Paul Bass Photo
Daniel Dunn at WNHH FM.
Daniel Dunn thought he might meet roadblocks seeking records about police complaints.
“I didn’t think,” he said, “they would go so far as to put them through the shredder.”
Nor did he predict that the town would hire the same law firm to independently “investigate” the document-shredding — and to fight his open-records request.
Then again, he might have had a hunch.
Dunn, a 36-year-old tech systems designer by trade and veteran Dungeons & Dragons aficionado by avocation, leaped into Hamden civic life this year determined to push for change.
He joined the Board of Police Commissioners, appointed by a new administration elected on promises of more transparency and more oversight of law enforcement. He had participated in Black Lives Matter protests. He had also, in a previous job before moving to Hamden’s Spring Glen neighborhood, helped the town of Chapel Hill, N.C., place thousands of public documents online as part of an “open data project.” Since 2019, outside of his day job, he has developed an “open government” website looking to crowdsource the placing of public records online in order to “increase transparency” and “improve local government.”
He knew going in that Hamden’s Police Commission wasn’t operating in that spirit, he said in an interview Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline Hamden” program. Based on the charter, he noted, “our job is to hire, fire and discipline,” including the job of providing oversight of civilian complaints. But, he quickly found, “our hands are tied.”
For starters, the commission wasn’t receiving copies of civilian complaints. So in February, he sent the police a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the past six years’ worth of civilian complaints and use of force reports.
He received about half of them. He still hasn’t received the rest.
He subsequently learned that the town had submitted a request to the state for permission to destroy many of the records he had just requested. The request was approved, and carried out. (Click here to read about that.)
So now Dunn is pressing a state FOIA complaint — facing the Milford law firm the town had separately hired to “investigate” the document destruction. (Click here to read about that.)
“I want a hearing” to find out why the document destruction occurred, and to press for copies of missing documents, he said. The hearing hasn’t yet been scheduled.
The episode reflects a lesson he has learned over years of transparency advocacy, Dunn said: “Transparency is more than words.” It involves the legal right to public information, which the state’s Freedom of Information Act guarantees; and battling “bureaucratic opacity” and resistance to carrying out the law’s dictates.
The copies of civilian-complaint files Dunn did receive fell into three categories: those found to be “sustained,” those leading to “exoneration” of officers, and others falling in the “unsubstantiated” category.”
Dunn noted that “unsubstantiated” means that police — in the process of investigating their own ranks — concluded they did not compile enough evidence to prove an officer had mistreated a member of the public.
“That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” he said. It takes “courage” for a citizen to submit a complaint of serious misconduct in the first place, he said. The commission should receive files of those cases to consider looking deeper from an independent perspective, he said.
The document-shredding episode also revealed that “a lot of stuff in Hamden is not scanned” and stored digitally, Dunn noted. The systems guy said that has to change, too.
Dunn was asked to respond to a critique from one retired cop who posted to an article about actions taken by Dunn and fellow police critics appointed this year to the commission.
“Anyone involved in protesting against police are never able to make impartial judgements involving police issues,” the ex-officer wrote. “It’s an insane choice and the officers in Hamden should watch out for her and the others who side with that view. I don’t want a police force made up of officers who have to look over their shoulders for the adversary in the Police Commission office. That leads to hesitation and in police work that will get officers hurt.”
Dunn responded that organizations already exist to carry out advocacy for police officers. By charter mission, the Police Commission’s goal is to provide independent oversight of police officers’ actions — also a part of keeping people safe.
“People across the United States want police reform and accountability. It has to be more than just words,” Dunn argued.
Click on the video to watch the full interview with Daniel Dunn on WNHH FM’s “Dateline Hamden” program.
Click here to subscribe to “Dateline” and here to subscribe to other WNHH FM podcasts.
Being an activist for an anti-police movement is a conflict of interest for sure. Not sure its bigger than the alleged conflict the mayor has the PD due to Hamden's worst kept secret.. Who knows though.