Allan Appel
Lt. Reddish, Sgt. Harrison, Chief Esserman at Dixwell gathering.
As neighbors complained of overly aggressive use of tasers, New Haven’s chief unveiled a directive to examine how his officers deploy the newly popular weapon — every time they pull the trigger.
Police Chief Dean Esserman made that promise to a crowd at a neighborhood meeting Wednesday night in Dixwell.
With Dixwell District Manager Sgt. Donnie Harrison and Newhallville District Manager Lt. Thaddeus Reddish and beat officers behind him, Esserman made the promise in response to questioners from among an audience of 40 people who were scattered about the auditorium at Wexler-Grant School.
Chapman.
Esserman was responding to James Chapman, who reported seeing an incident within the last month on Winchester Avenue, where he lives. “I saw a kid tasered. I’m not saying he was the best kid,” he said, but in his view no tasering had been necessary.
“What’s the taser procedure?”
“Tasers are a great tool. They actually save lives,” Esserman responded.
Then he underlined that a taser is of course a weapon, like a gun. “I’m going to ratchet up reviews of each taser” incident, he said.
The new scrutiny means that supervisors will review each use, “as if with guns.”
Esserman said that this is the path he took when he was chief in Providence. “The highest national standards [of taser review] will be in New Haven.”
Harrison gives Alderwoman Morrison “a community policing hug.”
The exchange was part of a wide-ranging, by turns appreciative and by turns testy, back-and-forth at a meeting on public safety convened by area Alderwomen Jeanette Morrison, Brenda Foskey-Cyrus, and Delphine Clyburn.
Click here for an article on former Chief of Police Frank Limon’s testimony one year ago on tasers before the Board of Aldermen Public Safety Committee. At that time, he said the department had an arsenal of 182 tasers. In 2010, 115 people had been shot; in 2009, 116.
Tasers, which are sometimes called stun guns, use electricity to temporarily overwhelm the nervous system and render a person incapacitated.
Later in the two-hour meeting, Dennis Grimes of Newhallville pressed Esserman on tasers. He asked again: “What’s the taser procedure?”
The chief replied that he is reviewing the taser procedure. He explained that when an officer arrives at a situation, he has to make a judgment of which, if any, of the four weapons on his belt should be employed: “Stick, gas, taser, gun.”
When a taser is deployed, the officer must write a report, an explanation. “My question as new chief: the review of that decision.”
Grimes pushed the matter: “The gentleman on Winchester had his hands up.”
Esserman: “Every use of a taser will be reviewed under this new chief.”
James Chapman said did not find Chief Esserman’s response adequate: “He could have asked me when it [the incident] occurred, and where.”
Chapman lives at 653 Winchester in one of the new houses developed by Neighborhood Housing Services. In New Haven only a month, he said that in sum he is enjoying it thoroughly. “Everything’s beautiful, except that one incident,” he said.