Citizens Confront Cops On Trust-Building

A few years ago, New Haven police officers arrested Holly Tucker’s mother on the New Haven Green. Tuesday evening, she confronted the assistant chief who had overseen the arrest for how he had treated her.

That happened at a community conversation about policing hosted by the New Haven Alumnae Chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority at the Whitneyville Cultural Commons in Hamden Tuesday evening that ended up illustrating some of the issues it aimed to address.

The sorority invited two New Haven assistant chiefs — Herb Sharp and Renee Dominguez — and policing expert and University of New Haven (UNH) Professor Lorenzo Boyd, for a panel discussion on ​“use of force, community trust, and next steps for prevention.”

Before the panelists spoke, UNH Professor Danielle Cooper asked people in the audience to share their experiences with police.

After a few other people had spoken, Tucker rose and took the mic that Cooper had handed her. First, she recounted her own arrest at a traffic stop in 2016 by the New Haven police.

“I was dragged out of my car by New Haven police and slammed to the ground and taken to jail simply because [the officer] didn’t like my attitude,” she said. She filed a lawsuit about the incident last year.

Then, in July of 2017, her mother, community activist Barbara Fair, was at a counterprotest against the white nationalist ​“Proud Boys” on the New Haven Green. Police arrested Fair for allegedly interfering with police actions. Fair discussed the incident on WNHH Radio a few days later, and later challenged the charges.

Tucker said she didn’t see the police arrest her mother. ​“If I had seen the incident they probably would have shot me because there’s no way a badge is going to stop me from seeing somebody put their hands on my mother,” she said.

Shortly after, however, she did see her mother in the hands of the police. And Sharp, she said, was the supervisor.

“As I am visibly upset, Sharp, he charges at me,” she said. ​“I’m visibly upset that somebody is attacking my 70-year-old mother. How can you not as a human being just try to calm me down … not come charge at me as if I don’t have the right to be upset?”

“When you do something wrong, apologize,” she said to Sharp. ​“You never apologized. I’m not crying. I used to cry every time I told this story. I’m not crying. I’m not sad, but I’m angry. I’ve very angry.”

Another audience member told a story. Both Dominguez and Boyd had introduced themselves. Then it was Sharp’s turn to speak. He stood up from the table at the front of the room where he was sitting and walked slowly towards Tucker.

“There’s two stories to everything,” he began. ​“Every time I touch a person’s life, I don’t want you to walk away from that feeling negative … I’m a God-fearing man. I will pray that you will someday forgive, and I apologize if I’ve done something.”

By this time he was standing on the side of the room a few steps in front of Tucker, who was sitting at the edge of a row a few rows back.

“If you feel that way, I apologize, because I want you to move on,” he said.

Then try to change things, replied Tucker. ​“You can make a difference in the way your officers are interacting with the community.”

“She’s absolutely right, she’s absolutely, right” replied Sharp, walking back to the table. The crowd applauded.

“To change the culture of law enforcement, that’s a very difficult thing,” he said, but it is his job to do it.

He told a story about how an officer in Cheshire, where he lives, confronted him once because he had parked temporarily where a plow was going to come later. ​“This happens to us all,” he said. ​“I have fears too … I have fears about my son. I have fears about my wife. I have fears about myself.” He said that after police shot and killed an 18-year-old in Wethersfield in April, he called his son and told him how to act if he ever encounters the police. He said that before coming to New Haven, he served in Rocky Hill, and left because of the racism in the department. He was the only black officer, he said.

But the moment with Tucker was not over.

Lillian Holmes stood up and asked to speak. ​“You made me nervous tonight when you walked over to the young lady,” she said. Maybe it’s the uniform, maybe the gun, maybe the badge. ​“The fact that she had expressed how she felt and the fact that you walked over to her made me very uncomfortable.”

Sharp told the Independent that he had approached Tucker in order to demonstrate that he was sincere.

“If I wasn’t sincere, I wouldn’t have gotten up out of that seat. I wanted her to believe that I was sincere,” he said.

Regardless of Sharp’s intentions, the moment illustrated exactly what Sharp, Boyd, and Dominguez told the crowd throughout the evening: the police must build trust with community members. Without it, already difficult and tense moments escalate to something worse than they need to be.

Watch a part of Tuesday’s conversation, including the exchange between Sharp and Tucker, below.

“Build Community Relationships”

On Tuesday, the sorority had invited a special guest with first-hand experience of police force. Michael Matthews’ son Jarelle Gibbs was killed in a high-speed chase in 2018 with Hamden officers. Matthews said he wants the department to open an independent investigation into the incident.

“I feel like I’m alone. My only son is gone,” he said. ​“It seems like every day is getting worser and worser. It’s like I’m losing faith.”

Matthews said he respects the work of the New Haven Police Department, but that ​“I can’t speak for any other town.” Though every member of the panel on Tuesday works in New Haven (Boyd has consulted for the NHPD and YPD), the panel itself took place in Hamden, whose police department has been the subject of intense scrutiny and protest over the course of the past year. Last week, the State’s Attorney’s Office arrested Hamden Officer Devin Eaton on assault charges after he shot at an unarmed couple in April. The incident sparked months of protests, including one on Monday and one on Wednesday.

Sharp had one piece of advice for Hamden: ​“build community relationships.” Just stepping out of a police vehicle, he said, is an important first step in forging those relationships.

Boyd, who is director of the Center for Advanced Policing, which works with police departments to improve their policing practices, said something similar.

“Hamden police needs a lot of work with community outreach,” he said. ​“I don’t think the Hamden officers are bad people. They just have bad info, bad tactics.” Boyd, who lives in Hamden, said he would like to work with the department, but has not yet managed to. 

At a mayoral debate on Monday, both candidates for Hamden mayor said that forging ties between the community and the police department is one of the town’s biggest challenges.

He said that when he conducts trainings, he always tries to include both officers and community members. ​“I need officers to hear the hurt in the community,” he said. The best part of Tuesday evening, he said, was not when he was sitting up front talking to the crowd, but rather afterwards, as community members and the two assistant chiefs were milling about talking and eating barbequed chicken legs and cookies.

The panelists also discussed how departments can hold themselves accountable, and how residents can help. Dominguez made a pitch for body cameras.

“It’s just to be able to tell a story from a vantage point that is very objective,” she said. They can limit the ​“he said she said” when departments investigate incidents.

Sharp made a pitch for New Haven’s Civilian Review Board (CRB). ​“The system is flawed. Make no mistake. The system is flawed,” he said. ​“There’s too much power for there not to be oversight.” He said that a CRB is a good way to provide that oversight and improve the department.

Residents, too, have a role to play in police accountability, said Boyd. Oftentimes, he said, officers are not found guilty in court because the jury is not made up of people from the community that was affected by the misconduct. He told the crowd that, if you’re called in for jury duty, try to actually sit on a jury.

A lot of people don’t report incidents of misconduct, he said, but civilian reports are an essential tool for keeping police accountable.

Cooper, who, like Boyd, is a professor at UNH’s Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences, echoed that point. ​“Show up in the data,” she said. ​“That’s my plea as a researcher.” Sometimes, she explained, people don’t report incidents because they don’t want to continue having to deal with the incident. But when people don’t report incidents, departments can say they didn’t happen.

The Deltas hold community conversations like Tuesday’s every month. But conversation is not their only goal. As Social Action Chair Karen DuBois-Walton told the crowd at the end, ​“don’t just talk about it. Be about it.”

She introduced three specific policy goals of the Deltas. First, she said, they want mandatory implicit bias training in departments. Second, they want a statewide database of police-involved deaths. Finally, she said, the sorority would like independent investigations to be mandatory in every police-involved death. Current law requires investigations in shooting deaths, but not in other kinds of deaths, like the crash that killed Jarelle Gibbs. As Matthews told the Independent, he’s still waiting on an investigation.