Cop-Stop Black ​“Survival” Effort Launched

On a warm summer night, then-FBI agent Quentin Williams found himself arrested, handcuffed and surrounded by 12 police cars, because he was black. He knew his next move could land him in jail, get him killed, or send him home safe.

Williams lived to tell the tale of how he survived that night. Now he is back in New Haven to make sure that others survive too.

Williams, also a former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, stopped by his old stomping grounds in New Haven Tuesday to announce a new statewide initiative to teach people, particularly young people of color, the skills that he claims saved his life when he was arrested that fateful day in Rhode Island in 1994.

Author of A Survival Guide: How Not To Get Killed By the Police Part I, a 31-page handbook that covers what to do when you are pulled over, and if you are ever stopped on the street, Williams is now head of a not-for-profit organization called Dedication to Community, or D2C, which focuses on improving community/police relations specifically through an initiative called Choose 2 Live.

That initiative trains people how to behave when they come in contact with police officers; it is up and running in 12 states. Now it will be coming to Connecticut.

Williams said many of his friends in law enforcement read the title of his book and immediately suspected it was anti-cop. He told a room packed with law enforcement officers from all across the state Tuesday that in fact the guide is ​“pro-law enforcement” because it is meant to insure safer interactions for police officers and members of the community.

He said he wrote the book at the behest of his wife, who has often watched how he handled random traffic stops. She urged him to write it for their then unborn son. The now father of two said getting it published and creating a platform to get it into the hands of people took on a sense of urgency after reading about ​“the senseless killing of people … by rogue law enforcement officers or individuals under the color of law.”

A reading of the handbook doesn’t expressly say it is aimed at people of color; the instructions are specific and colorblind. He explains law enforcement officers mindsets during stops and how to respond to requests. But in the book’s dedication Williams acknowledged his own disgust at the growing list of unarmed people — he lists Oscar Grant, Jonathan Ferrell, Trayvon Martin, Israel Hernandez and Robert Cameron Redus — who have been killed.

Connecticut U.S. Attorney Deirdre Daly said that despite efforts to ​“bridge the divide” between law enforcement and the communities they are sworn to protect, tensions remain. ​“There are too many lives lost to this divide,” she said Tuesday. ​“We do not live in a perfect world, but we must do everything we can to make it better.”

Williams credited former Assistant U.S. Attorney, the Rev. Keith King of New Haven, with helping to make the partnership possible. King has worked for years to build relationships between local police and the community they protect and he said that when he learned of the work his former colleague was doing he championed the partnership.

“We have to do what we can to help both sides come together,” he said.

A Lesson For Cops Too

But back to 1994.

Williams thought the arrest might be an elaborate practical joke. His FBI buddies were notorious pranksters. And if it was a joke, Williams said he thought, this one was a doozie. He was surrounded by no fewer than 12 police cars.

In case it wasn’t a joke, he played it straight. He was unfailingly polite, and followed the commands of the arresting officer to the letter.

“May I ask what this is about?” he asked. The cop told him to shut up and get against the car.

But because he was an FBI agent and always carrying his gun, he risked the cop’s wrath to tell him who he was and that he had a 9 mm FBI-issued gun in a fanny pack around his waist.

The cop took the pack and put Williams in the back seat of the cruiser. After about 30 minutes of head scratching over his credentials by the police on scene, the supervising lieutenant arrived.

That supervisor ultimately told Williams why he was under arrest: Earlier that day a black man had allegedly pointed a gun at a white man.

Williams had an airtight alibi for the time of the alleged incident. He was in Bridgeport closing out a year-long civil rights investigation into the alleged execution-style killing of a young black man by the police in Norwalk. His special-agent-in-charge could and would verify that.

Officers eventually allowed Williams out of the cruiser, so that he could sit on the curb while they worked to sort out the story.

“I was angry down in the pit of my stomach,” Williams recalled. ​“But on the surface I was smiling.”

Williams said he knew that if he had reacted with anything other than politeness and cooperation he could have ended up spending a night or more in jail, or worse.

Instead he lost more than two hours of a beautiful summer night, and suffered the humiliation of sitting handcuffed on the curb, surrounded by law enforcement while onlookers watched. But he lived to talk about it. That was what Williams said counted.

He said when he was finally let go, officers sent him away with a weak, ​“I hope you understand.”

He understood. That didn’t mean he approved of the way it was handled.

Williams said those officers could have taken just 18 seconds to have a conversation with him and apologize. He encouraged the law enforcement officers in the room Tuesday not to neglect those 18 seconds.

But even if officers don’t take that time, he said for the person on the opposite side of the badge, compliance and cooperation are key to survival.

In his book he stresses that if you are stopped and you feel that you were mistreated, or that the stop was unwarranted, report the incident after you are released. While you’re standing on the street or pulled over is not the time to make your displeasure known.

“No matter how I felt,” he said of that night in Newport, ​“my goal was to get everyone home safely.”