NHPD images
Officers arresting Shawn Marshall at the CT Financial Center.
CRB’s Devin Avshalom-Smith: Head punches deter trust in police.
A police internal investigation has found Officer Justin Cole acted appropriately when he punched a troubled man in the head three times after that man kicked him during an arrest at a Church Street office tower.
New Haven Police Capt. David Zannelli broke that news Monday night during the latest monthly online meeting of the Civilian Review Board (CRB).
The all-civilian cop review panel members responded later in the meeting by voting unanimously to assign the case to a CRB subcommittee for further investigation.
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Monday night’s Civilian Review Board meeting.
Zannelli told the CRB members Monday that the city police department’s Internal Affairs division has exonerated Cole and Officers Ashley McKernan and then-Officer In Training David DeRubeis after finding that they used an appropriate level of force when arresting Shawn Marshall at the Connecticut Financial Center on Jan. 29. (McKernan intervened during the incident to stop Cole from attacking Marshall further.)
Then-Police Chief Otoniel Reyes initiated the internal investigation on Feb. 3. The Internal Affairs division closed out the case on Sept. 10.
The incident itself started when Cole and several other officers responded to 157 Church St. after getting a call about an eviction dispute between the office tower’s management and Marshall, who was a commercial tenant at the time.
After over an hour of frustrating conversation during which the officers helped Marshall carry his bags down to the lobby, Cole and DeRubeis moved in for an arrest. The officers and Marshall fell into a scrum on the lobby floor during which Marshall kicked Cole. Cole responded by grabbing Marshall by the neck, punching him three times in the head, and pepper spraying him.
The video-recorded incident sparked a flurry of debate about police tactics in response to people showing signs of mental illness, including a critique of Cole’s response by the chair of the Board of Alders Public Safety Committee. (Click on the body cam video above and go to 1:08:30 to watch the arrest and use of force in question.)
Thomas Breen photo
Capt. Zannelli: “Compliance strikes” were justified.
During Monday night’s CRB meeting, Zannelli explained that the internal investigation cleared Cole because the officer, who had spent over an hour trying to get Marshall to leave the building peacefully, was responding to getting kicked.
“When that bridge is crossed and an officer is assaulted,” Zannelli said, “officers are allowed to use reasonable and measurable amounts of force to effectuate the arrest.”
In this scenario, Zannelli said, that could have taken the form of a taser deployment or pepper spray or baton use.
Or, as Cole chose to do, “a compliance strike.”
All would have been and are justifiable uses of force when an officer is assaulted, he said. In this case, Marshall kicking Cole during the arrest qualified as a felony assault.
A use of force instructor reviewed the incident as part of the investigation, Zannelli said, and confirmed that the force used by Cole was “reasonable and not excessive.”
“De-escalation is not a panacea for all circumstances,” the police captain continued. “In this case, when an officer was kicked, fell back on the ground, his body camera fell off, a reasonable person can conclude that de-escalation in that case has failed.”
Head Punch? “Compliance Strike”? “Knock On The Head?”
CRB’s Devin Avshalom-Smith: Head punches deter trust in police.
CRB members pushed Zannelli on whether or not three punches to the head were really the best response in this situation.
As CRB Chair Samuel T. Ross-Lee said, “I think this board has the responsibility to look at not just what’s allowed, but if what’s allowed should be allowed.” Just because a response is legally permissible doesn’t mean it was the right thing for the officer to do, he argued.
CRB member Devin Avshalom-Smith agreed.
“I can’t really get comfortable with hearing reports of officers punching people in the face or head. I feel that there’s got to be another technique,” said Avshalom-Smith, who recently won a Democratic primary for a Newhallville Board of Alders seat.
He said that community members in his neighborhood of Newhallville would likely hesitate to call the police for help “if they knew that [getting punched in the head] might be a consequence.”
“This is not an indictment of the New Haven Police Department,” Avshalom-Smith continued. “It’s clear we need their service. But if I ask nine out of 10 residents, people would say they prefer not to be punched in the head, and that there could be another way of distracting or disorienting a person.”
CRB Commissioner John Pescatore asked Zannelli to elaborate on why the head punches were allowed, per the Internal Affairs investigation’s findings. “Is that considered self-defense?” he asked. Is it an approved method to get a suspect under control?
“It’s in order to gain compliance,” Zannelli replied. Even after the punches, Marshall continued to resist until Cole pepper sprayed him, Zannelli said. “The objective is to get the individual to comply after assaulting the officer.”
Commissioner Nina Fawcett said that, after watching the extensive body camera footage of the incident, she commended Cole for his “extreme patience” in dealing with a man who refused to follow police orders for over an hour.
Fawcett referred to the punches as “knocks on the head.” She said that she spoke with an investigating officer about those very punches, and that they explained the “knocks on the head as a way to distract and stop the violence. Three knocks on the head, and that’s what he did.”
What should happen if a police officer determines that a person they’re dealing with might have a mental illness? Commissioner Steve Hamm asked. Is there a special resource that can be called in that type of situation?
If somebody is threatening to hurt themselves or others, Zannelli replied, a police officer would most likely call an ambulance for an emergency evaluation. The officer would need to complete a form to sustain an evaluation at the Yale Psychiatric Hospital in such cases, he said. He also said that the city police department already partners with the Connecticut Mental Health Center.
Is the city still looking to get social workers involved with certain 911 call responses? asked Commissioner AnneMarie Rivera-Berrios. “Is that something still up for discussion?”
Zannelli said that the mayor and the police chief are still having ongoing conversations about that so-called community crisis response team.
But, he continued, “for this particular circumstance, when an officer gets kicked, that is a felony. An officer’s use of force cannot be diminished to less of an average person’s … In this case, the officer was kicked first. We do have to keep that under consideration.”
Towards the end of Monday night’s meeting — which stretched on for three and a half hours, mostly due to discussion and debate about processes of the newly created board — CRB members unanimously voted to assign the case to a subcommittee for further review. The committee members voted to have the board’s city-hired consultant, Emma Jones, request all of the evidence in the case from the NHPD for the subcommittee members to review before they next meet and discuss.
As we can see, the CRB is comprised of people who hate the police. So-- Call the CRB the next time you need assistance!!