Markeshia Ricks Photo
Protesters flooded the entrance to the New Haven Police Department demanding answers from top cops about why an officer who was shown on a video throwing a handcuffed 15-year-old girl to the pavement was still on the job even as his actions are being investigated by Internal Affairs. For a seventh straight day, top cops hid out from the public.
Protesters wanted to get answers directly from the department’s top cop, Chief Dean Esserman, or his assistant chiefs. “The arrogance [of the department] starts with the chief and trickles down to the officers,” said longtime local activist Barbara Fair (pictured above).
Esserman was out of town on vacation. But in the wake of a video that went viral last Tuesday of officer Joshua Smereczynsky’s March 15 arrest of the 15-year-old girl, not one assistant chief or department captain has stepped out front to respond to community concerns about the investigation and outrage over the video. Meanwhile, the girl has been charged with third-degree assault, breach of peace and carrying a dangerous weapon. (Crucial details about the incident remain unknown pending the outcome of the investigation.)
Dozens of protesters filed into police headquarters Monday afternoon to ask the officers behind the glass partition and locked doors of the front desk to call Esserman down to meet with them, or let them up so that they could speak to him. When it began to take some time they chanted, “We want the chief! Bring out the chief!” At one point the chant changed to “We want the cheese! Bring out the cheese!,” alluding to Esserman being on vacation in Paris, France. Holly Tucker (pictured) said, “He can’t be in Europe,” she said. “This is the time for him to be here.”
Three of the department’s four assistant chiefs were in town. None of them came out to address the protesters, just as they have made no public appearances about the case since it began. When it appeared that no one was coming to speak to them, the protesters decided to take their protest back to the streets, literally. They blocked rush hour traffic on Union Avenue, vowing not to leave until someone from the department came to speak to them. Drivers seemed more confused than anything, not even honking much more than usual, but simply turning around in the middle of the street to head away from the human wall that had stretched across the street.
The protest started in the Hill neighborhood on Thorn Street, with protesters marching through the streets chanting: “No justice, no peace! No racist police!” It’s a rallying cry that has been deployed often by protesters of police brutality in New Haven, post-Ferguson.
At one point chant leaders like Tucker (pictured) used a megaphone to tell people, who were stuck in traffic at lights and because of police directing traffic, the story of what happened to the 15-year-old girl. “She was a 15-year-old girl — a child — slammed to the pavement by a police officer,” she said. (Defenders of the cop say that the girl, though handcuffed, was fighting against her arrest and posed a potential danger to the officer.)
Tucker’s words caused the marchers to take up the chant, “Hey, hey, ho, ho. Child abuse has got to go!” They received fist pumps out of windows and honks of solidarity from many they passed by.
Meanwhile, officers in police cruisers, and rookie cops like Mark Zaza (pictured), who was on foot, dutifully tailed the marchers making sure they were safe.
The protesters took their cause straight down Union Avenue past Union Station, while people arriving and trying to leave the city looked on, some gawking and pointing.
When they arrived a crowd of fellow protesters and press began gathering at the steps of the police headquarters to lend their voices to the chants and their support, changing: “No justice, no peace! No child abusing police!” Protester Omar Ryan (pictured in the center of the photo above) said that he doesn’t care what the girl allegedly did, that her treatment by the officer was wrong. “I don’t care what she did. I don’t care if she maced the whole parade,” he said. “Somebody slammed this child to the ground. She could have been your daughter.” State NAACP President Scot X. Esdaile, Pastor Donald Morris of the Christian Community Commission, and activists from Unidad Latina en Accion were present, as were members of the Nation of Islam. Earlier in the day Esdaile criticized the department for putting a black female officer on desk duty, then barring her from headquartes, while she is under internal investigation, while Smereczynsky, who is white, continues on patrol during his own investigation: “Do we have two different police departments, or one? A police department for black officers and a police department for white officers?”
Longtime local activist Ann Boyd (pictured), who also is the grandmother of the arrested 15-year-old girl, said that she was happy that so many people from the community came to lend their support. She said her granddaughter, who was not in attendance, was still “shaken up” from the incident. (She suffered cuts to her face and a fractured shoulder in the encounter. The police did not offer medical attention.) Boyd said she isn’t looking for justice, “because the United States is unclear on what justice is,” but she said she wanted to see the charges dropped against her granddaughter, and vowed that her family would continue to fight.
Newhallville Alder Alfreda Edwards said she was disturbed by the force that Smereczynsky appears to use in the video. She said it’s good that an investigation is taking place, but she wasn’t aware until she heard it at the protest Monday, that Smereczynsky is still working. “He should be suspended, or on leave until the investigation is complete,” she said.
Finally an officer waded into the crowd to answer questions: Not an assistant chief, but someone with no authority over the case or connection to it: Lt. Herb Sharp, the manager of the Newhallville/East Rock District. He put himself in the line of fire Monday as protesters blocked Union Avenue.
When activist Cornell Lewis (pictured left) told him that the protesters would stop blocking the street if someone from the department would speak to them and answer their questions, he agreed to be that person, and the crowd didn’t hold back.
The questions and declarative statements flew furiously: “Why is the cop who did this still working?”, “What’s being done about this?”, “Tell us the process for this internal investigation,” “Community policing doesn’t work.” All while a gaggle of reporters pressed microphones and cameras in his face, and Fair mostly spoke to him through a megaphone. (The above video of the encounter was shot by the New Haven Register’s Evan Lips.)
“What faith can we have in this process, when this officer is still on the street?” Fair asked. “He should at least be on desk duty.”
Sharp responded, while several protesters recorded him on their phone, that the department was conducting an internal investigation, and that everybody had to let the process work. The officer is entitled to due process, he said. He offered an explanation for why the officer in question remains on the job: “We can’t penalize someone until we’ve gone through that process,” he said. “It’s OK. Even all of you being out here protesting is part of the process. That’s OK.”
In the end, protesters realized that Sharp had no authority to give them more detailed answers to their questions than any of the several officers who had provided security during their march through the streets. So they agreed right there on the steps of police headquarters to take their questions to higher ground: They will bypass Esserman, and demand to speak to his boss, Mayor Toni Harp.
“At the very least, we want to see this officer suspended immediately until this investigation is complete,” Fair said. “But we also want these charges dropped.”
15 years old is far from being a child, especially when you're in a bar and carry a knife. At 15 you know right from wrong. If that were my child, I wouldn't be out on the streets protesting, I'd be home disciplining my child and praising the police officer for getting my unruly child off the streets. Since when have we become a society that no longer respects police officers. Police officers would not have to resort to tactical force if people just did what the officer instructed you to do in the first place. If you don't agree, you do it anyway. Your time will come in front of the judge, that's when you make your case if you think your innocent. Resisting arrest and struggling with officers only makes things worst. In an early article it was mentioned that the protesters stated that this was not a racial issue. Yet in this article it clearly says "Do we have two different police departments, or one? A police department for black officers and a police department for white officers?" How ignorant! Stop turning everything in life into a racial war and start taking responsibilities for your actions! If this keeps up we'll be looking at another Ferguson situation.