Struggling to help the nation heal and learn from fatal encounters between cops and citizens, President Barack Obama turned to some on-the-ground experts Wednesday for advice, including New Haven Police Chief Dean Esserman.
Esserman was invited to a conference room on the third floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to meet with the president along with dozens of other police chiefs, activists, and clergy to “to have a conversation about ways we can keep people safe, build community trust, and ensure justice for all Americans,” in the words of the White House.
They ended up talking for four hours behind closed doors.
Esserman said afterwards that he was impressed with how long Obama spent listening to everyone in the room offer ideas.
When it came his turn to speak, he said, he pitched an idea that he had floated earlier this week in New Haven to U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal: That the country develop a “national curriculum” of best practices for community policing.
He said he also spoke of New Haven’s successes with community policing. And he picked up on Obama’s use of the phrase “our police” in the discussion. “There are many citizens who don’t believe” the police are their police, he observed.
A White House pool press report listed five points of general agreement in the room:
“1) There’s more work to build confidence after force — particularly deadly force — to make sure the investigation is fair and that justice is done.
“2) Continuing to work with police departments on training, hiring, and recruitment.
“3) More data needs to be gathered and shared. Police departments “either don’t have good data collection or it’s not in a form everyone can use.” (He joked that even the resources of the federal government can’t get this done. “Some of you may remember we had a problem with our Heath care initiative,” he said).
“4) Examine how the federal government can help, which is complicated with 18,000 different law enforcement entities
“5) Changes need to be sustained and long-lasting.”
“The roots of the problems we saw this week date back not just decades — they date back centuries,” Obama said at the end. “There are cultural issues and there are issues of race in this country. And poverty. And a whole range of problems that will not be solved overnight.”
The session’s guest list, according to the White House:
Administration Officials
· Attorney General Loretta Lynch
· Neil Eggleston, Assistant to the President and Counsel to the President
· Broderick Johnson, Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary
· Cecilia Muñoz, Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council
· Ron Davis, Director, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice
· Vanita Gupta, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Attendees
· Chief Todd Axtell, Chief of Police, St. Paul, MN
· Mayor Ras Baraka, Mayor, Newark, NJ
· Chief Charlie Beck, Chief of Police, Los Angeles Police Department
· Governor John Bel Edwards, Governor, Louisiana
· Cornell Brooks, President, NAACP
· Judith Brown Dianis, Co-Director, Advancement Project
· Chief John Carli, Chief of Police, Vacaville, CA
· Mayor Chris Coleman, Mayor, Saint Paul, MN
· Dawn Collins, Community Organizer, Baton Rogue
· Terry Cunningham, President, International Association of Chiefs of Police
· Colonel Michael D. Edmonson, Superintendent of Police, Louisiana State Police
· Chief Dean Esserman, Chief of Police, New Haven, CT
· Roland Fryer, Henry Lee Professor of Economics, Harvard University
· Mayor Eric Garcetti, Mayor, Los Angeles, CA
· Mica Grimm, Activist, Black Lives Matter Minnesota
· Reverend Frederick Haynes, Pastor, Friendship-West Baptist Church
· Wade Henderson, President and CEO, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund
· Sherillyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
· Senator J.B. Jennings, Senate Minority Leader, Maryland State Senate
· Michael McHale, President, National Association of Police Organizations
· DeRay McKesson, Co-Founder, Campaign Zero
· Chief Cameron McLay, Chief of Police, Pittsburgh, PA
· Marc Morial, President, the National Urban League
· Sam Olens, Attorney General, Georgia
· Brittany Packnett, President’s Taskforce on 21st Century Policing
· Jim Pasco, Executive Director, National Fraternal Order of Police
· Charles Ramsey, President’s Taskforce on 21st Century Policing
· Laurie Robinson, President’s Taskforce on 21st Century Policing
· Rashad Robinson, Executive Director, Color of Change
· Reverend Al Sharpton, President, National Action Network
· Bryan Stevenson, President’s Taskforce on 21st Century Policing
· Mayor Tom Tait, Mayor, Anaheim, CA
· Maria Teresa Kumar, President and CEO, Voto Latino
With all due respect - Why was Esserman even there? His own force doesn't respect him; the NHPD routinely profiles drivers leading to some of the very problems plaguing the nation; and his cops keep arresting people who video them. To top it all off, there was just a report issued this week outlining how to police better. It would not be necessary if the NHPD were already doing what it's supposed to be doing and if it was lead as it should be lead.