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Smith, Keitezulu: “Miracle Mets”?
When new data showed that cops stop black motorists more often than white motorists while finding less contraband on them, Ron Smith and Sundiata Keitezulu weren’t surprised. They’d been there.
Smith and Keitezulu, unaffiliated candidates for mayor in Tuesday’s election, recounted their own “driving while black” experiences Thursday during an appearance on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
They did so in response to a question about a New York Times study showing that in New Haven, black motorists get stopped 2.9 more often than whites, though they end up having contraband on them only 0.6 times as often. (Read about that here.)
Smith, a former city clerk and Newhallville alder, said he was pulling out of a Hamden gas station after filling up at 4 a.m. some years back when an officer stopped him.
“Why did you stop me?” Smith asked the officer.
“Are you getting smart?” he said the officer responded.
Yes, Smith recalled replying: “I’m a genius.”
“He said, ‘“You’re getting smart!’” I said, ‘I’m a genius! I have to answer your questions. I’m not going to say I’m dumb.’ And he took that personally. He got mad because I called myself a genius,” Smith recalled.
The interaction went downhill from there, in Smith’s telling:
“He said, ‘Well, where you going?’ I said, “I”m not going to tell you where I’m going. I’m a grown man! I just spent $60 worth of gas across the street!I’m not no little kid. You’re not my father. What do you want?’
“He said, ‘I just stopped you because somebody just came through here speeding.’ I came out of the gas station! I know he stopped me because I was African-American.”
The officer called over a sergeant — who, it turned out, knew Smith, a public figure in New Haven. The sergeant ended a stop that in other circumstances might have concluded with an “interfering with a police officer” arrest.
Keitezulu, who like Smith is black, said he often gets stopped by cops for no reason. (In the 1990s he served prison time for a drug offense, an experience he said has given him insight into helping ex-prisoners reentering society.) He recalled one recent incident in which he was heading to a plumbing job. He said an officer stopped him, took his information, then asked to search his car. When he said he didn’t have time for that, the officer had him get out, then searched the car anyway. The officer found no weapons, Keitezulu said, but he did waste 30 minutes of his time.
Worth Complaining?
When asked if he subsequently filed an internal affiars complaint with the department, Keitezulu said no because it wouldn’t make any difference.
Keitezulu said he didn’t file a complaint “because I don’t think complaints work. You have to change the mindset. You’ve got to get inner-city people in police positions. This is the biggest problem in New Haven. Police officers in New Haven don’t live in New Haven. We have to find ways of recruiting people.” He recommended offering local hires $5,000 bonuses as a recruiting incentive.
Smith interjected that Keitezulu should have filed a complaint.
“Get the officer’s number and his name and write internal affairs,” Smith responded. “They will send you a resopnd back. That officer will be called in before a panel. It does work. You have to use the pen — because they use the pen on us. You have to get his badge nubmer and write the complaint and go downtonw and turn it over ot internal affairs.
“This is one way of trying to get to the problem.”
A white police officer also appearing on the WNHH program, Bob Proto, agreed about the need to address the problem; he said the state has made “great progress” since the 1999 passage of the Alvin W. Penn Racial Profiling Prohibition Act. Proto, a West Haven lieutenant who lives in New Haven’s Morris Cove neighborhood, was asked about Ron Smith’s encounter with the officer. “It works both ways,” Proto responded. “The officer has to give the respect. And I believe the officer has to receive the respect also.”
Miracle Mets?
Proto, Burwell at WNHH Thursday.
Proto was on the program because he, too, is an independent candidate for office in next Tuesday’s election. He’s running for alder in Morris Cove’s Ward 18 against incumbent Democrat Sal DeCola and Republican Lisa Milone. (Click here for a previous interview with DeCola and Milone, and here for a full interview with Proto.) A fourth guest on the program was Thomas Burwell, who is running as an independent for alder in Fair Haven’s Ward 14. (Click here for a previous interview with his opponent, incumbent Democrat Santiago Berrios-Bones.) Proto said public safety is his top issue; Burwell emphasized improving communication between constituents and their alder and planting trees and calming traffic at the end of Farren Avenue closest tot he Ferry Street Bridge.
All four candidates acknowledged that they face long odds running against endorsed Democrats in a city that last elected a non-Democratic mayor in 1951 and where all 30 alders are Democrats. “Nobody should run unopposed. That’s not democracy,” Proto argued. Burwell said he “gave my word” to constituents that he would run as an independent in November if he lost the September Democratic primary. (Both Proto and Burwell lost when they ran in the Democratic primary.)
Both Keitezulu and Smith invoked a certain baseball team currently playing in the World Series.
“The Mets are two games down. That doesn’t mean they’re out. It doesn’t mean Ron Smith is out!” Smith declared.
To which Keitezulu added: “I believe in Miracles. I’ve always been a Miracle Mets fan. People want to see change.”
Click on the above sound file to listen to the full interview with the four candidates.