The Abdussabur File: How Cop’s Rough Start Shaped Candidate’s Vision

Decades before Shafiq Abdussabur became a public face of community policing and a mayoral candidate running on cop cred, he was the one in trouble.

In his first years as a New Haven police officer, Abdussabur became a regular at internal affairs. He faced reviews after he fired bullets at a suspect’s tire, after a drug dealer he chased died, and after he gave a gun to his brother which his brother then used to murder someone. At one point Abdussabur had to fight to get his job back.

In an interview at Wooster Square’s Kaiyden’s coffee shop and in a 53-minute campaign video, Abdussabur, now a 56-year-old retired police sergeant, revisited those incidents. He called them formative learning experiences informing his anti-violence organizing work and his quest this year for the Democratic mayoral nomination.

“The reality of life sometimes is not about how successful you are. It’s about how you lived through your challenges in life, the lessons you learned,” Abdussabur said.

Those lessons led to Abdussabur founding (with donations from fellow officers) a mentoring and after-school program in Dixwell, negotiating gang truces, helping to design and launch New Haven’s street outreach worker program enlisting ex-offenders to reach young people at risk of engaging in violence, writing a book advising Black Americans how to avoid conflicts with police, getting hired as a consultant to the FBI, and serving as president of a national Black law enforcement officers’ group. And now a mayoral campaign in which he has emphasized his community-policing proposals and experiences.

Those experiences include the early-career controversies.

The Independent obtained Abdussabur’s internal affairs (IA) file through a Connecticut Freedom of Information Act request. The basic facts of the controversial incidents pretty much line up with his versions of them. What they say about how New Haven should be policed in 2023 is in some cases a less straightforward question.

Incident #1: The Gun

The lessons, and mistake, were clear-cut in the first incident, involving the .357 magnum Abdussabur purchased and gave to his brother as a birthday gift in 1998.

“We had done this in our family history probably since we were freed as slaves,” Abdussabur said of the gift. ​“We buy guns. We pass guns from generation to generation,” Abdussabur said.

Abdussabur, who grew up in New Haven the son of a Black Panther, joined the police force in 1996. Then-Chief Nicholas Pastore recruited him. Pastore encountered Abdussabur participating in community events and with fellow members of a George Street masjid in protests calling for more police protection in their neighborhood. He told Abdussabur the NHPD was looking for people like him to bring a community policing philosophy to the city.

On April 26, 1999, Abdussabur’s brother Andre Johnson shot a man dead with the .357 Abdussabur gave him. The gun was still registered in Abdussabur’s name; his brother’s pistol permit had been revoked. The victim turned out to be a close childhood friend of Abdussabur’s. Abdussabur said to this day he doesn’t know why his brother shot the man.

His brother was convicted and sent to prison for 18 1/2 years. Abdussabur was arrested for violation of a registration law requiring him to transfer ownership of a gun he purchased for someone else; the court granted him accelerated rehabilitation, eventually removing the offense from his record.

Then-Chief Melvin Wearing, meanwhile, suspended Abdussabur for three days for ​“conduct unbecoming an officer.”

“I believe that Officer Abdussabur did not intentionally shirk legal duties; however, ignorance of the law is not an excuse,” Wearing wrote in his suspension order. ​“Officer Abdussabur used exceedingly poor judgment in the first place by putting a lethal weapon in the hands of a person whom he know could not legally purchase one.”

Abdussabur said he hadn’t been aware of the paperwork requirement. He said he agrees that’s no excuse.

He said he subsequently enrolled in courses to become versed in the details of firearm ownership regulations and to learn more about proper use of guns, in addition to the impact gun violence has on society.

Incident #2: A Drug Dealer’s Death

The next time Abdussabur’s actions were tied to someone’s death, the department concluded he acted properly. It was Abdussabur himself who harbored doubts in retrospect.

The actions took place the night of Sept. 2, 2000, when Abdussabur and partner Joe Dease were on patrol in the Hill.

They received a complaint about two men selling drugs at Congress Avenue and West Street. Abdussabur and Dease located them. One of the suspects was on a bike, riding away. Pulling up, Abdussabur motioned with his arm for the man to pull over, to no avail.

“Hold up,” Abdussabur called, pulled closer. ​“Wait a minute. I want to talk to you.”

The suspect stopped, ​“began to dismount,” in the words of an IA report, then reached into his pocket. The officers were worried the man had a gun.

The young man ran away up Redfield Street. Abdussabur ran after him. Noticing the man’s right fist clenched, Abdussabur worried he had a weapon.

The chase ended in a rear yard on Redfield, where the man ​“forcibly jammed his hand into his right pocket and fell to the ground. Officer Abdussabur ran into him and was flipped over,” at which point the suspect ​“began punching and kicking Officer Abdussabur. Abdussabur was on his knees and grabbed onto [the suspect] in an attempt to gain control,” at which point the suspect hit Abdussabur in the head and shoulder, investigator Lt. Joann Peterson wrote in the IA report.

The suspect knocked a police radio out of Abdussabur’s hand before he could call for back-up. Dease arrived, yelling, ​“Watch his hands!”

The officers pulled the man’s hand away, at which point he ​“placed an item in his mouth, and began to chew” while continuing to struggle.

More officers arrived. They pepper-sprayed the man and struck him in the calf with a baton. Finally they handcuffed him. The man ignored a request to spit out the object in his mouth. Seeing a ​“white film and blood on his mouth, Abdussabur believed [the suspect] had swallowed crack rock cocaine.”

The suspect rolled over, ​“went unconscious.” Medics arrived, failed to find a pulse or heartbeat. They retrieved ​“several small plastic orange zip lock bags” from the man’s throat, but it was too late. He died later at the hospital. (It turned out the man had had previous narcotics-related arrests, and had once swallowed a bag while fighting with officers.) 

The department found no problem with how Abdussabur handled the incident.

“The IA was very short. The chief cleared us. He looked me dead in the face: ​‘I want to commend you for not pulling out your weapon and shooting him. You had every right to do that. I commend you on that,’” Abdussabur recalled.

Abdussbaur, on the other hand, felt haunted by the event, he said.

He later realized that he had previously encountered the victim on the street: He and Dease used to give him copies of New Haven Register want ads with potential jobs circled.

“How do we reach them before they are selling drugs? How do we reach them before they need a gun,” Abdussabur recalled asking himself.

Incident #3: The Shot Tires

Chief Wearing did find Abdussabur in the wrong about the next incident that prompted an IA probe. Again, Abdussabur had a different take.

This incident occurred within the hour after the New Year’s ball dropped in 2001, when Abdussabur was among a team of officers working a drunk-driving checkpoint on College Street between North and South Frontage roads.

When they approached one stopped car, the driver ​“quickly placed his seat in the reclining position” and ​“began to fumble with something on the right side of the seat.” His speaking slurred. He locked the door and began pulling his car forward, toward other stopped cars and officers.

Abdussabur yelled to other officers to use caution. Some yelled commands at the driver, who revved the engine. Two officers were directly in front of the car.

Abdussabur fired two gunshots at a rear tire at close range. The tire immediately fell flat.

The driver pulled into reverse. Another officer smashed his window to try to stop him.

Then Abdussabur fired shots at the front tire at close range. Police got inside the car, grabbed the shift, pulled out the driver.

The IA investigation concluded that Abdussabur failed to consider the potential of harming nearby officers when he shot at the tires. He put both the officers and the suspects inside the vehicle ​“in jeopardy by firing at the tires … knowing they could have ricochet [sic] through the body of the vehicle.”

The report also stated that Abdussabur offered conflicting accounts in interviews about whether the car had begun moving or if the driver had simply revved the engine.

Abdussabur said then — and argues today — that he acted to protect life, not endanger lives.

Under police guidelines at the time, he could have shot the driver because of the driver’s actions that endangered officers’ lives. He said he chose to stop the car instead.

“I was trying to save lives,” he said. ​“I was also trying to save the lives of the drivers. … Two black males are in the car, and you’re surrounded by police” breaking the window and reaching in, ​“it was just gonna be a matter of time.

“The worst thing a leader can do in a time of crisis is nothing. In that moment, I made a decision to do something. I felt that was a less deadly response for a deadly situation that was already brewing.”

Chief Wearing and the city’s police commissioners disagreed. On the chief’s recommendation, the commission voted to fire Abdussabur.

It was a low point in his life, and a turning point, he said.

He remembered standing in line at the Bassett Street welfare office to apply for food stamps ​“with my heart in my throat. I’m from the hood, so it wasn’t my first time in the welfare office. I was in the office welfare as a kid. I grew up with food stamps as a kid.” He wondered: ​“How did I get here? I started off a career to help move my community forward. I’ve been in these situations where it doesn’t feel I’m moving the community forward. It feels like I’m part of the barriers that black people deal with.”

He recalled a young woman behind him in line, whom he didn’t recognize, saying, ​“Good job, Shafiq. You looked out for the community. We’ve got you.”

People nearby nodded, he said.

“A chill went through my body,” he recalled. When he made it to the front of the line, he said, the woman processing his claim told him: ​“We saw what you did in the news. You didn’t shoot that young man. That was brave.”

Abdussabur decided to fight to return to the force. While he took other jobs to pay the bills, he filed a grievance.

Fifteen months later, he won back the badge.

Abdussabur spent 15 months fighting to get his job back. He succeeded. An arbitration panel concluded: ““[T]he Grievant’s behavior cannot be condoned. His action were serious, but the question put before the Panel was whether his actions warranted his termination. Given all the circumstances involved, including officers forcing entry into the vehicle, it was found that a penalty less than termination is appropriate in this case … [A] long term suspension would correct this type of problem from reoccurring. Discipline has the intent to correct. To terminate this officer for his actions would be punitive, not corrective. Therefore the termination is reduced to an indefinite suspension.”

Abdussabur claimed further vindication when the police department updated its use of force policy in 2021. Section 6.01.06 C of the general orders now permits officers to fire a gun ​“at or into a moving or fleeing vehicle” in order:

• ​“To counter an imminent threat of death or serious physical injury from an occupant by means other than the vehicle.

• ​“When a driver is intentionally placing others in the vehicle’s path causing an imminent risk of serious injury …

• ​“When an officer is unavoidably in the path of a vehicle and cannot move to safety.”

Jajuana & Justus

Back on a walking beat in Dixwell, the neighborhood where he grew up, Abdussabur resolved to do the job right and make a difference.

That challenge came into focus when his 13-year-old cousin, Jajuana Cole, was killed by a stray bullet outside her home on Dickerman Street.

The shooting shocked the community, as did another stray-bullet shooting death five weeks later of 13-year-old Justus Suggs.

Abdussabur worked with the families. He helped Jajuana’s mom find the money to bury her daughter.

He worked with Stetson Library’s Diane Brown to start an after-school program for teens out of the branch. That grew into a program called CTribat. Abdussabur’s colleagues chipped in money for him to take kids camping and keep them busy while in town. He recruited Justus’s and Jajuana’s moms to work with teens in the program and participate in gun violence-prevention efforts.

Abdussabur also began focusing on potential shooters and shooting targets. Amid rumors of a beef endangering an upcoming Freddy Fixer Parade, he raised money to take feuding members to a movie and pizza dinner in the suburbs. The police chief appointed him to help the city draw up a plan for the street outreach worker program; he followed up and helped people start the work. During one string of retaliatory shootings, Abdussabur brought feuding gang members onto Winthrop Avenue, closed the street, and successfully challenged them to work out their beef without weapons. He mentored teens and young men in trouble, helped them find jobs.

He drew on his lessons to publish a book called A Black Man’s Guide To Law Enforcement in America, with advice on how to avoid potentially fatal escalations when stopped by police. His advocacy earned him the presidency of the National Black Law Enforcement Officers (NABLEO) group; he also got involved in the New Haven police union, elected as treasurer.

Depending on which chief was in office and which department faction in ascension at any one time, Abdussabur’s star rose within the department. He became district manager (top cop) of the Newhallville neighborhood. He arranged for officers to visit school classrooms, get to know young people at summer events.

At other times he ran into trouble again. While some supervisors wrote positive reviews of him, according to his IA file, others wrote dozens of reports charging him with mistakes, especially after, as he put it, he was banished to a position in the 1 Union Ave. prisoner lock-up. Dozens of reports accused him of abusing sick time (taking 26 days in 2011 rather than the permitted 15), regularly missing lineup, coming late, failing to file paperwork, booking off the job without documentation, oversleeping, offering conflicting versions of reasons for absences. He received reprimands; in 2012 then-Chief Dean Esserman suspended him for two days for the absences.

Abdussabur said in this week’s interview that he was struggling with personal and family medical challenges as well as caring everyday for a dying grandfather.

He was also cited for wearing a beard (which he said he needed to do because of a skin condition). That was before the department decided — in 2021 — to change the rules and allow all officers to have beards.

Almost all the complaints against Abdussabur were written by white supervisors. At the time, Abdussabur was part of an ultimately successful group lawsuit charging the department with blocking Black officers from promotions.

Now retired from the department, Abdussabur has kept up his advocacy for community policing-based approaches to stemming violence. As a Board of Alders candidate in 2021 he issued a 10-point stop-the-violence plan on the subject, which did not receive a response from City Hall. Now, with financial and volunteer support from both Black and white cops he worked with on the force, Abdussabur is running for the top job at City Hall, one of three Democrats seeking to unseat two-term incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker in a Sept. 12 primary, continuing a controversial challenge that began at the end of a previous century at 1 Union Ave.