of its responsiveness to their complaints. That was the main sentiment conveyed at the Wexler-Grant School in Dixwell Wednesday, where the team of police consultants, joined by a mayorally appointed panel overseeing their audit, convened to hear input on citizens’ experiences with the police in the wake of the New Haven police bribery and theft scandal. (Click here for a story on the first forum and its purpose).

The meeting brought more of a discussion than the poorly attended first forum Tuesday, but nowhere near the passionate debate at the community summit that black leaders convened at the Elks Club, just one block away, on the same topic in March.

Jeffrey Meyer, a former prosecutor and now a professor at Quinnipiac School of Law, introduced the meeting by saying the panel is focusing on narcotics operations enforcement, the internal services division, a review of internal values and ethics procedures, and an assessment of the components of the organizational culture of the department. He sits on the mayor’s Independent Accountability Panel, which is overseeing the mayor’s $130,000 “dream team” probe of the police department, led by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). The panel’s volunteer members include movers and shakers from law enforcement, the legal establishment, city government and the faith community. (Pictured are Anthony Zona, a police union official, Rick Epstein, Chair of the Board of Police Commissioners, Chief Cisco Ortiz and Assistant Chief Herman Badger, and former cop and current Ward 12 alderman, Gerald Antunes). Attorney Tara Knight and Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts were also at the meeting, but at least as many panel members were absent as present.

Lytle, who coaches youth football in the Brookside neighborhood, detailed the lack of responsiveness by the police to a fight involving many youngsters, followed by an unfulfilled promise that police would be present at future games. Then he had a suggestion.

“I would like to see more people from within the community sitting on this panel,” Lytle said. “There’s people who are qualified who live in New Haven who would like to be on your panel, but when you’ve got a shut door system, it’s not going to work.”

Attorney John Radziunas (pictured) told of several instances when his requests for follow-up by the police were ignored, and one incident where he was shoved and called a liar, in so many words, by a police sergeant who finally responded to one of his calls for assistance.

“People feel they have no connection to the police department. There is a general belief by the people that I deal with, and myself, that the police department has created its own little community, that they have become - in their minds - they are the law.” His comments were met by several murmurs of agreement from members of the audience.

Radziunas then suggested a solution. “I think it’s conduct and attitude, and I think one way you can address that - maybe - is in the training academy.”

Then former mayor John Daniels took the floor. He began with a little history, saying the first black police officers (three of them) were hired in New Haven in 1952; that the 1960s was the decade of fighting to get more black cops hired; the 1970s, the decade of fighting to get them promoted; the 1980s, the fight against massive police brutality; and the 1990s the fight to get the community connected to the police department. That’s when Daniels, as mayor, introduced community-based policing in the early part of the decade, appointing Nick Pastore as chief. Click here to hear Daniels’ view of the philosophy behind community policing, and how he thinks it’s disappeared in New Haven.

Three speakers, including Ronald Huggins, a member of the Youth Board of Police Commissioners, Doug Bethea, whose son was slain last year, and Ed White, urged support for the police. White asked, “Has anyone truly walked in the police officer’s shoes? I don’t think we have. You’re either going to work with the police or work against them. I’m sick and tired of people complaining.”