nothin At Forum, 2 Cops Lay It On The Line | New Haven Independent

At Forum, 2 Cops Lay It On The Line

Markeshia Ricks Photo

Officer Baker at the forum.

One man told of cops stopping him for driving while black, of his son being unfairly arrested. Another spoke of barriers to moving freely” in the suburbs.

Familiar stories about the sea of distrust that separates officers from the black and brown communities they police — only these were being told by cops.

New Haven Assistant Police Chief Anthony Campbell and Officer James Baker told those stories as they participated in a candid conversation with community activists about racism, policing and how to bridge the gap between police and the community.

As the kids say these days, they kept it completely 100.

Moderated by Germano Kimbro (pictured), the panel Saturday was part of a men’s fellowship conference organized by the New Life Men’s Fellowship at Varick Memorial AME Zion Church on Dixwell Avenue. In addition to talking about policing, the men gathered for health screenings and to talk about fatherhood.

Kimbro said the discussion at the church was designed not only for people to ask tough questions, but to offer their thoughts and solutions on how to improve relationships between law enforcement and the community.

What Would You Do?

Attendees didn’t hold back about their anger and their fears.

One man wanted to know how the police officers on the panel, Assistant Police Chief Anthony Campbell and Officer James Baker, talk to their children about how to survive an interaction with the police.

I was born and raised here, and when I was growing up the police officer was your friend,” the man, who identified himself as Vincent, said. But now when it comes to the police, you have to tell the kids, Be careful, be respectful. Don’t make any sudden movements.’ It angers me to have to sit my 13-year-old down and warn him not just about not getting into all the other things out there, but to protect himself from the police who should protect him.”

Baker could empathize. His son was arrested by the New Haven Police Department and wasn’t well treated by the arresting officers in a shooting incident where his son and his friends were actually the victims, Baker said.

On the one hand, Baker said he saw the incident through the eyes of the officers simply trying to contain the scene. People are excited and upset; some of them had been drinking. The officers are trying to ask questions and find out what happened, but can’t get any straight answers. Ultimately, everybody is arrested.

But as the dad who got the phone call from his 21-year-old son at 5 a.m. Baker said the one incident so colored his son’s perception of the police that he now wants nothing to do with the police.

He wasn’t a threat, and actually was a victim, but he was victimized because he got arrested,” Baker said.

Police Here, Live Here

Fair with Campbell at the forum.

Assistant Chief Campbell said those kinds of experiences and negative interactions make it hard for the city to respond to the community’s demand for a police department that is more representative of the community, and that actually comes from the communities officers will be policing.

He said Mayor Toni Harp and Chief Dean Esserman are committed to hiring more blacks and Latinos, more women and certainly more New Haveners, but they’re fighting an uphill battle.

He pointed out that New Haven police officers start out with a salary of about $43,000. In Branford, the starting salary is $56,000. Yale University starts its officers in the low $70,000 range. It’s a no-brainer,” he said. Of the city’s 495 police officers, only 16 percent live in New Haven. He said the city has to find a way to incentivize or make it policy that New Haven police officers live in the city where they work.

We know that if you are a homeowner, you will care more about the the place where you own, than the place that you rent,” he said.

Another barrier to recruitment in Campbell’s eyes? Education. The system of racism is not just in the police department and the court system,” Campbell said. We as African Americans have long been denied a good education. If you can’t pass the civil service exam, you can’t be hired by the police department.”

But He’s Naked

Campbell likened the problem of racism in police departments in America to the Hans Christian Anderson tale The Emperor’s New Clothes. In that story, the emperor, who is naked, is convinced that his new clothes are so fine that they can only be seen by a select few.

Campbell said some police chiefs, including in this state, when confronted with statistics, video and testimony that suggest that their officers might be enforcing laws in racially motivated ways, won’t admit that they are naked and have a problem with race that everybody else can see.

Campbell recently participated in a public hearing about a report that showed that several police departments in the state disproportionately stopped more African-American drivers than white drivers. Campbell said one of the chiefs said, I don’t know how the numbers are skewed to show that, but it’s not racism. My officers are not racists.” (Read more about that here.)

Though I’ve been in this city for 24 years, I stay in uniform a lot because it gives me the freedom to move about freely, not just in New Haven, but in bordering towns,” Campbell acknowledged.

Baker said he has been pulled over in other towns, and when they see my uniform, they’re like Oh.’ As if they didn’t expect that the black man they’re pulling over might be a police officer.”

Kevin Muhammad (pictured), a former assistant principal at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School, said the fact that a uniform is all that stands between a black man being killed for driving while black” is symptomatic of the racism that still exists in America and its police departments.

A Two Way Street

Muhammad, who grew up in the Nation of Islam, said at a very young age he was given a card with instruction on how to talk to the police. He advised the attendees to teach their children how to prioritize respect for an authority figures.

You are allowed to ask the officer about why you are being stopped,” he said. But this isn’t the time to state your case, if you disagree with the reason. It is appropriate to ask, Sir, am I under arrest?’ If it is a child, the child can ask, May I call my parent?’. But you also have to teach them not to say too much more because in the case of an arrest, anything they say can be held against them.”

Barbara Fair, a longtime community activist and recent appointee to the mayor’s Task Force on Community and Police Relations, pushed her fellow panelists to think more deeply about the issue of respect for authority.

When I hear you say that, it immediately made me think of the video of the kids at the pool party in McKinney, Texas,” she said referencing recent allegations of police brutality, where a white police officer was captured on video grabbing a 15-year-old black girl in a bikini, dragging her by the hair and forcing her to the ground.

The girl can be heard asking for someone to call her parents while the officer kneels on her back. When other children rush forward to assist the girl, the officer stops them by drawing his gun.

You can hear the children saying Yes, sir’ so much that you would think Sir’ was the officer’s name,” Fair said. Respect goes both ways.”

Good Cop, Bad Cop

Attendees also pressed the panel, particularly Baker and Campbell, about the blue wall of silence” when it comes to police brutality. Fair, who has been a critic of the police department, asked why good cops” won’t stand up to bad cops.”

A good cop, to me, is one who sees a young girl being slammed to the ground — to me a good cop speaks out,” she said referencing the arrest of a 15-year-old New Haven girl by a police officer that sparked protests in the city led by Fair, and a counter-protest led by the police union. I shouldn’t have to protest. Good officers say, We do not approve of what you did.’ If you don’t take a stand against bad cops, you are complicit.”

Again, Baker provided some insight from a beat cop’s perspective, pointing out that a lot of factors may be at play when an officer is making an arrest.

I watched the video,” he said. And in that situation, you can look at it from the training that the person may have, or not have. He might have been nervous. Maybe he’s not used to policing that area and working with kids. In a situation where there are a lot of people around, he might have been afraid and thinking, I have to somehow get control of this person.’”

Though he didn’t criticize Officer Joshua Smereczynsky’s handling of the situation, Baker said given his experience working in the Dixwell neighborhood and his knack for interacting with children and teens, he believed he might have handled the situation differently.

I’m used to being around kids and can walk up and down Dixwell with no problem,” he said.

Fair argued that the lens with which Baker sees the situation makes the difference.

The difference is you see them as kids,” she said. You would know that a girl, handcuffed is not a threat to you.” That story prompted another question: How much psychological screening do officers receive?

Trauma’s Toll

Conference attendee talks about growing up with positive community police relationships in New Haven.

Campbell said to get into the police academy, prospective cops must take and pass a battery of tests including an extensive psychological exam. If you don’t get a clean bill of health on your psych eval showing that you are a well-adjusted person, you won’t be a police officer in New Haven, he said. But after that? Nothing.

Campbell said he thinks that is problematic. We know that five years into policing, the way we train you, is to be a paranoid person, who is hyper and not emotionally healthy.”

Campbell said often times veteran officers — who deal with the worst of humanity on a daily basis, who listen to a scanner every day that tells them to be on the lookout for a suspicious black male, and are exposed regularly to violence and trauma — are not as mentally healthy as they were when they first joined the department.

We do not care for our officers the way that we should,” he said. Campbell said that officers should be regularly evaluated for mental-health problems possibly yearly or more. But that costs money. And the findings of a psychological evaluation could jeopardize an officer’s career, which the union would likely fight. He said what you end up with is traumatized police officers policing people who are traumatized by the violence in their community. And that is not a good combination.

This is well known by the police chief. It is well known by the administration,” he said. But there is no law to mandate that we do anything about it.”

Campbell said that the reality is that at one point New Haven walked away from community policing and simply focused on responding to 911 calls. The positive relationships with cops that so many adults who grew up in New Haven remember were lost. The department also lost some of those relationships because the department lost cops. Last year was the first year the city was able to hire more officers than it lost.

We had 140 retirements in the last three years,” Campbell said. That’s a lot of cops and a lot of relationships.”

He said the city is working its way back to rebuilding those lost relationships by recommitting to community policing and walking beats, but it’s going to take a lot of time, possibly a whole decade, to see change.

Campbell argued that the return to community policing is already having an impact. Crime in the city is down significantly from where it was in 2011, a year when the city marked 34 homicides and revived community policing. The city is halfway through the year, and there have been five homicides. Crime is way down, but the respect for police is down and the respect for the community is down,” he said. I believe that’s a relationship gap.”

He predicted that body cameras and a revived civilian review board will complement the positive results that the city is seeing. But he said lasting change takes attention and resources.

Police officers are not supermen,” he said. They’re human beings in uniforms.”

Above all, Campbell said, the community has to stay at the table. Because the police department exists at the behest of the community. If the community wants at least 50 percent of police officers to live in New Haven, it’s up to the community to fight for that. We work for you,” he said.

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