Sam Gurwitt Photo
Justin Farmer and Ashleigh Huckabey lead march up Dixwell.
Echoing calls around the country to defund cops and reinvest in communities, 600 young protesters marched through Downtown, Dixwell, and Newhallville Saturday to demand that the university abolish its police department.
Standing in front of the Yale Police Department (YPD) at the corner of Lock and Ashmun Streets, students and community organizers gave their demands: disband the department and reinvest the funds that currently pay for it in community resources like schools and mental health services. Black Students for Disarmament at Yale organized the march with Black Lives Matter New Haven, People Against Police Brutality, and a number of other local organizations.
Teigist Taye.
“When I joined Yale, they said YPD was there for our safety,” said rising junior Teigist Yearwood (pictured above), who helped organize and lead the march. “Painting New Haven as if, you know, every day I step out of the Yale campus it’s some danger.”
“I want to say that I am so sorry if even for a second I bought the racist and classist lies that were fed to me when I joined the Yale institution,” she continued. “Because they are not true. This Yale police force only stands to divide us…To divide the Yale students from the rest of the city.”
The march began on the New Haven Green a little after 3 p.m., the third protest to start or end on the Green that day. About 200 bikers had descended on the flagpole earlier in the afternoon after cycling from Sleeping Giant State Park in Hamden. As the Yale protest began, a protest hosted by Connecticut Against Brutality, a New Haven County-based youth organization, was finishing up a program of speeches by students in the New Haven area about their experiences in schools.
Ashleigh Huckabey and Kharisma Redding.
After a few rallying speeches, the anti-Yale PD protesters formed a pack and marched toward Elm Street. They poured into the street, engulfing a few cars as they went.
They stopped in front of Good Nature Market on Broadway, where a worker refused to serve three black men last week.
Isaac Yearwood.
“We see a Patagonia, a J. Crew, a Lululemon… I don’t even know what a Fat Face is,” said co-organizer Isaac Yearwood (pictured above) into a megaphone, looking around at the stores that compose the street’s mostly pricey “Shops at Yale.” “We don’t see corner stores. We don’t see community house centers… We don’t see any of the stuff that serves anybody but the average $250,000 white child that goes to school here!”
Protesters reformed a mass, and began marching up Dixwell Avenue.
“Hands up, don’t shoot!” they chanted at one point. An organizer called into a megaphone to change the chant. “Fist up, fight back,” she called. The crowd echoed.
People Against Police Brutality organizer Kerry Ellington made an addition. The chant became “Fist up, fight back. Divest. Reinvest.”
Kerry Ellington.
The march stopped at the corner of Dixwell and Argyle Street, where Yale Police Officer Terrence Pollack and Hamden Police Officer Devin Eaton shot at an unarmed black couple last year. Pollack was suspended without pay for 30 days and then put on administrative duty in the department. The state’s attorney brought felony charges against Eaton, and the Hamden Police Department has placed him on unpaid administrative leave. In the fall, a judge ruled that the Hamden Police Commission could not hold a hearing on Eaton’s employment until his court case is over.
Protesters marched back down Dixwell and turned onto Webster Street, and then onto Ashmun. They sat in front of Yale’s police headquarters, filling the whole intersection.
When Yale abolishes the police department that operates out of the building she was standing in front of, said Ellington, “we’re going to turn this into a community center for the residents of this neighborhood.”
The crowd cheered.
“We have a deep need in this city, right in this community, for affordable housing” she said. “We have a deep need for more resourced public schools. We have a deep need for mental health programs. And the money that we pour into this predatory system right next to me is draining and divesting from our community, and we cannot get the public health that we need to have liberated communities.”
She echoed Taye, calling for Yale to defund its police department and instead fund schools, housing, youth services, mental health services, and jobs in the city. She also called for the immediate termination of officers with histories of excessive force complaints.
That was a demand she made of the city as well. She also called on Mayor Justin Elicker to immediately cut $2 million out of the police budget in the fiscal year starting July 1, followed by further defunding in his next budget. She called on the city to reduce the powers of the police union, and to make union negotiations public. She demanded that all police officers be removed from schools, which the New Haven Board of Education is considering.
She demanded that Yale’s police force no longer police outside of campus, and that surrounding towns, like Hamden, no longer have the ability to police in New Haven. She also called on the city to complete the process of starting a civilian review board.
Yale Police Chief Ronnell Higgins, Asst. Chief Anthony Campbell (a former New Haven chief), and President Peter Salovey were quoted in the Yale Daily News responding to the protest. Campbell said the New Haven police department can’t handle the extra 20 – 30,000 calls a year it would inherit without the Yale police, and wouldn’t know the campus as well. Higgins told the News that he “disagreed with the argument that the YPD did not keep Black and brown communities safe” and considers the claim “antithetical to YPD’s mission of providing protection for all students, faculty, staff and visitors.” “The Yale Police Department, under the leadership of Chief Higgins, is fully committed to police reform and to serving as an example for the nation of what a best-in-class police force can achieve,” Salovey is quoted as saying.
Exit 3 Coda
Thomas Breen photos
After a marathon of speeches and political demands for the abolition of the YPD concluded at around 6:30, a group of around 150 protesters marched back down Lock Street and Canal Street towards Prospect Street.
They chanted “Black Lives Matter!” and sang along to Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright,” which blasted from an amplifier held by a man near the front of the crowd.
They took a kneel at the intersection of Prospect and Trumbull Streets, right in front of the Yale’s relatively new Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray Colleges.
The crowd size dwindled to roughly 100 as the protesters made their way down Trumbull Street, largely without police cars controlling traffic.
They took another kneel at the intersection of Trumbull and Temple Streets. Cars speeding west down Trumbull turned north on Whitney instead of waiting for the protesters to pass. Many cars beeped and honked in support. Some drivers rolled down their car windows threw up-raised fists of solidarity.
By the time the protesters had made their way to Orange Street and the on-ramp of I‑95’s Exit 3, a New Haven Police Departmenrt cruiser had arrived to block traffic.
Roughly 50 people marched a couple hundred feet up the off-ramp at Exit 3. They cheered “Black Lives Matter” and took another knee as traffic backed up onto the highway.
After around 15 minutes, the protesters decided to disperse peacefully rather than risk arrest on the highway. “We won today!” one person shouted. “See you tomorrow in East Haven!”
Thomas Breen contributed to this report.