Late Night Protest Floods Mayor’s Lawn

“Shame!” ​“Fire the officer!” ​“Black Lives Matter!” ​“We can’t breathe!”

Dozens of protesters shouted those words on the front lawn of the mayor’s house during a heated five-hour, late-night rally that sought to frame roiling nationwide outrage against police violence in a hyperlocal context.

The protest took place from roughly 8 p.m. Friday to almost 1 a.m. Saturday on the front lawn and driveway of Mayor Justin Elicker’s house in East Rock.

Roughly 70 people turned out, according to attendee reports and a nearly-four-hour Facebook Live video posted by the Connecticut Bail Fund. People Against Police Brutality, the Semilla Collective, and a handful of other local activist groups organized the event, which was dubbed on Facebook: ​“Urgent Action: Drop the Charges Now.”

The protest came at the end of a week that has seen nationwide outpourings of grief, anger, horror, and disaffection around police violence. 

Many of those protests have come in response to a viral video that showed a white Minneapolis police officer killing an unarmed 46-year-old black man, George Floyd, on Monday by pinning him to the ground and pressing his knee into his neck for over five minutes as Floyd pleaded, ​“I can’t breathe.”

(Click here to read an open letter Elicker published Friday afternoon denouncing Floyd’s death at the hands of the white officer, and to read about Elicker and Police Chief Otoniel Reyes speaking out against the killing during a Friday virtual press conference.)

Friday night’s protesters built off of that national outrage and identified a more recent, and more local, incident as the immediate catalyst for their turnout: a Wednesday evening dispute at the Walmart off of Exit 8 that led to a 29-year-old black man arrested and charged with assault on a police officer, interfering with a police officer, larceny fifth degree, possession of a controlled substance, and possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell.

The New Haven Police Department released body camera footage and an incident report written by the arresting officer, Paul Vitale, on Thursday night after a shorter, edited bystander video went semi-viral on Facebook. Police Chief Otoniel Reyes said in an email press release that night that the officers involved acted appropriately and ​“did an excellent job and used the amount of force necessary to overcome the resistance of the man who refused to be arrested.”

The protesters who flooded Elicker’s lawn Friday night disagreed with that assessment.

“This Wednesday a black shopper was profiled by New Haven officers,” protester Jeannia Fu (pictured) said through a bullhorn in Elicker’s driveway. ​“He was profiled. He was chased. He was maced. He was brutalized by multiple officers. And then he was arrested.”

“Drop the charges!” the group yelled at Elicker’s house. ​“Fire the officers now!”

PAPB organizer Kerry Ellington (pictured) used a people’s mic to amplify what she saw as the connection between Wednesday’s arrest and a long history of white suspects and black suspects receiving radically different treatment from the police.

“The brother in Walmart,” she said, pausing for the crowd around her to repeat each sentence in unison. ​“Should never have been assaulted. He should never have been assaulted by Officer Vitale and the other officers who assaulted him.

“When we see white men, mass murderers gun down people in churches, walked out with Burger King sandwiches and bullet proof vests, and police officers use life-preserving skills to save them, then they can use the same with unarmed civilians shopping in a store.”

She called on the mayor to press for the charges to be dropped.

And she expanded the scope of hurt that motivated the local protesters to extend beyond this particular week.

“We are grieving and going through the grief of seeing Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, Jason Negron, Zoe Dowdell, Stephanie Washington, Paul Witherspoon, other people shot and killed in this city who never got justice.”

“I’m sick of seeing the viral videos,” said Semilla Collective and Bail Fund organizer Vanesa Suarez (pictured at top of article). ​“I don’t want to watch that shit anymore. We know about that shit already. We live through that shit generation after generation. And it needs to end. It needs to end. ​‘I can’t breathe,’ is all he was screaming. And that was not enough. They don’t like how we fucking protest. It don’t matter if we ask. It don’t matter if we petition. It don’t matter if we fucking kneel. It don’t matter what we do. They still kill us. So fuck you, Elicker!”

For the first 20 minutes of the protest, the mayor (pictured from behind) stood on his front lawn before the group, mask over his face, hands clasped, waiting to engage in dialogue.

In between chants, he repeatedly asked for an opportunity to speak.

Unlike during a police accountability protest held on the front steps of police headquarters earlier Friday afternoon, at which Chief Reyes and organizer Barbara Fair engaged in a 40-minute conversation about police violence and accountability (as reported by the New Haven Register’s Mary O’Leary), protesters outside Elicker’s house Friday night were not interested in dialogue.

They refused to let him speak, so, after about 20 minutes of trying, he returned inside to his house.

After Elicker went back inside, the group stayed outside for hours.

The protests lasted until roughly 1 a.m. Attendees repeatedly rang Elicker’s doorbell over the course of the night, issued calls for Wednesday night’s charges to be dropped, banged on Elicker’s first-floor windows, got into disputes with neighbors, and put words to the pain motivating this week’s protests across the country.

Around 1 a.m., police ordered the protesters to disperse for trespassing and disturbing the peace, leading to a peaceful end to the rally.

“Important For Us To Have Dialogue”

“Now is absolutely the time to protest,” Elicker said during a phone interview Saturday morning.

“Many of us in the community feel very angry about what happened with George Floyd. I feel very angry about the injustice and the inequity in our community, especially that impacting brown and black communities.”

However, he said, the protesters on his front yard and in his driveway for nearly five hours Friday night ​“crossed a line.”

“It’s important for us to have dialogue. It’s important for us as a community to work through these problems.

“But when protesters violate someone’s personal space and property, and aren’t willing to engage in conversation, that crosses a line that is not productive.”

Elicker said he had reviewed Officer Vitale’s body camera footage, incident report, and the Walmart bystander’s video. He said he has had multiple conversations with Chief Reyes about Wednesday night’s arrest.

“I think it’s not appropriate to drop the charges,” he said. ​“I believe the officer exercised extreme restraint under difficult circumstances, and that the man was shoplifting and resisted arrest, and that the officers did an appropriate thing and exercised appropriate conduct.” Elicker added that the case is now in the hands of the courts and the state prosecutor, and that he has little say over whether or not the charges should be dropped, even if he felt that to the be case.

He said that the killing of George Floyd is absolutely worth protesting and feeling outraged about. He said officers should and must be held accountable when they so brazenly violate the law.

“There is absolutely outrage shared by myself and the chief” about that situation, he said. As for Wednesday’s arrest at Walmart, ​“This is not in my assessment one of those cases.”

When asked about his thoughts on protesters turning out to his family’s home, Elicker said, ​“I ran for mayor. My wife didn’t run for mayor. My two-year-old and five-year-old did not run for mayor. My neighbors didn’t run for mayor. City Hall is fair game [for a protest.] I think anyone’s home is not fair game.”