The cops outside Lolade Siyonbola’s dorm room.
Lolade Siyonbola.
The cops asked the black student why she had an “expired” Yale ID.
They didn’t ask the white student that.
Neither one had an expired ID.
Yale ID cards don’t have expiration dates on them.
But the cops acted properly.
Such was Yale University’s official position Thursday as its police force’s handling of a complaint about an African-American graduate student sleeping in a common room of her own dormitory exploded into a national debate over race and policing.
Yale officials also defended the tactics of a police supervisor who argued with the African-American student that she wasn’t being “harassed,” an approach that differs from some other police approaches to de-escalating, rather than escalating, tense situations.
“The officers didn’t do anything wrong,” university spokeswoman Eileen O’Connor told the Independent when asked about the handling of the ID and the “harassment” arguments.
O’Connor acknowledged that two officers who dealt with the African-American student incorrectly concluded that she had an expired ID when they mistook a date printed for the card’s issuance as an expiration date. She said that the university is taking steps in light of this incident to remind all public safety workers that ID cards show issuance dates, not expiration dates; and to figure out a technological fix for a second cause of the delay in wrapping up this incident, involving Yale’s computer system and students’ registered “preferred names.”
The African-American student, Lolade Siyonbola, argued on Facebook, where she posted two videos of the encounter, that the police harassed her because of the color of her skin.
“I know this incident is a drop in the bucket of trauma Black folk have endured since Day 1 America, and you all have stories,” Siyonbola subsequently wrote on Facebook.
Many of the more than 17,000 people who commented on her Facebook posts — and the countless others who commented on media websites that picked up the story as it went viral — agreed with her. Others agreed with Yale police union President Rich Simons, who told the Independent Thursday: “Our members did a great job. It was an ID problem. It wasn’t on our part.”
University Secretary Kimberly Goff-Crews issued a statement saying the incident “deeply troubled” her.
And thus has begun the latest video-sparked soul-searching in a divided America about how law enforcement deals with people of color.
Napping While Black
By Thursday afternoon, more than a million people had viewed Siyonbola’s videos. (They’re embedded in this story.)
Siyonbola, a 34-year-old first-year graduate student in African studies and author of a book called Market of Dreams, took the videos after a white graduate student awoke her from a nap around 1:40 a.m. Tuesday.
At the time Siyonbola was sitting in a common room of York Street’s Hall of Graduate Studies dormitory, where she lives. She had fallen asleep while working on a paper.
The white graduate student called police to report than someone she didn’t know was sleeping in the building.
Awakened, Siyonbola accessed Facebook Live to record her interactions first with the student, then, over 17 minutes, her interactions with police.
Police asked to see her ID. She took them to her room, opened it with her key. At first she asked why she needed to show ID, then handed it over.
Officers continued questioning her in the hall while they checked her information with a police dispatcher. That process took longer than usual, according to spokeswoman O’Connor, because of “confusion” over the ID.
They had trouble confirming the ID because Siyonbola’s card had a “preferred” version of her first name that she uses, while the computer system has her legal name, according to Yale. Spokeswoman O’Connor said that students have every right to choose the form of their first name on the card. “When a preferred name is used, we are looking at how we can make sure it is quickly resolved in the system” in the future in the wake of this incident, O’Connor said.
Siyonbola repeatedly questioned cops about why she couldn’t be left alone once she had proved she lived in the dorm.
“Once we verify that you’re a resident here, we’ll be on our way,” one officer told her.
2 IDs
Several times, officers told her that her card had expired.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on with your Yale ID?” a policewoman asked at one point.
“I have no idea,” Siyonbola replied. “I use it every day to get in and out of everything.”
“What’s wrong with her Yale ID?” a male supervisor asked the policewoman.
“It’s coming back as expired,” the policewoman responded. The date on the card read July 13, 2017.
“I’m a first-year. How can it expire in nine months?” Siiyonbola asked.
“I don’t know if that’s an expiration date or when you got it,” the policewoman said.
The sergeant asked his officers what the problem was.
“It’s expired!” another officer responded.
However, Yale IDs do not have expiration dates. They have only dates of issuance.
Spokeswoman O’Connor said the two officers handling Siyonbola’s ID are “fairly new” on the job.
“The police are going to be putting out a training document to remind people that these are dates when they are issued, not expirations,” O’Connor said. “They were following protocol checking the system. They were confused by the date, which is a date of issuance, not expiration. That is being cleared up with a reminder to all safety officials that that is a date of initiaition of the ID, not expiration.”
A separate officer went upstairs to the room of the white woman who complained. O’Connor confirmed that the officer asked that woman for her ID, as well.
That officer did not question the expiration date, according to O’Connor. She said that officer used “a different method” to confirm the validity of the student’s ID.
“You’re Not Being Harassed”
Sample of the bottom of a Yale student ID, with issuance (not expiration) date at bottom.
A second question about Yale police policy arises from the conversation with a supervising sergeant who eventually appeared on the scene. This supervisor, who unlike the other police officers is black, repeatedly argued with Siyonbola about her take on the situation.
Both he and she remained calm throughout their tense conversation.
“It’s going to be OK,” the sergeant told Siyonbola.
“I know it’s going to be OK. I know I’m not in trouble,” Siyonbola responded. “I’m not going to be harassed.”
“This isn’t harassment”
“That’s actually what it is. I’m writing a paper … It shouldn’t take that long to undertand that there’s nothing going on.”
“We understand.”
“So why are you here? …”
“We’re going to do our job. You’re not being harassed.”
“I am being harassed.”
“No you’re not.”
The sergeant promised Siyonbola, “We’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
To which she responded: “The bottom of what? The fact that I was in the common room doing a paper and sleeping?”
How To De-Escalate
Paul Bass Photo
Velleca: “Society tired of over-policing.”
Yale spokeswoman O’Connor said all Yale officers undergo de-escalation training. She said the officers in this case acted appropriately according to their training.
“The officers and the supervisor were trying to clear up a situation. They were trying to obtain information from all the parties involved,” O’Connor said. “That was sometimes difficult. They were trying to resolve the situation. They were definitely trying to clear up the situation. They understand the feelings of the student who was authorized to be there. The police were following protocol. They were trying to ascertain the situation and sort out what was going on.”
O’Connor added that police “admonished” the white students for calling a complaint that should never have involved police in the first place.
One retired cop experienced in de-escalation training said officers generally are told not to argue with a citizen’s contention of being harassed during a tense call.
The retired cop, former New Haven Assistant Police Chief John Velleca, said that based on his viewing of Siyonbola’s videos, the responding officers were in general not “out of bounds.”
But he said that New Haven officers are trained to hear people out rather than argue with them when facing complaints of mistreatment. The idea is to start by asking the complainant to say more about why she feels harassed. After hearing her out, the officer can then explain his actions. Often, the officer either concludes he has overstepped or the complainant acknowledges the officer’s view, Velleca said. In any case, the situation grows calmer after the “catharsis” of the complainant being able to explain herself rather than being contradicted and fighting to be heard and understood.
Technically, said Velleca (who serves as resident policing expert on WNHH FM radio), officers are told not to consider a key proof that a person lives somewhere. The person could have taken a key from, say, a gym or other public place. So the police were technically right that training calls for further identifying the person being questioned.
He also said that police have discretion when realizing a situation isn’t a problem, that no crime has been committed.
As the country continues debating how law enforcement interacts with citizens in this video age, Velleca said, “Officers will have to learn how to do their jobs with the minimal amount of intrusion. I think society is tired of being over-policed.
“I truly think people are just sick and tired of the police pushing themselves into their lives under the guise of due diligence. I think we can let people live without us telling them how.”
Yale’s Official Version
Thursday afternoon, Yale released the following official summary of the incident:
Yale Police responded to a call in the early hours of Tuesday, May 8 at 1:40 a.m. The caller reported that she was a student at the Hall of Graduate Studies (HGS) and said that there was a woman sleeping in the common room on the 12th floor, and that she did not know who the person was. Three police officers responded to HGS around 1:45 a.m., where the caller met them at the entrance and showed them her ID. She then let them up in the elevator, which stopped at the fifth floor where another student appeared.
At this point, the caller pointed to the other student and said, “This is her.” Protocol is for police to separate the parties involved, so two officers stayed with the woman on the fifth floor and the investigating officer went with the caller to the 12th floor.
The investigating officer spent over 11 minutes initially with the caller to assess the situation, while the other two officers spent about 15 minutes with the other woman to assess the situation and to confirm her identity. After reviewing the scene in the 12th floor common room and seeing a computer, books, and notebooks in addition to a blanket and pillow on the couch, the investigating officer determined that the person who had been sleeping in the common room was likely a student, so the officer asked the caller to wait in her room on the 12th floor.
The investigating officer reported what she found to the other two officers on the fifth floor and to a supervisor who had arrived to assess the situation and determine whether assistance was needed. The officers were having a difficult time confirming the other student’s identification due to the use of the student’s preferred name in the system that was different from the official name on the ID. The supervisor worked with dispatch and security to clear up the matter, taking down the student’s information and giving her a case number. The assessment of the ID took about 15 minutes, which is longer than usual.
At that point, the investigating officer, with her supervisor, went to the 12th floor, where they spoke to the caller again for another seven minutes. Another officer also followed. They informed the caller that the student who had been in the common room was an authorized resident who had every right to be there. They also explained that this was not a police matter and were reporting the incident to the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Officers left HGS Studies at about 2:34 a.m.
The cops were called there to investigate a complaint and they did. They can't pick and choose which calls for service they respond to and which they don't. It would have went much faster if Lolade Siyonbola just handed over her University ID card like they asked her to right away.