Sophie Sonnenfeld
Reyes, Higgins, Winfield at the forum.
One woman spoke of watching the cops beat and arrest a man who was video-recording an arrest. A chief spoke of the need to focus on the positive police do — while a state senator responded that focusing on police misbehavior is essential to bringing about change.
Those raw stories and exchanges took place at Gateway Community College Wednesday night at a community forum on racial profiling,
Forty people attended the panel discussion, which featured Acting New Haven Police Chief Otoniel Reyes, Yale Police Chief Ronnell Higgins, New Haven State Sen. Gary Winfield, community activist, Rodney Williams, and Robin Fox from the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities. The Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project organized the forum.
Retired New Haven State Rep. William Dyson, who championed criminal justice reform during his 32 years at the legislature, moderated the event in his role as the Racial Profiling Prohibition Project Advisory Board chair.
Chief Higgins spoke of how he watched his father, who was also a cop, put on his New Haven police uniform every day. But n the 1990s, Higgins saw a different side of the profession when his brother was arrested by New Haven officers and beaten up badly. After his brother sued the city for close to one million dollars, Higgins “wanted nothing to do with being an officer.”
“Those who wear uniforms are not immune to the societal ills of police brutality,” Higgins said. But in times when he feels conflict he said he asks himself, “If not us, then who?”
Dyson moderates the discussion.
Project Manager Ken Barone reported that Connecticut police conduct 550,000 traffic stops per year, making them the most common encounter between citizens and police. The Profiling Prohibition project analyzes traffic stops to identify racial profiling and works on finding solutions for towns with particularly high rates of racial profiling. The Alvin W. Penn Law mandates that all 107 police departments in Connecticut submit electronic data on a monthly basis regarding traffic stops. The Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project analyzes this data and complies it into an annual report for public access; the next annual report is scheduled for release next Tuesday.
Though all racial groups have equivalent rates of equipment violations, Barone said, the statics show “that race and ethnicity is a significant factor in traffic stops.” The reports have also found that the rates of racial profiling in Connecicut are significantly higher in suburban communities that are just outside of ubran centers. Recent reports identified town departments including East Hartford, Hamden, Waterbury, Meriden, Newington, Wethersfield, Madison, and Windsor as having the highest rates of police racial profiling. (Read the report’s most recent findings here)
Higgins said he believes it is important to understand how police bias leads to racial profiling, but he said this bias is not fixed, “This bias is malliable, and we can reduce racial profiling when we familiarize those in uniform with people in their community and encourage officers to spend time with people who don’t look like them.”
In response, State Sen. Winfield, who has led for passage of police accountability laws, commented that people “don’t need to be familiar in order to respect each other as human beings.” Higgins acknowledged there can be an absence of human respect, but said this often stems from “a lack of empathy and understanding of the community they are policing.”
Higgins said that while there is no exact way to instill empathy in officers, departments can help reduce bias. He cited an example: When former top Philadelphia cop Chuck Ramsey sent recruits to the Holocaust museum.
Laura-Lillian Best tells her story.
Activist Laura-Lillian Best spoke about an incident in which a black man in the community was recording officers arrest a child, and the officers slapped the phone away. She said the officers then proceeded to beat him up, tase him, and arrest him for allegedly assaulting a police officer. Though those charges were thrown out in court, Best said, incidents like these, of racial profiling and police brutality, are a daily reality for her. “I hear about and watch viral accounts of police brutality and racial profiling directly from people within my own communities,” she said.
Cynthia Morgan agreed, adding “these officers need to be held accountable.” Best and Morgan said they believe the most effective way for communities to hold their officers accountable is by decertifying officers who have numerous incidents of profiling and brutality.
Rodney Williams.
Rodney Williams suggested holding departments accountable for officers they know are a problem. “Eventually weed them out, because we can’t keep sending them back into the community.,” Williams said. “Some of these officers don’t care about us, it seems like they just want to get their paycheck!”
Chief Reyes informed the room about a recent incident where a white New Haven officer saved a black man’s life after the man had been shot, by using a tourniquet. “And most likely none of you heard about it. But if it were a white officer that shot a black man, all of you would’ve heard about it,” Reyes said. Two such incidents occurred recently; read about them here and here.
Reyes added that in order to break down barriers between police and the community, the community should acknowledge the positive changes the department has made and discuss “both sides of the story.” He said the negative actions of police “do not symbolize the everyday goings-on of an entire department.” Focusing solely on misguided actions “delegitimizes the good work people in the department are doing,” he argued.
“While the number of these problematic police officers is small in relation to an entire department, it is necessary for people to be concerned about this small, but important percentage,” Winfield countered. “It is this percentage of officers that has the most life-changing impact on peoples’ lives.”
Winfield said that although there is no way to instill “legislative respect and empathy for officers, the consequence for disrespectful behavior can bring change.” Winfield cited the penalty for turning off a police body camera as creating “consciousness for good behavioral habits.” The only way for this kind of legislative change to occur, Winfield said, is through “community pushback that shapes policy.”
Dyson closed the forum by emphasizing that “having a dialogue is very important. Until we talk about it, it is going to remain the same. I am proud that New Haven can engage in a dialogue that is hot and heavy and we can do it in a civil fashion. I am tickled pink about it!”
When it comes to the Hoods and El Barrios the Police are a Military Occupying Force.Some of the nation's larger cities boast police forces the size of small armies. I read one time that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg actually likes to brag that the NYPD was his personal army.In the book by John W. Whitehead , A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, He writes Having watered down the Fourth Amendment's strong prohibitions intended to keep police in check and functioning as peacekeepers, we now find ourselves in the unenviable position of having militarized standing armies enforcing the law. Likewise, whereas the police once operated as public servants (i.e., in service to the public), today that master-servant relationship has been turned on its head to such an extent that if we fail to obey anyone who wears a badge, We risk dire consequences.So you see this is why you have problems with the police in the Hoods and El Barrios across this country.