Audio, Reports Flesh Out Fatal-Crash Chase

A ​“22” is a car crash. Ortiz came upon the sight of the Highlander crashed into the wall of a brick synagogue. ​“D2” is the policing district covering West Hills and Westville.

And a ​“signal 1” meant an ambulance was needed. Two men were trapped inside that Highlander. After hitting a ​“traffic-calming” island on Whalley Avenue at a projected 110 miles per hour, the Highlander flew into the air up an embankment into the synagogue. The crash killed both occupants.

Those final moments from the Jan. 2 crash were captured in officers’ incident reports and an audio file of police radio communications released to the Independent in response to a Connecticut Freedom of Information Act request.

Both state and eventually city police investigators are taking a hard look at the record of that police chase — not because the officers involved are suspected of having violated any policies, or acting in any way to have contributed to the fatal crash. In fact, the released information appears to buttress police officials’ assessment that the officers involved did what they were supposed to do. They radioed in real-time information to a supervisor. They acted in response to a crime with potential for further violence. They would have been authorized to exceed the speed limit, but there’s no evidence that they in fact did.

The investigations are taking place for two reasons. First, people died. Second, given the dangers that chases present not just to the public, but to officers themselves, officials are constantly reviewing major cases to learn more about how to make that call about when to pursue and when to hang back. In practice, that decision can be less clear-cut than it appears — both to those who argue that police should always chase crooks who try to get away and those who deem a chase always an unnecessary mistake.

State police were called in to investigate this crash as a matter of course because the incident, on a state road (Whalley Avenue), involved police officers and a fatality. The New Haven police department’s internal affairs division is preparing to examine the pursuit once the state completes its investigation.

“I have no concerns” about the officers involved, said Interim Police Chief Anthony Campbell. ​“In any major pursuit, especially when lives are lost, you want to do due diligence.” He said the department always wants to ask, in hindsight: ​“Is it worthwhile to continue? Do you put the officers or the public in danger?”

“Should we take another look at it? Absolutely. I would say that the fact that two people died, that our police officers could have died, is something that we need to take into consideration,” Mayor Toni Harp said in an interview. She praised the New Haven department’s chase policy, which is among the most cautious in the state. An incident like this one presents ​“a great opportunity to look at the policy.”

Breaking Away

The Jan. 2 incident began at 12:05 a.m. Officer Jonathan Lambe went to speak with the victim of a robbery at a Fitch Street gas station. He interviewed a 35-year-old man who’d been carjacked. Two men had approached his Toyota Highlander and ordered him out.

“Get out of the car or I’ll pop,” one of the men told the victim, ​“reaching in his pocket as if he had a weapon,” according to Lambe’s report. The man opened the vehicle’s door and pulled the victim out. The two attackers then hopped in the Highlander and drove off.

More than an hour later, at 1:32, Officer Ortiz was parked in a driveway facing the Best Gas Station on Whalley when saw a Highlander traveling east on Whalley toward Sherman, Ortiz later wrote in a report. The Highlander had the plate number provided by the victim.

Ortiz radioed for back-up and followed the vehicle east. He continued to follow the Highlander right onto Orchard, then right on Elm, then right onto Sherman, where it stopped at a red light back at the Whalley intersection. Back-up had arrived. Ortiz turned on his emergency lights and sirens to try to stop the driver.

The driver ​“accelerated and refused to stop.” Radioing in his progress, with other officers’ cars falling in line behind him, he followed as the Highlander now traveled west on Whalley. It crossed the Boulevard toward Westville Village at 1:34. The pursuit continued through green lights back past Fitch.

“The vehicle at this point had a gap between itself and police. I could see the vehicle continue straight on Whalley Ave toward Blake St,” Ortiz later wrote. ​“I had to slow a bit for cars on Whalley Ave and Central Ave area [in the heart of Westville’s commercial district] and lost sight of the vehicle.”

Seconds later, crossing Blake Street up a hill, Ortiz saw the crash at Congregation Beth El-Keser (BEKI) synagogue.

In the bottom right corner of video footage from the synagogue’s parking lot surveillance system (see above), the Highlander is shown speeding up the hill. Several cop cruisers, with emergency lights flashing, follow behind, but a good five seconds or so later, and not evidently speeding. Officials later estimated that the Highlander was traveling around 120 miles per hour when it struck a newly installed median island and veered off in the air, above the grassy embankment, into the synagogue wall.

Ortiz radioed in the crash and called for fire department assistance.

“As I approached the vehicle I observed one male, the front passenger ejected from the vehicle breathing heavily. I tried to yell out to the passenger, but he was unresponsive. I observed a driver still pinned inside the Toyota Highlander not moving and unresponsive. I remained next to the passenger until NHFD and AMR medical personnel arrived on scene. The passenger was taken to Yale Hospital,” Ortiz wrote in his report.

The passenger ​“had been ejected from the vehicle and was laying on the ground face down next to the passengers‘ side of the vehicle,” wrote Officer Lambe in a separate report.

The driver, 23-year-old Tommy Clayton Brown Jr., was declared dead at the scene. The passenger, 20-year-old Andrew Bolden-Velez, was later pronounced dead at the hospital.

Click here to read the police reports. Click on the audio file at the top of the story to listen to police transmissions.

Weighing Risks

Police departments nationwide have wrestled with their police chase policies. A loose consensus has emerged among experts that often it’s not worth it to chase a fleeing criminal, especially for non-violent offenses and even if that means allowing him or her to escape, because a pursuit could end up harming or killing somebody — the chase target, a bystander, or a police officer.

The FBI has been warning cops for years to think twice about chases, especially high-speed chases. According to one bulletin it distributed:

• Every day someone dies as a result of a police pursuit
• One out of every 100 high-speed police pursuits results in a fatality
• Police officers are more likely to die from incidents involving vehicles than guns
• Forty-two percent of deaths related to police pursuits are innocent third parties
• Injuries related to high-speed police pursuits can trigger lawsuits and disciplinary procedures
• High-speed police pursuits (not guns) are the leading cause of officer deaths and career-ending injuries
• Most high-speed police pursuits are responses to traffic violations and equipment problems, such as tinted windows and broken windshields.

New Haven’s pursuit policy explicitly forbids high-speed chases over nonviolent offenses, said Assistant Chief Tony Reyes, who oversees patrol.

The policy, spelled out in departmental General Order 302, which was updated in 2012, gives officers the discretion to determine whether to initiate a pursuit. Officers must determine whether the ​“potential danger to the public” posed by fleeing suspects outweighs ​“the immediate danger to the police officer and the public created by the pursuit.” Officers are to consider road conditions, whether and how many people and other drivers are around, whether cops have enough information to apprehend the suspects later, and the seriousness of the offense.

Once launching the pursuit, officers are to activate emergency lights, continually keep a supervisor up to date via radio communications, and ​“drive with regard for the safety or persons and property.” Both officers and supervisors are supposed to continually reevaluate the pursuit with an eye to calling it off if necessary.

Click here to read other details of the policy in the full general order.

Based on the initial assessment of reports and the recordings in the Jan. 2 incident, ​“it does not appear there was any violation of policy by the officers,” Reyes said. The point of reviewing such chases afterwards is to examine ​“whether they unnecessarily risked themselves or the public.”

Harp, in remarks on a recent ​“Mayor Monday” program on WNHH radio, said she agrees with the policy of chasing only in cases involving potentially violent crimes. She said this was one of those cases, because it involved a carjacking by a possible armed robber.

A retired New Haven assistant chief and interim chief, John Velleca, echoed her take during a separate WNHH radio interview. He said in most cases a chase doesn’t make sense because it creates more potential harm than good. He also said that even if a carjacking took place more than an hour before this police pursuit, officers definitely should conclude that the public remained at risk — because of how many carjackings involve guns and end up in shootings.

“Most police officers don’t enjoy these the way everybody thinks they enjoy them. These are traumatic high stress incidents, especially when you end up in an accident that ends in loss of life.

“In my history there, we have had carjackings. We have had people who have done those carjackings use that car to commit a drive-by shooting in which somebody was killed. …

“Traffic violations? Don’t chase anybody for that. Stolen cars? Don’t chase anybody for that. Those are nonsense. Drugs? Don’t chase anybody for drugs. Who cares about drugs, to be quite honest with you?”

Velleca recalled gang-related carjacking sprees that occurred in New Haven in the early 2000s. ​“We have had crews that went on 24‑, 48-hour benders doing carjackings and shootings. A carjacking, a shooting, a carjacking and shooting, then fall back a couple of days and get up and do the same thing again. We don’t want to go back to those days.”