Thomas Breen photos
Chief Jacobson: Police need community's consent.
At Thursday's top cop-community meetup.
Make sure city police officers are well trained in how to provide basic medical care to detainees in distress — as well as compassion to everyone they interact with on their beat.
Police Chief Karl Jacobson heard those recommendations, and many more, during one of his first community meetings since becoming the city’s top cop.
That meeting took place Thursday night in the Career High School cafeteria on Legion Avenue in the Hill.
The event was billed by the mayor’s office as the first of three “public safety town halls” at which community members could talk with Jacobson, a 15-year New Haven Police Department (NHPD) veteran who was sworn in as the new police chief on July 6, about his vision for the department.
The meeting also served as an opportunity for members of the public to press Jacobson, Mayor Justin Elicker, and the two newly promoted assistant chiefs David Zannelli and Bertram Ettienne about the city’s response to the recent in-custody injury and police mishandling of Richard “Randy” Cox.
Roughly 25 Hill neighbors, alders, community activists, and city staffers attended the hour-and-a-half-long, conversation-focused event. (Click here to read about a clergy-organized public safety meeting in Newhallville that Jacobson attended earlier this week.)
Newly promoted Assistant Police Chiefs Zannelli and Ettienne, and Mayor Elicker (below) on Thursday.
Time and again on Thursday, Jacobson said that he plans to lead the department according to the tenets of “procedural justice,” which is a criminal justice theory that argues that fairness and dispute resolution are key to successful, legitimate law enforcement. He said he wants the hallmarks of his tenure as top cop to be transparency, diversity, accountability, and stability.
“The police need the consent of the community to police you,” he told the attendees seated at high school cafeteria tables before him. That means making sure that residents feel listened to and treated fairly by officers.
Earlier in the day, Jacobson recalled, he addressed roughly 100 officers during lineup before the start of a policing shift. He said he told those officers: “You can make mistakes. You’re human. But you cannot disrespect community members, because then we’re going to come down you” and you’ll be out of a job. “You will not treat people disrespectfully.”
Kenneth Oliver.
Kenneth Oliver, a retired former city employee who served as the city fire department’s emergency medical services (EMS) supervisor, asked Jacobson about current medical training for New Haven police officers.
He said that the city police department used to require that officers be trained as emergency medical service providers, or medical response technicians (MRT). That certification had to be renewed every two years.
“Is that policy still in place?” Oliver asked. “Are you going to continue having those [officers] trained as basic medical responders?” Because what happened to Randy Cox — whose crumpled and paralyzed body was dragged out of a van and into a holding cell by officers who accused him of just being drunk and not seriously injured — could have had a different outcome if the officers involved had “continued training in emergency medical services,” Oliver said.
“We require 60 hours of training in the academy for emergency [medical] response,” Jacobson said. “But we don’t require it afterward.”
He said said the Board of Police Commissioners has already asked him to look into whether or not the department can require that officers get recertified every two years for basic emergency medical service skills.
Jacobson pointed to the special order that he, the mayor, and the then-acting chief put in place on July 3 that updates and clarifies the city’s prisoner transport policy to include a “medical Miranda” provision whereby officers have to ask detainees if they need care — and then seek out that medical assistance on the spot if the answer is “yes.”
“But we’re gonna build a stronger general order,” Jacobson promised, that deals not just with transportation and detention and “legitimacy,” but also with the type of emergency medical services recertification suggested by Olive. “That’s a part that I think we need to add,” he said. “I would say we definitely need to have it.”
Sylvia Haughton.
Westville resident Sylvia Haughton and Orchard Street resident Frankie White asked Jacobson about digging even deeper than ensuring that officers are up-to-date in their knowledge of basic emergency medical care.
“How do you ensure compassion for a human being” among New Haven police officers? Haughton asked.
Roughly 20 minutes later during her time at the mic, White picked up that thread with a similar question.
“What is the compassion culture of police?” she asked. “How do we train officers periodically to remember that they’re dealing with human beings?”
In response to White, Jacobson returned to the four principles at the center of procedural justice.
“Give someone a voice,” he said. “If we gave Randy a voice that night, we wouldn’t be here,” because the officers would have stopped what they were doing and sought medical help right away after hearing him say that he thought he broke his neck.
“Treat people with dignity,” Jacobson continued. That goes for everyone officers deal with on a day to day basis.
“Equality in decision making,” he said. That is: when an officer responds to a call, they need to listen to both sides offered by people at the scene. “It doesn’t matter who the sides are,” he said.
And “build trust.”
“When you do this,” he said, “you build legitimacy with the community.” And when the community feels the police are legitimate, he continued, they follow the law and the city is a safer place for everyone.
Frankie White.
In response to White’s questions, Jacobson said that “strong leadership and discipline” play important roles in making sure that officers treat the people they interact with with compassion.
He also pointed out lengthy job tenures of some of the officers who are currently on paid administrative leave because of their roles in the Cox case. Two of those officers have 15 years each on the force. One has 22.
“I’m not saying this as an excuse,” Jacobson said. But “the constant day to day of being a police officer wears on you.” He spoke of the importance of looking at “the mental health of officers. We have to make sure that they’re not disgruntled or biased towards any type of group.”
He noted that the recent state police accountability bill requires that all police officers receive mental health checks at least once a year. Jacobson promised to require even more frequent check-ins for officers who work in uniquely traumatizing units, like special victims, homicide, and the bureau of identification.
“We’re doing it already,” he said, “but we’re going to do more.”
“Disgruntled people want to come home early,” White said. They don’t want to put in the extra effort to make sure that they’re treating people with care and respect.
Jacobson agreed. “Hurt people hurt people,” he said. “Some of these officers see stuff, they’re hurt by it, they haven’t dealt with it, and they hurt people. We need to find that out.”
He said that one of his top priorities is making sure that officers accused of, for example, rudeness on the job, are paired with police officers who excel at engaging with the community.
“More training, more exposure to officers that do it right,” he said, will be a critical way towards directing those officers down a more compassionate path.
How about some community education on behavior and compassion and courtesy toward the police and everyone else? When does that teaching and learning happen??