Quest Resumed For Civilian Review Subpoena Power

Police accountability advocates are gearing up for a renewed push to create a civilian review board with teeth in New Haven.

Three of the advocates unveiled proposed legislation for such a board at a panel discussion Thursday night at Yale Law School.

The proposal, entitled the ​“Malik Jones All Civilian Review Board (ACRB) Ordinance,” would give a CRB subpoena power, a key demand among activists in town in heated public debates over the past year.

“A bad board is worse than no board,” argued Yale law student Wally Hilke, who has worked on the proposal and served as one of the panelists Thursday night. Longtime public accountability activist Emma Jones, and Chris Desir joined him on the panel

City alders, after succeeding in getting a 2013 charter referendum passed to create a tougher new version of a CRB, have failed to pass an ordinance actually to create it since then. Debate over how to grant subpoena power has proved a sticking point. Alders discovered state law prevents the CRB from being able to subpoena cops to testify. Advocates argue that without subpoena power, the CRB would be toothless.

“Without subpoena power board meetings are just useless PR,” Hilke said Thursday night.

Emma Jones, whose son Malik was killed by an East Haven cop in Fair Haven in 1997, agreed with Hilke. After her son’s killing, Jones studied the structure and efficacy of different civilian review boards and found that few had the power necessary to act as a check on police abuse. 

“Of 106 civilian review boards I reviewed, none are effective,” Jones said. Subpoena power, independence, funding, investigative powers and the ability to recommend disciplinary powers or a grand jury investigation are the determinants of review board efficacy, according to Jones.

Jones said Thursday night that the CRB could get that power by including the president of the Board of Alders or an aldermanic committee chair on the CRB, because those individuals have subpoena powers in their official roles.

According to the proposed ACRB Ordinance, the Board of Alders would have to create a CRB committee, whose chair would serve as a non-voting member with subpoena power on the ACRB.

Hilke added that subpoenas are useful not just for compelling police to testify, but for securing documents and enlisting witness testimony as well.

Chris Desir, the third panelist, argued that internal affairs divisions are structurally incapable of serving a public interest, as they are answerable to police departments instead of civilian power.

“We’re talking about structures, not individuals,” Desir said. Desir said they had obtained police records on misconduct from 2010 – 2016 from the department’s internal affairs division by means of a Freedom of Information Act request. When the information came it was in the form of handwritten spreadsheets, with many names illegible or spelled inconsistently, according to Desir. Desir said this was reflective of the police’s inability to police the police. Desir also said the documents revealed NHPD tried to discipline the officers involved in the shooting of Jewu Richardson, but that the officers responsible for this internal discipline closed ranks at the witness stand.

Hilke said noted the police union has presented an opposing force for a stronger CRB before the Board of Alders. He argued that the city shouldn’t worry about the police contract. An ACRB, Hilke said, is compatible with the chief’s authority as enumerated in the union contract and the city charter.

“City law trumps the contract,” Desir said.

“They’d have to change the contract to fit the law, not the other way around,” Desir said.

To build momentum, Jones, Desir and Hilke are calling a series of mass meetings to launch a public campaign for support for the proposal. The first, on Feb. 8, will serve to coordinate a social media campaign, calls to alders and conversations with neighbors. Hilke hopes the ACRB ordinance will pass this spring so that it can go into effect by the end of the year.

Steve Winter, the newly elected alder for Newhallville/Prospect Hill’s Ward 21 alder and a longtime advocate for a stronger CRB, said that the key to the campaign is grassroots organizing. He encouraged people to talk to their alders and their neighbors. He has vowed to work with colleagues to get the new CRB law passed.

Hilke said the proposed ACRB would differ substantially from the Board of Police Commissioners, a civilian body which has hiring and firing power and the ability to compel officers to testify under the current charter. The Police Commissioners Board also has the ability to ​“make all rules and regulations relating to the administration of the department which it may deem necessary or advisable, which rules shall be printed and made available to the public.”

Jones said it was necessary to remember the police violence that prompted calls for a CRB.

“Is it really about these horrific animals from the inner city that are driving officers to kill from fear? Is that what we really believe? That they have no choice but to shoot?” Jones asked. Jones added that the police killed over 1,000 people in the United States in the last year.

Desir said one of the latest examples of brutality for which officers need to be held accountable happened in Bridgeport, where James Boulay, a cop, followed 15-year-old Negron into a Walgreens parking lot before trying to pull him from his car. Boulay shot Negron and another passenger in the car, before handcuffing him and leaving him to die, according to Desir.

Jones added that police violence cuts across racial, socioeconomic and gender lines, though it disproportionately affects black people. Jones said that the current political situation necessitates urgent reforms to stem police violence, alluding to a Martin Niemoller’s poem, ​“First they came for the Socialists,” which discusses the way state violence in Germany undercut social solidarity and gradually consumed the progressive elements of civil society, until there were no good people left to defend democratic order or human life.