Task Force Member: Change On The Way

“Everything is on the table” as the state reexamines how policing is conducted, according to a New Haven minister who will help conduct that reexamination.

The minister, the Rev. Steven Cousin of Bethel AME Church, has just joined the state’s Police Accountability & Transparency Task Force. Gov. Ned Lamont has asked the group to come up with suggested responses to protests demanding changes in policing, in time for an upcoming special legislative session.

“We have a unique opportunity for real change,” Cousin said Wednesday during an appearance on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program.

“Everything is on the table,” from specific proposals to, say, ban chokeholds and require deescalation training, to fundamentally altering what tasks police are or aren’t assigned as part of their jobs, Cousin said.

Republican State House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, who represents Derby, Orange, and Woodbridge, appointed New Haven’s Cousin to the commission. Cousin cited that fact as indication of the widespread determination to seize the current moment to do serious work. ​“A Republican reached out to a Democrat. We want to do something. We want to listen.” (Click here for a story about the task force’s preliminary recommendations.)

Black Lives Matter protest organizers in New Haven, as in other cities, have called for slashing police department budgets as a first step to eventually abolishing police departments as they’re currently constituted and transferring their duties to social workers and other non-military professionals. One call in New Haven is to stop assigning officers to schools. Democratic lawmakers in Washington and at the state level have proposed reforms ranging from uniform use-of-force and car-stop policies, to greater penalties for misconduct, to greater public disclosure of individual cops’ brutality records.

Leslie Radcliffe, an activist who lives on Truman Street in the Hill, has worked closely with police to improve life in her neighborhood over the past 11 years. Joining Cousin on ​“Dateline,” Radcliffe agreed that this moment presents an opportunity to create lasting changes. She said she has generally had good experiences with New Haven police and does not support abolishing the department. But she also said she has seen room for improvements.

For instance: She has worked with at least five different district managers in her 11 years on Truman Street. That makes it harder for cops and a community to develop lasting working relationships, she said.

Radcliffe also called for a shift in training, away from teaching rookies at the academy to remember that when they begin each shift, ​“this may be my last hour.” That prepares an officer to take a military approach to a community, to see it as a war zone, rather than to become part of a community, she argued.

“There’s a place for a police officer” who may have to resort to arrests or weaponry in the face of potential violence, she said. But ​“if you have a tail light” violation, an armed officer approaching with fears of meeting unexpected death will respond with a dangerous frame of mind.

Some critics have called for an end to ​“community policing” that relies on cops assigned to walking beats in neighborhoods. The critics argue that this has led to over-policing. Radcliffe said she supports walking beats as a way for officers to get to know young people and adults in a neighborhood, and therefore be better prepared to handle interactions properly.

On the other hand, Radcliffe agreed with critics who say police do more jobs than they need to be doing. For instance, she said, the city doesn’t need cops directing traffic at construction sites. And she’s sympathetic to the notion — advanced by some critics and traditionalist officers alike — that cops ​“aren’t social workers.”

“I’m optimistic. What I see happening now, I’ve never seen happen before,” Radcliffe said of the current push for change.

Cousin cautioned the public to be patient about change — and urged people to hang in after this moment vanishes from the top of social-media feeds, replaced by the next viral crisis story. Everyone was consumed for a month with Covid-19 concerns, then suddenly shifted to focusing on Black Lives Matter in recent weeks.

It took protesters in Montgomery, Alabama, 384 days of marching to desegregate public buses, he noted. It will take more than a week or a month now to ​“reform not just the police department” but ​“reform society.”

“Are we going to translate this into votes” in November and action against voter suppression? Cousin asked. ​“Are we going to show up to Board of Education meetings? Are we going to show up to management team meetings?”

Click on the above to watch the full episode of WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” with the Rev. Steven Cousin and Leslie Radcliffe.

Click on the video below to watch, and on this link to read about, a 2015 protest by New Haven police union members who stormed City Hall to disrupt a mayoral press conference after an officer was placed on desk duty pending an investigation into why he slammed a handcuffed 15-year-old girl to a sidewalk, causing a concussion. (The officer was subsequently cleared of wrongdoing; calling for the mayor’s and police chief’s removal, the union protested the fact that he had been temporarily placed on desk duty.)