5 New Appointees Tapped For CRB

The president of the Board of Alders has tapped five new appointees to fill out the membership of the city’s years-in-the-making Civilian Review Board.

And a Westville alder has submitted a resolution calling on his colleagues to declare that racism is a public health crisis in the City of New Haven.

Those two legislative updates are included in the agenda package for the full Board of Alders meeting scheduled for July 6. The city’s Office of Legislative Services sent out an electronic copy of the agenda and associated documents Thursday afternoon.

According to the packet, Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers has submitted to the full board the names of five new appointees for the city’s CRB.

Westville Alder Darryl Brackeen has also submitted a resolution calling for the city to follow the lead of 20 other cities and at least three states in recognizing racism as a public health crisis. (See more on that below.)

The five new CRB appointees are Immanuel Missionary Baptist Church Rev. Samuel T. Ross-Lee, Newhallville community activist Devin Avshalom-Smith, Hill North Community Management Team member Melvin Counsel, two-time Olympian and rowing and cycling coach John Pescatore, and former Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills Community Management Team Chair Chris Peralta.

These appointments now advance to the Aldermanic Affairs Committee, where committee alders will interview each of the candidates about their interests, backgrounds, and abilities to serve on the CRB.

City residents mandated the alders create a new all-civilian police accountability board back in 2013 during that year’s charter referendum. Questions around whether or not the board could have subpoena power bogged down the actual creation of the municipal body for years. Dozens of local police accountability, building off of Emma Jones’s decades of advocacy on the issue, activists filled the Aldermanic Chambers week after week at the end of 2018 and early 2019 to call on the alders to guarantee the board subpoena power. Alders finally voted to create the board, with subpoena power, in January 2019.

The summer of 2019 saw a series of CRB nominations and contested appointment hearings. By November 2019, the mayor had appointed and the alders had confirmed seven members of the board.

The CRB formation process stalled for months after that — up until a few weeks ago, when Mayor Justin Elicker and city legislators promised to prioritize formally seating the CRB in the wake of local and nationwide uprisings against police brutality following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Racism As A Public Health Crisis

Also in Monday’s legislative packet is a proposed resolution from Westville Alder Darryl Brackeen, Jr. that calls on the city to recognize racism as a public health crisis.

Brackeen wrote in a letter to Walker-Myers urging passage of the resolution that Windsor, West Hartford, Hartford, and Bloomfield have already taken this type of action. And that’s just in Connecticut.

More than 20 cities and at least three states across the country have done the same, he wrote.

“Proponents of such resolutions assert that the impacts of racism and purposeful disinvestment in the social and economic well-being of people of color has resulted in disproportionately higher rates of chronic stress, lower infant birth rates and higher rates of COVID-19 infection and death,” Brackeen wrote. ​“This resolution demonstrates a commitment to advancing racial equity, including health disparities.”

Read the full proposed resolution below. The resolution is on the July 6 agenda under Unanimous Consent, meaning that the full board will likely vote on the item on Monday.

RESOLUTION DECLARING RACISM AS A PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS IN THE CITY OF NEW HAVEN

WHEREAS: Racism is a social system with multiple dimensions: individual racism that is interpersonal and/or internalized or systemic racism that is institutional or structural, and is a system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on the social interpretation of how one looks; and

WHEREAS: race is a social construct with no biological basis; and

WHEREAS: racism and racial discrimination threaten human development because of the obstacles which they pose to the fulfillment to basic human rights to survival, security, development, and social participation; and

WHEREAS: racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance have been shown to be attitudes and behaviors that are learned; and

WHEReAS: racism has been shown to have negative cognitive, behavioral, affective, and relational effects on both child and adult victims nationally and globally, historically, and contemporarily; and

WHEREAS: racism unfairly disadvantages specific individuals and communities, while unfairly giving advantages to other individuals and communities, and saps the strength of the whole society through the waste of human resources; and

WHEREAS: racism is a root cause of poverty and constricts economic mobility; and

WHEREAS: racism causes persistent discrimination and disparate outcomes in many areas of life, including housing, education, employment, and criminal justice, and is itself a social determinant of health; and

WHEREAS: racism has been shown to increase anxiety, depression, and is linked to a host of medical complications in ethnic minority individuals; and

WHEREAS: racism and segregation have exacerbated a health divide resulting in people of color in Connecticut bearing a disproportionate burden of illness and mortality including COVID-19 infection and death, heart disease, diabetes, and infant mortality; and

WHEREAS: COVID-19 is just the latest example where minority populations are disproportionately harmed; and

WHEREAS: Black, Native American, Asian and Latino residents are more likely to experience poor health outcomes as a consequence of inequities in economic stability, education, physical environment, food, and access to health care and these inequities are, themselves, a result of racism;

WHEREAS: studies have linked racism to worse health outcomes; and

WHEREAS: the collective prosperity and wellbeing of New Haven depends upon equitable access to opportunity for every resident regardless of the color of their skin.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the New Haven Board of Alders denounces racism in all its forms and declares racism as a public health crisis.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board of Alders:

(1) Assert that racism is a public health crisis affecting our city and all of Connecticut; (2)Work to progress as an equity and justice-oriented organization, by continuing to identify specific activities to enhance diversity and to ensure anti-racism principles across our leadership, staffing and contracting; (3) Promote equity through all policies approved by the Board of Alders and enhance educational efforts aimed at understanding, addressing and dismantling racism and how it affects the delivery of human and social services, economic development and public safety; (4) Improve the quality of the data our city collects and the analysis of that data, as it is not enough to assume that an initiative is producing its intended outcome, qualitative and quantitative data should be used to assess inequities in impact and continuously improve; (5) Continue to advocate locally for relevant policies that improve health in communities of color, and support local, state, regional, and federal initiatives that advance efforts to dismantle systemic racism; (6) Further work to solidify alliances and partnerships with other organizations that are confronting racism and encourage other local, state, regional, and national entities to recognize racism as a public health crisis; (7) Support community efforts to amplify issues of racism and engage actively and authentically with communities of color wherever they live; and (8) Identify clear goals and objectives, including periodic reports to the Board of Alders, to assess progress and capitalize on opportunities to further advance racial equity.

Correction: The original version of this article incorrectly stated that Chris Garaffa had been appointed to serve on the CRB. The Board of Alders president has actually tapped Chris Peralta for the position. The error was due to a typo in the initial meeting packet for the alders’ July 6 meeting.