Jesse Morrell came to New Haven to warn club-goers, fornicators and Darwinists about Judgment Day. After a run-in with city cops, he came away with a more earthly judgment.
Morrell, a street preacher who speaks out against drinking and sex, filed a civil rights suit in 2005 against two city cops who allegedly barred him from giving a sidewalk sermon in downtown New Haven — and yanked the wire from his tape recorder when he tried to document his eviction.
The city agreed last week to settle his case for $25,000, according to Victor Bolden, the city’s corporation counsel. The settlement came as the years-old suit was headed for trial in U.S. District Court.
For those who agreed to settle it, the case raised questions of police training and an apparent conflict of interest with extra-duty cops who work second jobs for nightclubs.
For Morrell, the case won’t bring personal benefit — the $25,000 is going straight to attorney’s fees, he said. But it will open the doors for him to return to New Haven to preach freely in the streets.
Morrell, who’s 24, said he started preaching seven years ago at bus stops at the New Haven Green. He found God after spending his adolescent years as a drug user, drug-seller and two-time felon, he said. Now, with vitriolic fervor, he denounces that life.
He now travels the nation full-time, preaching on college campuses and sidewalks against those who sin against God. He chronicles his journeys on his website and on Youtube.
“Children of the devil!” he declared to a recent crowd at one college campus visit documented on Youtube. (Click on the play arrow to watch.) The crowd had confessed to “premarital sex, and marijuana, and drunkenness, and gangster rap music.” He instructed them to “stop your rebellion against God.”
At other appearances, he wears a sandwich board on his shoulders.
“Warning!” reads the sign. “Judgement Day Is Coming.”
The sign is addressed to: “Fornicators, drunkards, sodomites, pot smokers, gangster rappers, immodest women, Darwinists, gamblers, feminists, socialists, abortionists, pornographers, homosexuals, jihadists, dirty dancers, [and] hypocrites.”
New Haven Sermon “Squelched”
That’s just whom Morrell hoped to reach when he paid a visit to downtown New Haven’s entertainment district on May 16, 2004.
His efforts were thwarted four times by four different cops, according to Morrell’s lawsuit, filed in New Haven’s U.S. District Court. (Click here to read it.)
Here’s what happened, according to Morrell’s suit:
Morrell, who was 19 at the time, stood on that Sunday evening outside an unidentified Irish pub on what he describes as Route 10 (presumably Anna Liffey’s on Whitney Avenue) and started to preach.
John Lalli, a city police officer, approached the preacher and told him he would be arrested “if he did not immediately cease his speech.” Fearing arrest, Morrell packed up his show and looked for another place to preach.
The young preacher settled on what was then Neat Lounge at 124 Temple St. He put a step stool on the ground and prepared to share his thoughts with the club crowd. But before he could start, another cop stepped in — Officer Dave Coppola.
Coppola (pictured) approached “in a very aggressive manner” and “forced Mr. Morrell to halt his speech.” Morrell protested that he was simply trying to “speak about his Christian beliefs.” Morrell advised the cop he was tape-recording their interaction.
Coppola then “abruptly ripped the tape recorder’s wire out of Mr. Morrell’s tape recorder,” and threw Morrell’s step stool in a garbage can, according to the suit. He threatened Morrell with arrest if he didn’t leave the area.
Morrell moved on to a third club, Alchemy, at 239 Crown St. There, an unidentified cop threatened him with arrest if he didn’t stop his speech.
Undeterred, Morrell moved on to a public right of way outside what he describes as “Back Room Caf√©,” presumably in the Temple Square Plaza. There, he claims, another unidentified cop threatened him with arrest if he didn’t stop his speech.
Four times denied, the teenager “gave up any hope” of preaching in New Haven that night.
According to Morrell, cops threatened to arrest him based on state statute 53a-182, which states that disorderly conduct is grounds for arrest. The law is meant for people who engage in a number of delineated behaviors, “with intent to cause inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof.”
Morrell argued that he wasn’t guilty of that offense — he was simply trying to express his religious beliefs in a public space. He claimed that by threatening to arrest him, cops trampled on his constitutional rights to freedom of speech and religious expression and due process of law.
“Mr. Morrell strongly desires to share his religious message on public ways in New Haven, and would do so, but he is chilled and deterred from expressing his message on said public ways in New Haven for fear of arrest,” reads the complaint, filed by attorney Nathan Kellum of the Tennessee-based Alliance Defense Fund.
His suit names Lalli, Coppola, then-Police Chief Francisco Ortiz, and the City of New Haven.
Morrell sought punitive damages for allegedly having his property ripped apart by Coppola — which he claimed amounted to “assault, battery, tortious destruction of private property, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
He also sought compensatory damages and an injunction allowing him to preach his religious beliefs in public areas of New Haven.
Cops’ Reply
A formal response filed in court by Officer Coppola highlights what appears to be a weakness in the city’s defense.
In his response, Coppola admitted seeing Morrell that night. He denied chucking the step stool in a garbage can. He also denied threatening to arrest Morrell.
However, Coppola stopped short of denying the charge that he ripped the wires out of the young man’s tape recorder. Instead, he replied that he is “without knowledge or information” to address the truth of that claim.
For his part, Lalli admitted to encountering Morrell outside an Irish pub, but denied threatening to arrest him.
In their defense, the cops write that their actions either did not violate the plaintiff’s rights, or that it was objectively reasonable to think that their actions were lawful.
The Settlement
The Litigation Settlement Committee voted to settle the case for $25,000 in an emergency meeting on July 22, according to Corporation Counsel Bolden. He said while the city denies any wrongdoing, “we would like to have this matter behind us and move forward.” The city could be responsible for legal fees if it lost the case, he noted. The committee recommended the proposed settlement by a 4 – 0 vote.
At the meeting, two committee members held up the case as evidence for the need of a change in procedures at the police department.
Hill Alderman Jorge Perez “emphasized that the city must follow-up on training,” according to minutes from the meeting.
The case is the second in two weeks where the city has settled a police misconduct case that raised questions about police training.
Two weeks ago, the city settled a lawsuit filed by Dramese Fair claiming that he was unlawfully strip-searched by three cops during an arrest in 2007. The suit named the city and Lt. Holly Wasilewski, Sgt. Tony Reyes and Officer Dennis O’Connell. (Click here for Bill Kaempffer’s Register story on that case.)
At issue in the Fair case was whether cops were following police department protocol governing strip-searches. Police department rules say that cops don’t need a lieutenant’s permission to do an “underwear check” during a felony arrest, but they do need that permission for a misdemeanor arrest. Cops arrested Fair on misdemeanor charges, but failed to get a sign-off from a lieutenant before checking his underwear for contraband (the supervising officer, Wasilewski, was only a sergeant at the time).
Reached Thursday, police union President Lou Cavaliere said the police department has failed to properly train its officers on that 20-year-old policy governing strip-searches, and that the forms cops are supposed to use to authorize the search don’t even exist. He suggested the police department issue a general order and re-train cops on the policy.
The Fair case cost the city $32,500, according to attorney Bolden.
A Conflict of Interest?
Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts, who also sits on the Litigation Settlement Committee, had a different take on the Morrell case.
Reached Wednesday, Smuts said the case raises questions about the practice of extra-duty “hold-downs.” In extra-duty work, cops are acting as uniformed police officers, but hired by a private entity to maintain order at a certain location. Transient work, such as at construction sites, is assigned on a rotating basis. Other shifts are “owned” by certain cops who have a direct relationship with a particular employer — that’s called a “hold-down.”
In Smuts’ point of view, the Morrell case “speaks of the perception of the conflict of interest when officers have hold-downs at places like nightclubs.”
When a cop allegedly shooed a preacher away from a club entrance, “the concern was the perception that the officer was acting on behalf of the nightclub, not in the public interest,” said Smuts.
If the Morrell case came to trial, the city would have had to address that apparent conflict of interest, said Smuts.
Cavaliere defended the practice.
“Mr. Smuts ought to mind his own business,” said Cavaliere (pictured). Cops have been allowed to do hold-down jobs for 40 years, he said. Having a steady officer at a place of business is key to building relationships and knowing the terrain, he said.
“It’s no different than an officer working the same job in community policing,” he argued. A cop who routinely works at a club will know the regulars, the staff, the trouble-makers, and how to quickly disperse a crowd that gathers after last call, he said.
The city wants to do away with hold-downs because of a number of civil rights complaints against extra-duty cops, Cavaliere said. He called that faulty logic.
“We get cops sued every day for people doing their jobs,” he said. “This doesn’t mean that cops are corrupt at hold-downs.”
The topic is being hashed out at the bargaining table of police union contract negotiations, which have been ongoing for over a year. The city is pushing to eliminate or limit the use of extra-duty hold-downs, Smuts said.
The mayor, Smuts and labor relations are “causing a big disruption in the labor negotiations because of these bar hold-downs,” replied the union president. “All they’re going to do is create some hostility within my bargaining unit.”
Cavaliere said police union members feel so strongly about upholding the practice that the topic may send the negotiations to binding arbitration. Some cops make an extra $20,000 to $30,000 per year on hold-down gigs at clubs, he said. “They are the only means they can get to supplement their earnings.” He said changing the practice threatens to strip their livelihoods away.
Return Ticket
Reached by email on a visit to Canada, Morrell said he looks forward to the chance to return to New Haven to preach about Judgment Day. The New Haven case was one of two legal fights that left him returning to Connecticut for court dates: In 2007, Morrell filed a similar lawsuit against the city of Hartford; that case is still pending in federal court.
“I am very happy that it is finally over,” he said of the years-long legal battle in New Haven. He said the settlement includes an injunction that prohibits the city from barring him from giving speeches in public.
“I am particularly pleased that we got the injunction that we wanted so that I am protected when I preach about Judgment Day and Jesus Christ on the streets of New Haven,” he said.
He plans to return to Connecticut in the spring.
“I plan on preaching in the downtown club district of New Haven, as well as preach from the city street into the courtyard of Yale University,” he said.
If you can get arrested for disturbing the peace breaking back into your home - why can't we get a guy who walks around agrily coned ming us to hell. Sure speech is protected, but fire in a movie theater is dangerous and your protected speech shouldn't unduely disturb my right to peace ("hence the disturbing the peace")
Perhaps Yale will confront this wacko more effectively, should he begin accosting students...