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DOJ’s Roy Austin and U.S. Attorney David Fein deliver the news.
A trumped-up arrest of a Fair Haven priest exposing rampant police harassment of Latinos has led to a scorching federal report on an outlaw culture within the East Haven police department — and the threat of a lawsuit to bring about change.
The report became public Monday. The U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division conducted the report. Officials released it and discussed it a press conference Monday afternoon at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in downtown New Haven.
Click here to read a 23-page summary of the findings.
The DOJ’s two-year investigation found that the East Haven cops have engaged in widespread “biased policing, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and the use of excessive force.” It found that they violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the federal Safe Streets Act by routinely stopping, harassing, and then mistreating Latino drivers; and by threatening and intimidating both citizens and cops who try to bring such conduct to light.
That was a civil investigation — meaning it could lead to a federal lawsuit against the town. The DOJ is also conducting a criminal investigation; arrests of East Haven cops are expected in coming weeks, according to both former East Haven Mayor April Capone Almon and former East Haven Deputy Director of Affairs Paul Hongo. Officials wouldn’t comment on that investigation Monday except to urge people with information about racial harassment or harassment of cooperative witnesses to contact the DOJ at 855 – 202-1830 or [email protected].
The report is the latest episode in an ongoing battle over how the New Haven area treats its growing Latin American immigrant population, which is concentrated in New Haven’s Fair Haven neighborhood and has spilled over the border into East Haven. New Haven has welcomed immigrants with the option of obtaining ID cards and issuing a police order prohibiting cops from asking about people’s immigration status in most cases. East Haven police — according to critics and now according to the feds — have systematically sought to make immigrants, and all Latinos, as uncomfortable as possible living, driving, and working in their town.
As to what happens next, the feds may have made long-term change more difficult in East Haven by the timing of the release of the report, and of possible upcoming arrests. One official described what the DOJ is up against: “a very obvious blue wall of silence.”
The investigations started after Father Jim Manship of Fair Haven’s St. Rose of Lima Church crossed the New Haven border in February of 2009 to look into widespread allegations by many of his congregants that the East Haven cops were trumping up charges against them and harassing Latino-owned businesses and customers. The East Haven cops confiscated Manship’s camera when he video-recorded them in action. They arrested him and claimed they thought he had a gun — an allegation that fell apart when the video (never destroyed) showed otherwise. (Click on the play arrow above to watch.) That incident, first reported in the Independent, led to a class-action lawsuit against East Haven filed by Yale Law School’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic as well as separate civil and criminal civil-rights investigations by the DOJ.
Manship’s incident is retold in detail on page 10 of a summary of the report released Monday, as evidence that the “EHPD retaliates against individuals who criticize or complain of disparate treatment of Latinos.” The report also accuses EHPD Chief Leonard Gallo “and other EHPD officers” of “creat[ing] a hostile and intimidating environment for persons who wished to cooperate with our investigation.” The report cited “messages on a police union bulletin board that referred to ‘rats’ at EHPD.” It said “Chief Gallo had warned that DOJ had agreed to provide him with the names of individuals who cooperated with the investigation,” even though DOJ had told Gallo names would remain confidential. And, “remarkably,” according to the report, EHPD officers at “a late evening meeting … warned DOJ staff and a police practices consultant that they could not guarantee their safety during ride-alongs with officers.”
Further, a statistical analysis of EHPD traffic stops found officers on all shifts stopping Latino drivers disproportionately; improperly seeking federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement information on their immigration status, even for alleged “traffic infractions rather than felonies”; and mistreating Latinos afterwards. In some cases, close to one-third or one-half of all traffic stops by some individual officers targeted Latinos; by the most “generous” of estimates, Latinos could conceivably constitute 15 percent of East Haven’s drivers, officials said.
There’s no evidence that the EHPD has reprimanded or retrained individual officers who routinely violate rights, officials said.
“Extreme Tactics”
EHPD cops “deliberately choose … locations to wait in their patrol cars for Latino drivers to pass so that they can initiate traffic stops on these vehicles, a tactic known in law enforcement as ‘sandbagging,’” Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez wrote to East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo in the letter summarizing the investigation’s findings.
The letter went on to describe officers’ “extreme tactics” once they stop Latino drivers.
“They employ a variety of methods to find cause to initiate the traffic stop, methods they typically do not employ on non-Latino drivers. With Latino drivers, the incident reports show that EHPD officers will first attempt to identify a facial defect on the license plate of the car. If there is no obvious defect, and the car has an out-of-state license plate, the officers will stop the car based on claims that, in their experience, such out-of-state plates are often forged.
“On other occasions, the officers will follow the Latino driver and wait for a traffic violation to occur that they can cite, a tactic rarely used against non-Latino drivers.
“In other instances, the officers cite speeding as the justification for a stop, but, contrary to standard police practice, give no indication of how they know a car is speeding, failing to state if they paced the vehicle or used a radar gun. In at least one case, the officer took the highly unusual step of looking up the insurance information for a moving vehicle in order to find cause for the stop, demonstrating the degree to which legitimate traffic enforcement is a secondary consideration to targeting Latino drivers.”
Reached after Monday’s report release, Father Manship said he was “tremendously encouraged” by the findings that vindicated his original allegations.
“The light burns a little brighter for us now” because the report paves the way for improvements at the police department.
That thought was echoed by East Haven Police Commission member Jim Krebs (pictured). He praised the DOJ’s report.
“You’re going to see a much-improved department in East Haven. We hopefully will be a model police department in the state of Connecticut,” Krebs said.
East Haven Mayor Maturo and Chief Leonard Gallo could not be reached for comment.
Did Feds Make It Worse?
DOJ officials signaled a different prediction in the press conference and in the report. They noted that Gallo personally has been responsible for the culture of intimidation and resistance to change at the department. They noted that while the previous East Haven mayoral administration cooperated fully with the investigation, the town’s new mayor — a supporter of Chief Gallo — hadn’t been able to “arrange” to meet with DOJ officials before the press conference to discuss the report. They described East Haven’s department as among the most challenging to work with during their investigation.
“We have had some struggles we have not had in other agencies,” said Roy Austin, the DOJ’s deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, who came to town for the press conference.
Austin and Connecticut U.S. Attorney David Fein said they will seek to work with East Haven on a voluntary remedy through a “court-enforceable agreement that will lead to sustainable reforms” before deciding whether to file suit against the town. They’d like to see East Haven start to comply with state law in analyzing and reporting on the racial makeup of drivers they stop; “develop a comprehensive non-discrimination policy”; train officers better; hire more Spanish-speakers; comply with federal rules about enforcing immigration laws; and reach out better to the community.
In short, they want to see a wholesale change in culture at the department. Or else they’ll sue.
“Fixes like this to change the culture of a department take … years,” Austin said.
It could take longer than originally expected because of an election that took place in November. East Haven brought back Maturo as mayor. He had originally hired Gallo in a previous stint as mayor, and he supported Gallo.
Then he lost an election to April Capone Almon. When the Manship arrest occurred, and the federal investigations began, Almon’s picks on the police commission suspended Gallo. They worked closely with the feds, according to Austin.
Then Gallo and his supporters helped elect Maturo in November, by a mere 34 votes. Maturo put Gallo back in charge.
The outcome might have been different if the DOJ had issued its report just a few weeks earlier. Or if expected arrests had happened by then.
People familiar with DOJ practice say the feds avoid taking any action near to an election in order to avoid allegations that they tried to sway it. Austin repeatedly denied (click on play arrow) that that took place in East Haven this fall — or that it ever takes places anywhere, as far as he knows.
Despite what Austin said, a DOJ policy manual specifically suggests that agents wait until after elections to proceed with sensitive investigations. Click here to read about that. The feds are instructed to avoid “causing the investigation itself to become a campaign issue.”
Reached after the press conference, former Mayor Almon called the findings “no surprise to us.”
“I really feel nothing but sadness for the people of East Haven. I feel like they’ve been duped,” she said. “My administration and myself, we knew it was coming.”
Community groups involved with the Yale Law clinic-filed lawsuit issued a release with reactions to the report Monday. The release quoted Angel Fernandez of the St. Rose Pastoral Council saying: “Neither the Town of East Haven nor the East Haven Police Department has been willing to take any serious steps to curb anti-Latino abuse and harassment. Only a zero-tolerance policy toward harassment of Latinos and an end the intimidation of police officers and community members will address the community’s concerns.”
If someone makes a stand against ILLEGAL immigration they are branded bigots and police are accused of discrimination. The inmates are running the asylum.