Wait — Whose Witness Was He?

Sgt. Doug Harkins looked like he’d rather have been anywhere but the witness stand in Courtroom 4B — helping a defense lawyer fault cops and maybe clear an outspoken police critic accused of assaulting police.

Harkins was there nonetheless on Monday afternoon in the state courthouse on Church Street.

While his appearance made him sweat, it also provided an unusual dilemma for a judge as well a semantic legal debate that would fit in a Woody Allen movie were the stakes not so high.

The judge, Raheem L. Mullins, had to decide whether or not to declare Harkins an ​“adversarial” witness. That would determine what kinds of questions a lawyer could ask him.

Harkins was testifying in a criminal case against Jewu Richardson, who faces two felony and seven misdemeanor charges in relation to a car chase with the cops in the early evening of Jan. 16, 2010. The chase ended with Officer Ross Van Nostrand atop the hood of Richardson’s boxed-in blue Acura TL at the Mobil gas station at the corner of Whalley and Sherman avenues and shooting Richardson, who was then 32, in the chest. Click here for an in-depth account of the case, Richardson’s criminal history, and his history of complaints against the police.

The case has become a cause celebre for local anti-police-violence activists, who view the incident as an example of an officer unjustifiably jumping on the hood of a car (Richardson’s blue Acura TL), shooting an unarmed man and getting away with it. Richardson survived the shooting — and began showing his bullet wound to crowds at anti-police protests. Since the trial began two weeks ago, a shifting cast of a half-dozen or more Richardson supporters at a time have filed into the two rows of wooden spectator benches at the left side of the courtroom.

The case has also rallied New Haven officers to support the officers called to testify in the case. Cops see this case as an example of a man with a criminal history leading police on a dangerous chase and trying to hurt the police. They claim that Richardson, after already causing two car accidents during the chase, hit Officer Ross Van Nostrand with his car, propelling Van Nostrand to the hood; and that Van Nostrand shot in self-defense. Officers and prosecutors have filed into the two rows of wooden spectator benches at the right side of the courtroom to observe the trial.

The tension has been felt both in the hall outside the courtroom, where marshals have stood guard to limit arguments; and in the courtroom itself. At one point Monday, Judge Mullins admonished the pro-Richardson activists for ​“hissing” and ​“sighing” at police testimony.

“I appreciate the emotional complexity of this case,” Mullins remarked. But ​“I am not going to put up with it any more.” He threatened to remove spectators from the courtroom at ​“the next outburst.”

While Richardson is technically on trial, Tuesday’s testimony focused on the actions of the police. Richardson himself admits to fleeing the cops and causing car accidents. His attorney is trying to show that police went on a reckless chase over a minor incident and then shot a man in the chest for no good reason. The prosecution is trying to show that a reckless criminal endangered the lives of police, who had no choice but to defend themselves.

Amidst that Manichean battleground, Sgt. Harkins found himself pulled into the courtroom Tuesday to aid the ​“other side.” No wonder he was frowning.

What He Wrote …

Harkins found himself on the stand because of a memo — a ​“pursuit critique” — he wrote the week after the 2010 incident. Richardson’s attorney, Diane Polan, obtained it. She then called Harkins to testify as a witness for the defense.

In the memo, Harkins, who was the patrol supervisor the evening of the shooting, reported ordering officers three separate times to call off the chase. And he ripped into them for disobeying him and endangering public safety.

Officer Robert DuPont initially stopped Richardson in the Hill for driving with a busted headlight, only to have Richardson flee. DuPont chased him. In the report Harkins wrote of telling DuPont to stop the pursuit. DuPont followed the order. ​“Per department policy, I immediately terminated the pursuit as the risk to the public outweighed the necessity to apprehend the suspect,” Harkins wrote.

Harkins then wrote about how he subsequently saw other officers ​“traveling at a high rate of speed” on Columbus Avenue in search of Richardson’s Acura. They caught up with the Acura as it ​“was stopped in the lanes of traffic” at a red light on Ella Grasso Boulevard. ​“Once the suspect realized the police officers had spotted him, he drove straight through traffic, striking a civilian vehicle,” Harkins wrote. An officer radioed in the collision. ​“Within seconds, at least seven police cars arrived on scene … Deductive reasoning would indicate that these officers had every intention to seek out this car and reengage this vehicle in a pursuit despite my clear order to terminate the pursuit,” Harkins wrote.

Indeed, a second pursuit ensued. A second time, Harkins wrote, ​“I terminated the pursuit.” As he did so, an officer radioed in that Richardson had struck his police cruiser with the Acura. Harkins asked if the officer was hurt. He was not.

“The pursuit continued north on Sherman Avenue and sounded as if it was increasing in speed,” Harkins wrote. Along the way Richardson struck a civilian car at Sherman Avenue and Chapel Street and continued driving toward Sherman and Whalley.

“As Whalley Avenue is a very heavily traveled highway, I terminated the pursuit for the third time.” That happened just as officers followed Richardson into the Whalley Mobil lot and boxed in his car.

Harkins noted with disapproval that an officer ​“chase[d] the suspect’s vehicle over the sidewalk and into the gas station parking lot where he executed what appears to be a ​‘pit maneuver’ of sorts. It should be noted that New Haven Police Officers are not trained to execute such maneuvers nor are they trained to to ram cars. Even if New Haven Police Officers were trained in these maneuvers, prudence would dictate they not be executed in the middle of a gas station with gas pumps relatively close by. Furthermore, this incident yielded nothing but risk of injury to persons and property with the recovery of no contraband.”

Harkins ended his memo with this conclusion:

“As it is unacceptable for officers to disregard direct orders, this incident reflects a complete lack of discipline and demonstrates a strong sense of recklessness. Considering the number of officers involved, I decided to address my concerns personally at all B and D‑squad line-ups. With conviction, I redirected my officers to think before they act, to adhere to the chain of command, and to remember that there are significant consequences for their decisions.”

For obvious reasons, defense attorney Polan was eager to put Harkins on the stand to discuss the memo — and the state tried to keep as much of what he wrote and concluded out of earshot of the jury.

… & What He Said

Despite his criticism in the letter, Harkins sounded a different tune on the stand. Rather than lighting into the officers’ actions, he acknowledged what he wrote only reluctantly, put the blame on Richardson for causing the chase, and downplayed the officers’ alleged indiscretions.

Before he even got going, Judge Mullins had to decide how to categorize Harkins as a witness.

The state prosecutor, Jack Doyle, objected when defense attorney Polan began asking Harkins leading questions that began with phrases like ​“would you agree that …?” Under court rules, an attorney can only ask questions like that of an ​“adversarial” witness, someone usually called to the stand by the other side.

Polan called Harkins, Doyle noted. The state didn’t. So Polan can’t consider him an adversarial witness, he argued; she should be able to ask only straightforward factual questions.

Polan countered that because Harkins is a cop, ​“he’s aligned with law enforcement, which is represented by the state’s attorney’s office.” She noted that she’d never before ​“been in a situation in which a police officer has been” called by the defense to bolster its case on behalf of an accused criminal.

Me either, Judge Mullins said.

“At this point,” Mullins decided, he would consider Harkins not to be an adversarial witness. He would bar Polan from asking leading questions. Depending on how the questioning proceeded, he might reconsider.

Here’s how the questioning proceeded:

Polan kept asking Harkins to confirm that he had concluded that the officers had violated the department’s chase policy, that he had called them off the chase three times.

In a low monotone, Harkins responded with clipped answers. He repeatedly said he couldn’t recall what Polan was talking about. She would show him a transcript of an internal affairs interview in which he drew those conclusions. He would eventually cede a point with a gruff ​“yes” or ​“no.” Throughout, he grimaced and strained his neck from the buttoned collar of his white dress shirt. He alternatively looked at his lap and glared at Polan. He rubbed his eye, pulled at his cheek, furrowed his brow. Unlike the police officers who testified before him, he rarely looked at the eight jurors to his left.

Instead of answering one question, he corrected Polan for referring to an officer by the incorrect rank.

Harkins perked up when prosecutor Doyle took his turn at ​“cross-examination.”

Yes, you called off the chases — but those officers had the right to initiate the chases, right? Doyle asked. That’s right, Harkins peppily concurred, as he continued to do as Doyle cited moments in the narrative when officers had done nothing wrong.

Doyle had Harkins point out the man in court who he believed was to blame for starting the whole mess. Harkins pointed at Jewu Richardson, seated in coat and tie beside Polan at the defense table.

“Who is the risk to public safety?” asked Doyle.

“He is.”

“You called [the chase] off because of the conduct of whom, sir?” Doyle asked.

“The defendant,” Harkness leaped to respond.

By this time Harkins was gesturing with his hand and pivoting to the jury box to demonstrate all the dangerous maneuvers Jewu Richardson engaged in that evening in 2010. He stomped on the floor to demonstrate how Richardson ​“stomped on the gas” to pull away from officers.

By the time Polan returned to asking the questions, Judge Mullins had reconsidered. She could now consider Harkins an ​“adversarial” witness. She could ask him leading questions.

Harkins, meanwhile, resumed not recalling the answers to some questions — such as having written in an internal report that Richardson had ​“crashed,” not ​“smashed’ into an officer’s car — until Polan presented him with transcripts. When she asked him about the report that Richardson had caused only minor damage to a police cruiser in the crash (a key point determining whether it would have been OK to engage in a subsequent high-speed chase), Harkins retorted, ​“I didn’t investigate that accident.”

Polan then took advantage of her new permission to lead the witness by posing a question based on the very words Harkins had written in his 2010 pursuit memo.

While acknowledging that Richardson shared blame for causing the chase by fleeing, Polan asked, ​“would you argue that officers driving at a high rate of speed are also” responsible for having created a public danger?

“No. I won’t do that,” Harkins now said on the stand. ​“He [Richardson] did it.”

Polan persisted. When officers speed through a residential neighborhood over a minor traffic offense, she asked, ​“they’re not creating a risk?”

“No. I would say the suspect is creating the risk,” Harkins responded.

They’re not even adding to the risk? Polan continued.

Harkins paused. Harkins sighed. Then Harkins offered his single word in response: ​“No.”

“Isn’t that the whole point,” Polan concluded, ​“of the pursuit policy?”

Polan and Harkins didn’t agree. It will be left to the jury to decide that question, and the broader question of whether Richardson committed a felony. They may began those deliberations as early as Tuesday afternoon.