The case against one of five Yale students arrested in a controversial October nightclub raid was dismissed Tuesday. Meanwhile two other arrested students said they refused a dismissal deal that would have had them apologize to police.
A Superior Court judge dismissed the case against a Spanish Yale student, said Hugh Keefe, the student’s attorney. He declined to speak about the specifics.
The student was charged with disorderly conduct during a police raid of a private Yale party at Elevate Lounge on Oct. 2, 2010. The raid, which involved SWAT officers with assault rifles, resulted in five arrests. It also prompted public outcry after students complained of verbal and physical abuse on the part of New Haven police.
During the raid, police ordered students to stay off cell phones. They beat and Tased a student who failed to do so. Video footage from the raid emerged showing officers subduing a person on the floor then turning to onlookers and shouting, “Who’s next?” Click the play arrow to watch. Other students said they were yelled at and even punched by police.
Keefe represents four of the five students arrested during the raid. All four of his clients had court dates on Tuesday, but only one had his case dismissed. The other three cases were continued to Feb. 4.
“Hopefully they will be dismissed in due course,” Keefe said.
Seth Bannon, left, and Steven Winter, right.
“It looks like it’s going to be dismissed. They keep continuing it,” said Steven Winter, one of the students. He’s charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing.
“There’s really nothing there if you look at the police report,” he said. “They arrested me totally without cause.”
Seth Bannon, who was arrested with Winter on the same charges, also said he expects the case to be dismissed. “There’s no doubt. It’s just a matter of what we have to do to get it.”
The prosecutor last week offered a deal that would have dropped the charges if Bannon and Winter signed a letter of apology to the cops who arrested them. Bannon said he and Winter rejected the offer.
“I couldn’t in good conscious apologize for something when I didn’t do something wrong,” Bannon said. “My mother would be angry with me.” She taught him to “apologize when you mean it and at no other time,” he said.
Since their arrests, both Bannon and Winter have been involved in activist efforts to reform the police department. Bannon said those efforts have paid off. He said their new group, Citizens For Policing Reform, has come to an agreement with the mayor’s office on reforms. Those improvements will be announced in the next month, he said. He declined to discuss the specifics, saying only that they are “some reforms in the way that the police and the community interact.”
The Elevate raid was part of “Operation Nightlife,” a crackdown on the club district following a downtown shootout involving New Haven cops. Police said they raided Elevate because it was dangerously overcrowded.
Several Operation Nightlife incidents prompted public complaint and Internal Affairs investigations, which are still ongoing months later. Read about those here, here, here, and here.
As much as we all complain about the occasional "bad cop", this operation was a symptom of a systemic problem of little oversight and conflicting priorities, beginning in the Mayor's office and moving down to the rank and file.
If the Mayor does not introduce substantiative reforms into the police department as a result, I think even citizens who generally agree with his administration will think twice and question the policies that encourage swat team raids on bars and the trampling of our constitutional rights.