Hope Seen For Change

A neighborhood organizer and retired homicide detective, a violence prevention worker, and a police chief agreed that hard work lies ahead to improve policing in America — and that it can be accomplished.

That note was struck Thursday night during a ​“community conversation” that drew more than 140 people.

Hosted by the Urban League of Southern Connecticut, the facilitated dialogue included panelists Louisa Aviles director of the group violence intervention at the National Network for Safe Communities (NNSC); New Haven Police Chief Otoniel Reyes; and Stacy Spell, a retire detective who now serves as program manager of federal-state-local anti-violence Project Longevity initiative. 

Urban League Interim CEO Virginia Spell moderated the conversation, which explored what a more community-based model of policing would look like in New Haven, violence reduction and police legitimacy work, how the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) will foster police reconciliation in the future, and the communities role in police reform and community policing.

In his collaborative work with the NHPD, Spell said police leadership continues to require officers to practice focused enforcement and attention. That means only those involved in criminal activity will be pursued. And it means that officers are to respect the constitutional rights of each community member.

Reyes and Spell agreed that in recent years the NHPD has been actively working to break away from the foundational model of policing in America with focused enforcement.

“We’ve been guilty of our enforcement not being focused,” Reyes said. ​“We’ve jumped out on communities and started doing general enforcement in areas. Inadvertently it’s impacting people that have nothing to do with what’s going on.”

Each panelist addressed the national history of distrust and harm by police on its communities. ​“Since the Black man arrived here as a slave in 1619 in Jamestown and up until 1863, the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, we saw the inhumane treatment of those of color. That inhumane treatment escalated in the post-Reconstruction era, most at the hands of law enforcement. We’d like to break away from that model,” Spell said. ​“Please let us not conflate what is going on on a nationwide stage with what is occurring here in the city of New Haven.”

Reyes said he has witnessed the NHPD make significant strides in its efforts to build a relationship with communities, which is why he is hopeful that change can happen. ​“I’ve seen police reform in the last 21 years. I’ve seen the change in the culture,” he said.

The relationship between the community, particularly communities of color, and the NHPD has to be reset, said Spell. Spell proposed that in this new relationship accountability and transparency be brought to the table.

“The police can’t do it all by themselves. The community plays a role,” Spell said.

Reyes argued that change can happen by reforming policing rather than defunding it.

Reyes advocated training officers to accept that ​“putting on this uniform comes with a heavy burden of racism and inequality”; being transparent with the public about police decisions and work; and reinforcing a culture in the NHPD that does not tolerate racism.

Many New Haveners distrust the police because ​“we don’t let them in,” Reyes said. 

Reyes and Aviles agreed that reform must include a minimized footprint of police in communities. Aviles said social workers handle many of the calls now directed to officers,nwithout harming public safety.

Aviles identified the nationwide concerns of policing as a legitimacy crisis. ​“There’s never been more evidence than there is now that we really need police legitimacy to go up if we want violence to go down,” she said.

An acknowledgment of the police’s history of harm is the first step to reform the panel agreed. ​“This is our history, and it’s not ancient history,” she said. ​“If we’re serious about trust-building, then police have to go first.”

In the last half hour of the discussion the panelists answered questions submitted from the public regarding white supremacy in police departments, assessment of reform approaches such as implicit bias training, and hope.

Reyes said the department’s leadership instills in officers that ​“illegal and immoral” behavior has no place in the NHPD. ​“If you do the right thing, we’re going to support you. If you don’t we will come after you,” he said.

The Urban League plans to continue to host these virtual discussions via Zoom for the next three upcoming weeks.

Another discussion about the evolution of policing and the hopeful possibilities of the current protest moment took place earlier Thursday on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.” Author, civic leader, and political scientist Khalilah L. Brown-Dean joined former legislator, prosecutor, and gubernatorial criminal-justice policy chief Michael Lawlor for the conversation. Click on the video to watch it.