Vazquez: We Don’t Do Chokeholds

In an interview, the top cop, Assistant Chief Al Vazquez (pictured), discussed how New Haven-style training would have come into play in the two controversial police cases that have riveted the nation:

• The death by choking of the 43-year-old Garner, who was black, by a white New York City police officer.

• The shooting death of 18-year-old Brown, also black, was shot and killed by a white Ferguson, Missouri officer.

Though both men were unarmed, grand juries have declined to indict the officers in both cases, touching off waves of protests around the country including in New Haven — and sparking debates about police training and handling of officer misconduct.

Vazquez spends his days dealing with both subjects as the assistant chief overseeing departmental training and internal affairs. The two cases sparked not just protests in New Haven this week (two scheduled for Friday, one for Sunday) but also some soul-searching at the police training academy and police headquarters. (Read about that here.) Vazquez, who spends his days dealing with both subjects as the assistant chief overseeing departmental training and internal affairs, has been in the thick of those conversations. In the process, he drew on his own experiences on the beat as well as his work on best practices.

No Chokeholds Here

Using cell phone video cameras, bystanders in Staten Island captured New York City police attempting to arrest Garner for allegedly selling ​“loosie” cigarettes. Garner can be seen venting his frustrations with the officer that eventually puts him in the chokehold. When additional officers step into to assist with the take down Garner can be heard asking officers to not put their hands on him. He even says please. Once officers have Garner down on the ground, one officer can be seen pushing Garner’s face in the ground, as Garner cries out 11 times, ​“I can’t breathe.” His dying words have become a rallying cry for protesters. 

New Haven Police Chief Dean Esserman urged officers during his Thursday Compstat meeting to put themselves in the place not of the New York cop who choked Eric Garner to death, but of the other cops who saw him do it while Garner cried out for help. He had made the same request of Police Academy cadets earlier. ​“Would you have put your hands on that officer and said, ​‘Step back and let me help you?’” Esserman asked. ​“Would you have listened to Eric Garner say 11 times, ​‘I can’t breathe,’ and try to help him? Would you have had the moral courage to have stopped that officer?” Read more of what Esserman had to say here.

In New Haven, officers ​“are trained in takedown procedures, but a chokehold isn’t one of those procedures,” Assistant Chief Vazquez said.

Vazquez said he would expect if New Haven police officers were in a similar situation that they would use the procedures they’ve been taught, including ​“verbal Judo.”

“Looking at Garner, the officers started off good. They were talking to him and he was talking back. But things escalated quickly,” he said. ​“We would have encouraged them to keep talking. Verbal judo is the first resort. If the arrest had to be made, the last resort would be to get physical.”

Vazquez said if the arrest got physical, the goal would have been to subdue Garner quickly and once he was handcuffed, bring him back to his feet, or at least to his knees. He said Garner’s size would not have changed how New Haven officers would have responded.

New Haven trains cops to get a handcuffed suspect off the ground ​“precisely because of fear of a person having a heart attack and not breathing,” especially in the case of an overweight person, Vazquez said.

Different Cop, Different Outcome?

Vazquez was more cautious about condemning the actions of former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, though he was critical of law enforcement’s relationship with the people of that community, its treatment of protesters and the handling of the announcement that a grand jury decided not to hand down an indictment.

“I wasn’t there. There are two many contradictions,” Vazquez noted.

In a play-by-play of the events that lead to the death of Brown, Vasquez said he didn’t really see anything that was out of the scope of responses available to an officer in a situation where he feels like his life might be in danger.

“It’s all about the mindset, and that notion of if you are in imminent danger,” he said. ​“If it was me, I might not have perceived it that way, but I don’t know that.”

By Wilson’s own account, he believed he was in danger from the unarmed Brown, who was an inch taller and outweighed Wilson by about 80 pounds. Wilson alleged that Brown made a grab for his gun while Wilson was in his car. Vazquez said cops have been shot with their own guns.

Vazquez said up until the point where Wilson left his squad car to pursue Brown on foot, he doesn’t really see anything wrong with how Wilson handled himself, including the initial decision to fire his gun while he struggled with Brown inside the car.

“Providing that the facts are the facts,” Vazquez said, if Wilson thought that Brown would overpower him and take his gun and shoot him with it, it was not unreasonable for Wilson to fear for his safety and decide to shoot Brown.

After Wilson shot Brown the first time, Brown allegedly ran away. Wilson, after calling dispatch, got out of his car and pursued him on foot even though his backup had not arrived.

Vazquez didn’t see that as unusual either.

In January, Vazquez will have 23 years on the force. He said when he was a patrol cop he ran down plenty of people without backup, including those who were actually armed.

He said where the story gets murkier for him is the point at which Brown turned around and either raised his hands in surrender, or charged Wilson.

“When you ask about how we train, it is a difficult question to answer in this incident,” he said. ​“Speaking as a cop — and I can only guess, when Brown turned back around, if in Officer Wilson’s mind he thought that Mr. Brown was going to overpower him and take his gun — I can see how he decided to use deadly force.”

Vazquez said he has been talking to the two classes of recruits simultaneously making their way through the police academy about these recent incidents of police shooting unarmed civilians. He said he couldn’t look at what happened in Ferguson and make the case that they shouldn’t use their discretion to use deadly force or not if they are in a similar situation.

“If somebody is in a similar circumstance, that individual might decide to do something different because that officer doesn’t perceive the situation the same way,” he said. ​“I think if you put a different cop in that situation you will get a different result.”

A Chase Of His Own

Vazquez told a story to illustrate why he’s hesitant to ​“Monday morning quarterback” the Ferguson officer.

“I’ve been in that situation,” Vazquez said.

The situation occurred in the mid-1990s, when Vazquez was still a young cop. He was in his cruiser one night responding to a parking violation. He was stopped at a red light. Across the street he saw a group of young males surrounding another young man.

The group started running in different directions. The young man in the middle, Vazquez now saw, had a silver handgun.

Vazquez radioed in for help. Unbeknownst to him, the communications system had crashed.

The gunman started walking toward Vazquez’s cruiser — then noticed the cruiser and walked away.

Then he started running. At one point Vazquez, following in his car, lost sight of the man when two parked cargo vans blocked his view.

Vazquez got out of the car. He saw the fleeing man again. The man saw him and pointed his gun right at Vazquez.

Vazquez fired a shot, then jumped backwards into his car. A shell casing hit him in his chin. He thought he’d been shot.

Holding his chin, he checked for blood. Not seeing any, he realized the shell casing was his own. He called in an update on the nonfunctional radio, then chased the gunman down a dark driveway.

The man jumped a waist-high fence. Vazquez decided not to climb over it, because that would mean holstering his weapon — which would in turn put him at a disadvantage.

He turned up the volume on his radio — and heard a deafening squelch. Now he realized why no back-up officers had arrived. He switched to an alternate radio channel and finally got out his emergency message. Back-up arrived — but by that time the man had disappeared for good.

Looking back on that incident, Vazquez said, he’s hesitant now to judge another officer who chases a man who he feels poses a risk to public safety as well as to the officer’s safety.

“You can argue you should just let him go and wait for units. It’s just not what we do. Why do I have to allow somebody with a gun in his hand to flee into a neighborhood, where he can kill somebody?”

Where Ferguson Clearly Erred

Still, Vazquez noted, at the end of the day, a man in Ferguson is dead and a community left in turmoil. He attributed that to two factors beyond the fact that Brown was killed: poor communication by the police and poor communication by the city with the residents of that community.

From police greeting peaceful protesters in riot gear and guns drawn, to waiting until nightfall to announce the grand jury’s decision to not indict Wilson, Ferguson handled its relations with the community poorly.

He said Brown’s death exposed a police department and a city that had failed to engage with its community. He said New Haven’s approach to community policing is different and goes the extra mile to stress that ​“an officer is no better than the person on the street.”

“There should have been better communication, especially with the parents,” he said. ​“They shouldn’t have had to learn that [decision] from the press. There should have been more compassion.”

“It is important for all of us, including law enforcement to learn from what happened in Ferguson and New York,” he said.

Vazquez said what is impressed upon recruits most is that being a police officer is not about being a warrior, but a guardian. When protesters in New Haven have taken to the Green in recent weeks to protest, there has been a police presence, but no riot gear and no tear gas. He said NYPD got that right after the grand jury decision in the Garner case, Ferguson got that wrong.

“Our job is to safeguard the protesters,” he said. ​“Our job is not to stop them, or to try to change their mind regardless of what they say to us.”

Paul Bass contributed reporting.