Melinda Tuhus Photo
Steven Echols (pictured) returned earlier this year from a two-and-a-half year stint in prison on a drug possession charge.
“A lot of dudes get looked at differently [by police] when they get back from jail,” he told the three dozen people assembled in the Barnard School cafetorium for a police-community dialogue. “Two officers came up on me on the street and asked what I was doing. I said, ‘I live here; this is my apartment and I pay rent.’ They think we’re still doing the same things, but I’m trying to better myself.”
Across the circle, Leslie Radcliffe countered, “I do see young men on the corner posting [selling drugs], and how do I know when I see you that you’re not doing it, too? What can I do to know this is not what’s happening?”
“If you see them slinging drugs, call the cops,” responded Echols (pictured above). “But if you see people on the corner just hanging out and having fun, you can ask them to help you with something.”
Later he explained that was his way of saying that people need to get to know each other, “to get to know what we’re about, and what we want to do. We might just be hanging out because we have nothing to do and just want to sit and talk with our boys, and that’s the only place we have to do it.”
At the event Thursday night — the first in a series of scheduled dialogues with the police chief and other officials — real back-and-forth like that took place, with cops and citizens, and among different citizens themselves. Police Chief Frank Limon had his own personal story to tell, too.
After the event, Radcliffe (pictured) spoke to two other young men from a group to which Echols belongs called Frontline Soldiers. It started out as friends who play basketball together and are coached by Blest Peters, a member of the Street Outreach Team which works with young people who recently returned from jail or are at risk of getting into trouble.
Staffers from Community Mediation moderated Thursday night’s event. Executive Director Brenda Cavanaugh noted it had been in the works since August, predating the recent spate of gun violence and also the incidents of what many described as heavy-handed policing in the city’s entertainment district.
Start Community Bank CEO Bill Placke told a story of driving around the Yale campus into some construction. A cop there was facing away from the oncoming one-way traffic, talking on his cell phone. He was not directing traffic. Placke wasn’t sure where to turn. When Placke picked a route to continue on, he said, “It must have been the wrong one,” because the officer pulled him over, screamed some choice words, and “made me cool my heels for a long, long time” before letting him go on his way. Placke spewed a few choice words of his own.
“There was no mutual respect,” Placke (pictured with outreach worker Blest Peters) recalled Thursday night. “I was at fault; he was at fault.”
“He could have locked me up just like that,” he added, snapping his fingers. “I keep thinking that one of the solutions here is to try to figure out ways to improve mutual respect.” He said he wasn’t sure how to do it in the neighborhoods, but he suggested the police improve their training and “pick really good people on the force.”
Longtime Dwight activist and mediator Sheila Shanklin challenged the young men sitting across the circle from her. “Every one of you gentlemen could be a mediator,” she said. “And you should also join a management team. That’s something to do; then you don’t have to sit here and complain. Come with a plan — people will listen to you. You’ve got it within you because you’re here tonight.”
After the meeting she repeated her invitation to come to meetings and get involved. “They’re feeling there’s no help for them, and I think there’s plenty of help for them, but I’m so glad to see them here, and they want to do something different.”
Community activist Kevin Ewing said he is working with the Soldiers group to help them formulate a plan. Lee Cruz of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven suggested they get together and submit an application to the Foundation’s Small Grants programs.
It was noted that most community management team meetings are held in police substations. Young men present Thursday night said they would not feel comfortable entering in part because of their poor relationships with the police, and also because they didn’t want to be mistaken for police snitches.
Two men at the meeting said they had attended the Citizens Police Academy and thought it was an excellent introduction to understanding how the police function and what they’re up against. Then Radcliffe pointed out that anyone with a criminal record is not eligible to participate; a few people suggested that restriction could be reconsidered.
Chief Limon (pictured) welcomed participants at the beginning, saying he wants to overcome the feeling of “us” versus “them.”
“We can’t exist that way — we have to be a community. We all want public safety, community, respect and stability,” he said. Then he sat and listened for two hours.
“Everyone’s got a story,” he said, referring to all the stories of police abuse he’d just heard. “I have a story, too.”
He told how he and his wife were driving home from church recently on Long Wharf Drive when they saw four youngsters throwing rocks at the cars passing by. Fearing someone would be hurt or killed, he pulled over and confronted them.
I said, ‘I’m the police chief,’ but they didn’t care.”
It turned out they were between 12 and 14 years old. He told the 14-year-old to get his parents on the phone. “I tell the dad to come down here. ‘This is the police chief. I need to talk to you about your son.’
“So he pulls up in a big van, in a suit. So I say, ‘What are you doing?’ He says, ‘I’m driving around the community picking up people and taking them to church.’
“I say [pointing to the son], ‘This is the first person you should be taking to church.’
“He tells me, ‘He won’t listen to me.’
“I tell him, ‘You’re the father; he’s the son — you grab him by the collar, you put him in the van and you take him to church.’ That’s how we used to handle it in the old days, right?”
Many of the Frontline Soldiers were listening attentively, nodding and smiling at that part of the story. Then Limon continued his story, saying three older teens rode by on a bike and challenged him, saying the younger kids were their homies. They started swearing at him. So he asked the crowd, “What do you think I’m going to do now? I called two squads [squad cars], and now we’re going to handle it differently.”
“Here’s the situation,” he concluded. “All these kids won’t even respect the chief of police; they won’t even respect their parents. We’re all talking about mutual respect, but we’re talking about a culture where kids don’t care about the police, and don’t listen to their parents. But this [tonight] is good; at least we’re talking about it.”
Afterward he told a reporter, “Listening skills are very critical. I started listening to what people were saying and we are going to get back to addressing some of the issues that I’m hearing tonight.” (Click here for a story about the chief’s search for a new communications strategy.)
Asked what they thought of the meeting, several of the young men were upbeat. “We had a lot of different outlooks on things in the community,” Steven Echols said, “but I think it went well as far as we all know how the police should respect us and we should respect the police.”
Management teams should meet somewhere other than the police stations. A place like a library, school or gym would work best.