Thomas Breen photos
Mayor Elicker, with the Yale police union handout in his left hand and the 1975 "Fear City" flyer in his right: This is "unbelievably offensive."
Yale first-years Hunter Robbins, Amber Nobriga, Lisa Chou, and Shukraat Adesina give mixed-to-negative reviews of the Yale police union's "Welcome to Yale" survival guide flyer.
Yale’s police union helped introduce first-year students and their families to New Haven this weekend with death-decorated flyers warning them not to go out after dark, to stay on campus, and to avoid using public transportation — inspiring the mayor and a host of top city and Yale officials to denounce the apparent contract negotiation ploy as “shameful” and “unbelievably offensive.”
According to Yale Police Chief (and former New Haven top cop) Anthony Campbell, Yale’s police union — known as the Yale Police Benevolent Association — handed out flyers to new Yale students and their families this past move-in weekend that were entitled, “Welcome to Yale: A Survival Guide for First-Year Students of Yale University.”
The Yale police union's "Welcome to Yale" flyer.
“The incidence of crime and violence in New Haven is shockingly high,” the flyer reads, “and it is getting worse.” It states that murders have doubled so far this year, and burglaries and motor vehicle thefts are way up.
“Nevertheless, some Yalies do manage to survive New Haven and even retain their personal property,” the flyer continues. “The following guidelines have been prepared by the Yale Police Benevolent Association to help you enjoy your stay at Yale in comfort and safety. Good luck.”
Beneath that message is a drawing of a cloak-enshrouded skull, followed by five survival tips, including: 1) Stay off the streets after 8 p.m.; 2) Do not walk alone; 3) Avoid public transportation; 4) Remain on campus; and 5) Protect your property.
Campbell said that this flyer appears to have been put together and distributed by the union’s executive board unbeknownst to Yale police leadership and many rank-and-file officers. He said that, based on his conversation with the union president, the union’s executive board created the flyer out of frustration with the university’s latest offer during ongoing police union contract negotiations.
While he did not have a count of exactly how many flyers were distributed during move-in weekend, Campbell said he addressed a large group of parents and students on campus on Sunday, told them about the flyers, and a number of people held up copies they had received. The Independent spoke with five Yale first-years outside of Woolsey Hall on Tuesday afternoon: one had received a copy himself on Saturday, while four had not, though they had all heard about the flyers and said they had been handed out on Old Campus over the weekend.
The president of Yale’s police union, Officer Michael Hall, directed this reporter to a spokesperson for the union, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment by the publication time of this article. Hall also did not respond directly to requests for comment. No one from Yale’s police union was present at the university’s police headquarters at 101 Ashmun St. on Tuesday afternoon when this reporter swung by.
Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell (center) at Tuesday's presser.
On the front steps of Woolsey Hall at College and Prospect Streets on Tuesday afternoon, Campbell joined Mayor Justin Elicker, city Police Chief Karl Jacobson, Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison, Police Commissioner Michael Lawlor, and a host of other top Yale and city officials to criticize the police union’s move-in-day move.
“When you welcome someone to your community, you embrace them. You support them,” Elicker said. “You don’t promote fear. You don’t promote misinformation.”
He described the flyer as “unbelievably offensive” and the union’s action as “childish and selfish.”
“We have our challenges, but [New Haven] is overwhelmingly safe,” Elicker said, describing an overall decline in violent and property crime citywide over the past three years. He urged Yale students to “get out into the neighborhoods and not be afraid.”
He also pointed out that the flyer is an almost word-for-word knockoff of an infamous “Fear City” flyer that the New York Police Department’s police union handed out in 1975 that warned city visitors to stay in Manhattan and hold onto their bags with both hands tight. “They couldn’t even be creative enough to come up with their own flyer,” Elicker said.
City Police Chief Jacobson: This flyer was "appalling."
Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison: "I am ashamed of what this union has done."
Speaker after speaker echoed those same themes over the course of the next 15 minutes: That the flyer unfairly and inaccurately portrayed New Haven as a crime-ridden hellscape, and that the police union’s action action served primarily to inspire fear.
“I would have been appalled to be given a flyer” like this when he moved on to Yale’s campus as a student more than three decades ago, Campbell said. He said that this flyer does not “represent the spirit of the Yale Police Department … The spirit of our department is this: To serve every member of our community, to welcome them, to drive down crime and give them a sense of safety.”
“We do not support this,” he continued, “and, to be quite frank, I’m really disgusted they took this path. … They have brought shame upon the union.”
Police Commissioner Mike Lawlor ...
... and Yale Associate Vice President of Public Safety Ronnell Higgins: "Yale is committed to the safety and well-being of our students, faculty, staff, neighbors, and visitors, and we unequivocally condemn the irresponsible and reckless actions of those who chose to spread this inaccurate information."
Ronnie Huggins: ""I challenge you to embrace New Haven and the beauty of our city."
“If this image of a dystopian hellscape were accurate, it would be an extraordinary self-own by the Yale police,” Lawlor said. “But it’s not true.” New Haven is an overwhelmingly safe place to live, and it has been for the decades he and his family have spent living in the city.
He said that, back in 1975, the NYPD police union distributed a million copies of the “Fear City” flyer — the one that the Yale union essentially “plagiarized” — at the city’s airports. Within 48 hours, he said, every major city union, including the sergeants and lieutenants unions, had denounced it. “New York was having some very serious problems” at that time, he said, and was nothing like what New Haven is today.
Lawlor also stressed how offensive it was that the union distributed these flyers to new students and their families on move-in day, “one of the most important days in a student’s life. To be confronted by this inflammatory” material is outrageous. “I hope to never see it again in our city.”
“As a New Havener, I’m disappointed,” city youth services staffer Ronnie Huggins said. Directing an alternative message to Yale’s new students, he said, “I challenge you to embrace New Haven and the beauty of our city.”
The entrance to Yale's police department at 101 Ashmun.
Before Monday’s press conference started, a few passing Yale first-years described the flyer as everything from baffling to fear-mongering to filled with reasonable advice, even if delivered in an exaggerated maenner.
Stephen Xia, an 18-year-old first-year student from the Bay Area, said that he was handed one of the flyers on Saturday as he moved onto campus. “It didn’t seem that strange,” he said. “Walking in pairs never hurts.”
“It felt a little exaggerated,” he confessed. Especially the picture of the skull.
He said he hasn’t been to Union Station yet and hasn’t had a chance to ride on public transit. He said the Yale Shuttle, which he also hasn’t been on yet, does seem pretty convenient.
How’s he like New Haven so far? “It’s pretty nice,” he said. It’s been hotter than he expected. But he’s getting used to it.
A group of four fellow first-years were much more mixed to negative on the police union flyer — as indicated by the thumbs down and thumbs to the side signs they gave when asked to rate their reaction to the handout. All four said they hadn’t received the flyer itself, nor had they seen a copy, even though they had heard plenty about it and said that it was distributed on Old Campus over the weekend.
It sounds like the flyer was filled with “a lot of misinformation,” said Amber Nobrige, an 18-year-old from Hawaii.
Asked if they feel safe in New Haven so far, they all noted that they do. In fact, they feel like there are police officers everywhere — “on every corner,” said Hunter Robbins, an 18-year-old from East Providence.
Mostly, they felt like the flyer just wasn’t too relevant for them. They described the university as safe and relatively enclosed and protected, with its many university-specific buildings and resources.
The original version, from New York in 1975.
Gotta give the graphic designer credit because the reproduction was accurate down to the font...
...but they forgot that there was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts!