East Haven is being slammed again for alleged brutality against Latino immigrants, this time in the form of a civil rights lawsuit to be filed Tuesday in federal court in New Haven.
Students from the Yale Law School plan to file the suit on behalf of local Latinos who charge that East Haven police have violated their civil rights through, physical abuse, illegal search and seizure, and entering their homes and businesses without permission, according to Dermot Lynch, the lead law student on the case.
The charges — of police frequently Tasering or beating immigrants based on their skin color — stem from allegations that are currently the focus of a separate U.S. Department of Justice probe into alleged civil rights violations by the East Haven police. The town’s police have consistently denied the charges.
The plaintiffs in the new lawsuit are expected to detail their experiences at a 2 p.m. press conference Tuesday outside U.S. District Court on Church Street. The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages from the East Haven police department as well as the town; it also seeks “injunctive relief that would require the department to review its policies and procedures,” said Yaman Salahi, a student member of the law school’s Worker and Immigrants Rights Advocacy Clinic, who worked on the case. The defendants include East Haven Police Chief Leonard Gallo, who is on administrative leave as East Haven’s Capone administration looks at reforming the department.
The nine Latino plaintiffs come from both East Haven and New Haven, according to Salahi. They are Marcia Chacon, Wilfrido Matute, Segundo Aguayza, Jose Luis Abarracin, Welinton Salinas, John Espinosa, Guido Xavier Criollo, Edgar Torres, and Yadanny Garcia.
A tenth plaintiff is Father Jim Manship of St. Rose of Lima Church in New Haven’s Fair Haven neighborhood. A 2009 arrest of Manship first brought the issue to attention; Manship was arrested while filming East Haven cops allegedly harassing Latino business people and customers in a store on Main Street near the New Haven border. Police alleged that he was pointing an object at them that they thought might have been a gun. A video later released, however, revealed that the officers knew Manship was brandishing a camera, not a weapon. (Click on the play arrow to watch that video.) The charges against him were dropped, more people came forward with stories of alleged harassment, and the federal civil rights investigation began.
The suit charges that police routinely harassed immigrants and tried to force them and customers of their businesses to leave town. The suit also reprises allegations that police set up outside the immigrant-run My Country Store on Main Street to ticket and otherwise harass customers.
Town attorney Hugh Keefe has defended the town against these allegations in the past. He said Tuesday morning he’s not representing the town in this matter; attorney Patty Cofrancesco is.
In a press release issued Monday night, David Rosen, a local attorney working with the Yale students, called the problem structural, not the result of a few rogue officers.
“East Haven’s leaders have failed to ensure its officers are following the law,” the release quotes Rosen as saying. “They refused to fix the problem or make the changes necessary to guarantee a professional police department.”
The lawyers’ press release also quotes a plaintiff, Marcia Chacón, who said police harassment cost her business at My Country Store, which she owns.
“We have spoken out against racial profiling for months on end, but police officers continue to single us out and harass us based on the color of our skin. We are filing this suit, because we hope it will help bring an end to this abuse,” she is quoted as saying.
The plaintiffs charge that police regularly ticketing cars at one store declared that customers could “park in New Haven and walk.” They charge that an officer regularly entered a house with Latino families illegally, without a warrant, to harass its occupants, at one point suggesting to a woman in front of her children that she leave the country.
The plaintiffs also cite previously reported statistics about the issuance of traffic tickets. Of 376 tickets given out in one stretch between mid-June and early 2009, some 60 percent went to Hispanic drivers. Hispanics make up 6 percent of East Haven residents. (Read more about that here.)
Read some of the stories about some of the incidents that led up to the suit, first reported in the Independent, here, here, and here.
Good, hopefully the DOJ will also be arresting a few of the ...at the EHPD, a few will probably be named in this suit.
Its a shame that the ... give everyone there a bad name.