Yale is looking at why one of its police officers ended up firing bullets at an unarmed couple in a car in Newhallville — and at how it polices in general.
Those will be the topics of separate investigations for which the university has hired outside help. University Vice-President for Administration Janet Lindner announced the investigations in a community-wide email “update” on the April 16 shooting, in which Hamden Police Officer Devin Eaton stopped a car and sprayed it with bullets with the help of back-up Yale Officer Terrance Pollack. A passenger named Stephanie Washington was hospitalized because of injuries suffered in the shooting.
That shooting is currently the subject of a criminal investigation being conducted by the New Haven state’s attorney’s office.
Yale has hired retired Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Chase Rogers to investigate Pollack’s “conduct as it relates to policies, procedures, and practices of the police department,” Lindner wrote. Among other issues, Pollack did not turn on his cruiser lights at the stop or call in the stop before exiting his car and firing his weapon. Rogers’ investigation has already begun, Linder reported.
Yale also hired a firm called 21CP Solutions, “a team of community policing experts,” to conduct an assessment this summer of how Yale’s cops communicate and navigate jurisdictions with the New Haven and Hamden police departments, a subject raised in protests that followed the April 16 shooting, Lindner wrote. Yale has also asked the firm in the fall to examine the university’s “policing policies, practices, and training.”
21CP Solutions’ team includes police chiefs who claim to “have turned around troubled police departments and renewed the community’s confidence in their agencies”; as well as “social scientists and academics” who study police reform. Its consultants include New Haven’s Tracey Meares, a law professor who served on President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing and has helped train cops nationwide on “procedural justice,” or building police-civilian trust. (Read more about her here.)
On its website, 21CP Solutions boasts of being “the preeminent team of thought leaders and change agents in modern policing.”
Following is the full text of Lindner’s message:
Good morning,
I write with an update regarding the police shooting that took place on April 16. As I shared with you in a previous update, the State’s Attorney is conducting an investigation into the incident; its findings will be made public.
Yale has begun its own personnel investigation of the incident. Yale’s investigation will focus on the Yale police officer’s conduct as it relates to policies, procedures, and practices of the police department. The University has engaged Chase Rogers, the former Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, to conduct this investigation. She has already begun her preliminary review of relevant policies and procedures and will complete the investigation after Yale receives the results of the State’s Attorney’s criminal investigation.
The shooting on Argyle Street raises questions about jurisdiction and communications among the Hamden, New Haven, and Yale police departments. The university, with support from the mayors and police chiefs of New Haven and Hamden, has retained a team of community policing experts, 21CP Solutions, to assess these issues and to make recommendations on how policies, practices, and interactions can be clarified and improved across and within police jurisdictions. We expect 21CP Solutions to conduct its assessment this summer.
Yale also has engaged 21CP Solutions to conduct an assessment of Yale’s policing policies, practices, and training. Our goal is, and has been, to be a leader in campus community policing, and 21CP Solutions experts will help the police department build on its success and make any necessary improvements to become a model for campus policing. This review will take place in the fall.
Yale Police Chief Ronnell Higgins and I are committed to the safety of the greater New Haven community, and we are grateful to all who are helping us meet that profound obligation.
Sincerely,
Janet Lindner
Vice President for Administration
Yale University
Congratulations to 21CP for securing this no doubt lucrative contract!