Decrying “profiling” and an “abuse of power,” protestors descended on the Whalley Avenue police substation Friday.
They were reacting to a report in the Independent about a wall of 25 mug shots of “un-wanted” characters — and comments by the district’s new top cop that he wanted to see those men pushed out of the neighborhood or sent to jail.
Led by longtime criminal justice activist Barbara Fair (pictured), over 20 people showed up at noon at the corner of Whalley and Norton Avenues to speak out against Lt. Leo Bombalicki’s new policing plans. At a meeting of the Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hill (WEB) Management Team last week, he showed off the wall of photos of 25 men whom he had instructed his officers to keep an eye on — men who were not wanted for any crime, but whom he had identified as potential troublemakers.
Reached Friday, Police Chief James Lewis said Bombalicki took down the wall that same evening, because the photos were not meant to hang in the public’s view. He defended the practice as a good tool to help cops respond to neighborhood complaints.
Calling Bombalicki at one point an “insane man,” Fair stood at the front door of the locked substation on Friday, shouting to those gathered — including three television news crews — that the lieutenant’s tactics were unacceptable.
“He’s targeting people that haven’t done anything!” Fair said. “It’s profiling! It’s targeting!”
Asked what she meant by “profiling” Fair said that the police were judging individuals on their past actions, not on evidence of current wrongdoing. “Just because these there’s been a negative interaction with the police, they think they know these guys. But they don’t know them!”
“What we’re saying is, what about a second chance?” said Shelton Tucker, another protester. “There’s innocent people going to jail every day.”
Fair said that Bombalicki’s tactics amount to “harassment” and that it is unfair to stop people on the street for questioning without cause. You might catch a couple of criminals that way, she said, “but is that fair to the 20 or 30 other guys you stop while going down the street?”
“That’s not preventative!” Fair said. “It builds up hostility.”
Fair also objected to Bombalicki’s assessment that there is an organized gang presence on Whalley. “What’s organized about standing on the corner?” she asked. “We’ve been doing that culturally for years!”
The substation was locked at midday on Friday, but through the window it was apparent that the mug shots had been removed from the wall where they had been posted.
Chief Lewis later explained that the wall of photos is nothing new; he expects all officers to keep track of people of interest.
“The difference is, in that particular office, there was no privacy for the officers there,” he said. Hanging the photos in public is not appropriate, he said: first, because suspects might see that cops are investigating them, and second, because a suspect might be innocent. He defended the use of a wall, if it’s kept private. He said the wall was started by the past district manager, Lt. Sidney Collier, who put up a person’s photo after getting several neighborhood complaints about the man.
“Every police officer I’ve ever met keeps track of people in the community who may be causing trouble,” Lewis said. “That’s not profiling. That’s actually targeting people who are identified as troublemakers.”
Lewis said the protest took place at just the place and time where he was set to sit down with Lt. Bombalicki and the head of the local NAACP chapter to have a “productive conversation” about the policing tactics. The trio had to move their meeting to a different place, he said.
Back at the rally, protesters were not satisfied by the news that the wall had been torn down.
Fair (click on the play arrow to watch Tom Ficklin’s video) said that the bigger issue was the policing philosophy that would have allowed the pictures to go up at all.
“We need to change the mindset. We need to bring back community policing, where police care about these kids,” Fair said. She said that the lieutenant was “still living in the ’50s and ’60s” and that his approach to policing would “poison the minds” of new officers.
Asked if she would have objected if the wall of mugshots had been kept out of the public eye, Fair said, “No. I don’t like the fact that they sit around targeting people.”
Fair called for the NHPD to engage in “real police work.” She mentioned community policing and tracing handguns to get them off the street.
Lewis roundly rejected her line of reasoning. Identifying trouble-makers based on neighborhood complaints is community policing at its best, he argued.
“To say it’s not community policing is frankly absurd,” Lewis said.
Rebuilding
Local activist and WEB management team member Eli Greer stood at the edge of the crowd. “This is a reasonable concern,” Greer said. “It’s very important to engage in dialogue between groups and the police.”
Greer said that although he had chosen “not to have a public opinion” on the wall at the meeting, that he had subsequently called “downtown and expressed concern.” Greer said that the pictures had been removed “within 24 hours” of the management team meeting.
“Was it a prudent tactic vis-a-vis the public? “No,” Greer said. “But the most important thing is that crime is reduced. The rest of this is a side show.”
Greer said that the discussion of individuals who are of concern to the police was “a police matter, that’s not a neighborhood matter,” better suited for “a location amongst police officers.”
Greer (at left in photo) later gave his business card to Fair and invited her to come to the monthly WEB management team meeting to talk about her concerns. Fair said that she would “definitely, definitely” be there. “I want to be a part of rebuilding community.”
Hazel Jones, who lives nearby on Ella T Grasso Boulevard, was not optimistic about repairing relations between the police and African-American community.
“When you have a whole community that doesn’t trust the police, there’s a problem,” Jones said. She said that the the mistrust was based on police “pulling people over for no reason.”
“People are scared to call the police. They don’t know if they’ll be treated fairly,” Jones continued.
Asked if she would be joining Greer at the next WEB management team meeting, Jones (pictured) said that she would consider it, but that New Haven might be too divided to come together.
“There are two sides to New Haven,” Jones explained, “There’s the hood and there’s not-the-hood.”
“I believe [Greer’s] just got a whole other outlook on New Haven,” she said.