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Esserman: This “rubbed a deep wound.”
A one-word late-night utterance on a police radio has brought FBI investigators to 1 Union Ave. — and touched off department-wide soul-searching.
The word is “nigger.” Someone got onto the police radio after midnight on Dec. 30 and slowly uttered it. Some officers didn’t hear it. Others did, and called their supervisor to report it.
Within hours Police Chief Dean Esserman ordered an internal affairs investigation, one that has spread to include FBI forensic testing and visits to other police departments with access to New Haven’s frequency.
Meanwhile, the incident led more than 40 black officers to meet on Sunday at a community room on Ashmun Street to discuss a response. (They’d originally planned to meet on Saturday, then decided to wait a day when Channel 3’s news team caught wind of it.) They decided to hold a press conference Thursday to call for stronger measures against internal racial concerns. Then, after meeting with Esserman and in City Hall with Mayor Toni Harp, leaders of local black police organizations — the Silver Shields, the Guardians, and the National Black Law Enforcement Officers — agreed to delay public comments while the city responds to their concerns.
Esserman addressed line-up for all shifts over a 24-hour period this week to discuss the investigation into the radio incident and other measures to address racial and cultural concerns. He held a lively session with department supervisors Thursday afternoon after the regular weekly CompStat data-sharing meeting. And he has expanded department-wide cultural awareness and diversity training for all officers and detectives. The classes are scheduled to begin this coming Monday. Yet another meeting followed, among top cops about next steps.
“Give me a week. Let’s see what we can do,” Harp (pictured at the opening Wednesday of a downtown police substation)said she told the black police officers in her meeting. “If you don’t feel we are addressing it, you should put pressure on us to make sure we do.”
Harp said in an interview in her office Thursday afternoon that she discussed the black officers’ concerns about some “mid-level managers” in the police department as well as a handful of incidents that have occurred over the past few years. She said she believes that “by and large everybody works well together” in the police department. “Are there outliers? Yes. It has to be addressed. Is it the norm? I believe it is not. The chief has taken action. I am excited about the sensitivity training,” which will include experts from Connecticut Mental Health Center.
One participant described leaving the City Hall meeting “very impressed” with the mayor. “She was very attentive. She was very, very open to listen.”
The department had already, before the most recent incident, scheduled in-service training on cultural awareness and diversity to begin next week. In the wake of the latest incident, those classes will be doubled in length, from two to four hours, and will specifically include discussion of the case, according to Esserman.
“This is an issue that everyone in America must face,” Esserman said. “It is an issue that everyone in America must address, including the New Haven police department. The big mistake we can make is to ignore it or to send the message that for one minute it is acceptable. If our rank and file are going to believe in the values of the New Haven police department, we have to demonstrate that.
“We will investigate it vigorously. We will talk about it. Every supervisor in this department will speak with one voice.” The radio incident, Esserman said, “rubbed a very deep wound.”
Officer James Baker, president of the Guardians, declined to discuss the issue for now beyond remarking: “I’m hoping everybody’s going to do what they need to do to make sure the department is running the way it should be, fairly.”
The Late-Night Call
Whoever made the after-midnight remark Dec. 30 on the police radio spoke in a low voice, drawing out the “n word,” then said nothing else.
The officers who heard it immediately notified their supervisor, who in turn reported it to the shift commander, according to Chief Esserman. He learned about it that morning, and ordered the opening of the internal probe.
All radio communication is recorded. Investigators went to the emergency communications suite on the fourth floor of police headquarters to review the tape. “Technical problems” prevented the staff from “identifying the locator tracking” on the call, according to Esserman. Usually when a call comes over the radio, a message comes on a screen at the emergency communications center with information on the location of the caller.
“We brought in the company” that provides the equipment, Esserman said. The company, too, couldn’t identify the source of the call, “so we brought in the FBI.” The FBI discovered that the location code had never come up on the screen. That could “mean anything,” Esserman said — perhaps that the call came from outside the department, or perhaps that a department radio had not been properly coded.
“So we hit a blind wall. We didn’t stop,” Esserman said. “We started interviewing everyone in communications. We started interviewing officers. We discovered that officers and communications personnel were also on cell phones. We retrieved the cell phone messages between communications personnel with their voluntary assistance. We were trying to track it every way possible. We could not make an identification. So we’re continuing to do interviewing” — including at departments in towns outside New Haven.
The Aftermath
Black officers said the incident tapped into frustration about how some white supervisors in the department have treated some of them. Black officers also brought up a few incidents that occurred over the past year. One involved a swastika found on a vehicle in the police department’s basement garage (which is not accessible by outsiders). Another involved a white officer’s Facebook posting, which included anti-black, anti-Latino, and anti-Jewish slurs and demeaning epithets about black and Jewish members of the department. That incident occurred before Esserman took over the department two years ago, but it came to his attention again when the officer in question was up for a promotion. Instead of promoting him at the time, Esserman said, he ordered the officer to get help for personal problems he was experiencing.
In 2012, Esserman suspended a white officer — and called in the FBI, which launched a civil rights investigation — after a citizen’s cell-phone footage captured the officer appearing to stomp on the neck of a handcuffed black suspect. (Read about that here.)
After the leaders of the black organizations raised their concerns this week, Esserman said he decided to start a discussion with his line-up addresses. It continued at the post-CompStat session with supervisors Thursday. Everyone was asked to speak about reactions to the radio incident. Then the group discussed the upcoming training, in which all officers will participate in four hours of training by Lt. Patricia Helliger, who is certified in cultural awareness and diversity training. (Training academy chief Lt. Max Joyner and internal affairs chief Lt. Anthony Campbell will also run the sessions.) Esserman had planned to play the offensive call during the training; about half the people in the room argued that that would offend participants. In the end, it was decided not to play the recording during the sessions, but to give officers the opportunity to listen to it during the break.
After the meeting, numerous supervisors called it a “productive,” “constructive,” open exchange.
Police union President Louis Cavaliere Jr. said Thursday evening that the chief has handled the controversy appropriately.
“Obviously we have no room for any type of this behavior in this department. I’m all for if they want to step up sensitivity training in this department. I don’t believe there’s an issue. But it’s been brought to our attention that a few remarks have been made,” Cavaliere said. “People feel they have been offended and insulted and hurt. It’s a word that shouldn’t be tolerated in our department.”
He said the Facebook incident reinforced a lesson he tries to impart to fellow officers: “On a monthly basis, I try to remind guys about social media and being careful about what you say. Maybe you’re in a bad mood one day and you have a few drinks in you. Be very, very careful about how you respond about something that might catch up with you.
“I don’t even care for Facebook. If I do go on there, it’s very clean. There are a lot of kids on there. All over country I see people walked out of their jobs because of what they said on Facebook or Twitter.”
State NAACP President Scot X. Esdaile said he has been aware of the controversy and expects to meet soon with black officers to learn more.