A knife-wielding man was threatening to seek revenge on a group home that booted him. A woman on the street was getting in the way, yelling about a police car blocking her car. A lieutenant arrived and took control of the situation — as a video camera recorded his actions.
The first officer on the scene had failed to calm the woman down. In fact, he lost his cool and kept arguing with the woman and threatening to arrest her, escalating the danger.
Lt. Ray Hassett used his voice and body language — and nothing else — to stop the woman’s tirade, get her to leave, and allow the cops to keep control of the group home scene. The public got a glimpse of the kind of pressures facing cops each day, and how cops handle it. (Click the play arrow above to watch Hassett at work.)
It was one of many times over the past few years that cops kept the peace in tough situations as video cameras rolled. Those cameras might have made officers uncomfortable, but the officers nevertheless respected the public’s right to to record them at work in public from a safe distance, even under pressure. In the end, a secret emerged about videotaping cops: Most of the time it shows how hard their job is, and how well most officers do it.
Those incidents stand in contrast to a spate of recent cases in New Haven in which cops working the downtown nightclub district have arrested or threatened to arrest citizens for using cameras.
Police are investigating several such incidents and promising to train officers in respecting the public’s First Amendment rights. In some cases the videos show a partial story; police say the broader context may vindicate the officers’ actions. In what may prove the most egregious example, an officer involved in possibly beating a detained man on Crown Street threatened a passerby with arrest (or violence) for filming the scene, then yanked the camera away and turned it off. (Click the play arrow above to watch that clip.)
The media has encountered isolated incidents like this in recent years. The most blatant known example of abuse came during the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in 2007, when an officer threatened to arrest a New Haven Advocate photographer and confiscate his camera if he persisted in shooting pictures of arrests. (Read that story here.) Last November Officer David Runlett illegally demanded that an Independent reporter delete photographs and physically intimidated him into doing so. (Click here to read a memo reporter Thomas MacMillan wrote about the encounter. Reached by phone later, Runlett defended his actions; he did not apologize or suggest he would act differently in the future.)
Those encounters, however, are not the norm. New Haven police by and large have tolerated being videorecorded in action — and in the process given the public a glimpse of why they’re known as “peace officers.” Some greatest hits:
Officer Paul Kenney was caught cooling tempers in a fast-escalating dispute, heightened by cultural barriers, at a downtown jewelry store.
Two men who almost came to blows after a traffic accident on Elm Street shook hands after the intervention of Officer Jeffrey Fletcher.
Officer Lucille Roach similarly negotiated a resolution when a windshield-smashing in Dixwell Plaza revived a long-running feud among recent Hillhouse grads. (The videos appear midway through and at the end of this story.)
Lt. Marty Tchakirides negotiated a “divorce” between “Italian Frank” and “Puerto Rican Frank” on the Green when their drinking led to trouble. (More videos of the incident can be found here.)
Officer Scott Bullock also avoided taking sides while chilling out two irate drivers after a Westville crash totaled their cars and sent two teens to the hospital. Find videos and the back story here.
A Hillhouse security guard tried to prevent videorecording of a fight on school guards. But the cop in charge, Sgt. John Magoveny, was unconcerned. He was busy stopping the fight, defusing the tensions, preventing a larger scene from developing at the school.
City cops, at least those patrolling the unruly bar district downtown, may soon be not just video subjects, but videographers themselves. Police Chief Frank Limon said he’s looking into equipping the officers with “head cameras” to record arrests. Departments in Cincinnati and London, among other cities, have started doing that.
This is a great series. Like many New Haveners, I am concerned when police overstep their bounds, and have been shocked by some of the videos that have emerged. However, it's important to also give credit where it's due: Officers like Lt. Hassett deserve praise -- public praise -- for keeping their heads in situations like that. Unfortunately, for many officers, that part of the job goes unnoticed most of the time.