Paul Bass Photos
Loiterers?
Officers Elliott and Cohen at 55 Church: Body cams off.
At a Church Street bus shelter, two cops appeared on bikes and started riding figure-eights through a crowd of people on the sidewalk.
People parted to stay out of the way.
A test of citizens’ rights — and the way police tackle difficult public nuisances — ensued.
One of the officers, Jeremie Elliott, called out an announcement.
He told the crowd that people did not have permission to stand on the sidewalk unless they were waiting for a bus.
“This is a federal building,” Elliott lied, referring to 55 Church St., the office building behind the bus shelter between Center and Crown streets. Then he announced that police would start checking IDs of non-bus-riders.
I happened to be in that crowd that recent day at the bus shelter, en route to my office back from a morning press conference. I asked Elliott about what he had just said.
“I’m not answering any questions,” he responded. (Click here to read about the last time Elliott needed to answer questions.)
I asked him if I were allowed to remain on the sidewalk.
“You can do whatever you want,” replied Elliott.
So I could, but the other people in the crowd couldn’t?
I told him that I had just heard him tell us we couldn’t stand there unless we were waiting for a bus. That we were breaking the law.
“I said nothing about the law. That’s not what I said,” Elliott insisted. Then he pedaled off.
No IDs were checked.
“People sell bad things out here,” one woman at the bus stop remarked, defending the police actions.
The officers were wearing their new department-issued body cameras during their sidewalk figure-riding. However, they never turned on the cameras during the episode. At least that’s what the department’s records division reported when the Independent filed a Freedom of Information Act request for footage of Elliott’s announcement and the officers’ riding. (I turned on my cellphone camera right after the announcement. That video is below.)
Bodega Relief
“We just pass through here,” Elliott’s bike-patrol partner, Officer Derek Cohen, explained at the scene, “and make sure everybody’s OK.”
The bike cops have been doing that regularly these days, in response to rampant drug use and dealing reported inside and around the bus shelter.
The manager of Gateway Food Mart, a storefront on the ground floor of 55 Church, noticed the figure-eight visits started to occur often outside his window in the past few weeks.
He applauded the cops for doing that. He said the result has been less of a crowd at the bus shelter — and fewer problems in his store.
The shelter was one of five modern, green, heated structures installed at bus stops in 2007 and 2008. But in cold or rainy weather, bus riders hesitate to use the 55 Church St. shelter when druggies are inside it, so they come inside Gateway Food Mart to escape the elements while waiting, said the manager (who asked to remain unnamed and unphotographed for fear of retribution). “It gets crowded, [and] the shoplifting starts,” the manager said. “I ask them to leave. They don’t like that.”
“Do you see anybody there?” he asked rhetorically as he pointed out the window to the shelter. “No. Much better.”
Directory at 55 Church.
The nine-story 18-unit office building, appraised at $11 million, is owned by the Hurley Group real estate developers (through an entity called 45 – 55 Church St. LLC.), not the federal government. It includes U.S. marine, naval, and air force offices. Other tenants include engineers, architects, the Nature Conservancy, American Medical Response, Yale-New Haven Hospital, Yale Behavioral Health, the Green Parking Council, among other non-government operations.
Police Chief Anthony Campbell said the officers did nothing wrong by figure-eighting on the sidewalk — or even, in Elliott’s case, making false claims about the nature of the building or planning to check IDs.
The law “allows lying to get to the truth,” Campbell said.
“Is that something we typically do? No,” Campbell said. rather, officers do it “under extreme circumstances.” As an example, officers confronting a large, rowdy, drunken crowd when bars let out may announce that “everyone who doesn’t clear the vicinity in five minutes will be arrested,” even if that’s not their intention, in order to maintain the peace.
If Elliott had actually checked IDs without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, that would would have been a problem, Campbell said. But he noted that the courts have, in cases like the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court Frazier v. Cupp, upheld the right of cops to lie in the course of their jobs. For instance, they can claim during a suspect interview to have evidence they don’t have, in hopes of eliciting a confession.
It’s also OK that the officers didn’t have their body cameras operating, Campbell said. They’re not supposed to have them turned on at all times. That enables them to have private conversations with citizens who might not want to be recorded Campbell said. They are supposed to turn on the cameras when responding to a specific crime and making an arrest.
“An Overreach”
Defense attorney Norm Pattis had a different view on the episode, and on the police tactics. He called the episode “troubling.”
He agreed that cops have a right to enforce loitering laws. He questioned how far the officers took that mission, as well as the need for Elliott’s fabrications.
“Whether [lying] can be used as a means of driving people from a public place is a more interesting case. I’m not aware of any case” on that, Pattis said. “I think the officer was taking creative liberties. I think he’s on the wrong side of the law.”
“That is a troubled corner. Police have a right and some would argue an obligation to maintain a visible presence to prevent crime,” Pattis said. “They don’t have the right to intimidate people: ‘This is a federal corner’ … I’m not sure we want big brother out here clicking his heels saying, ‘Move along.’
“Poor people, homeless people have to go somewhere. If every jurisdiction said, ‘Move along,’ where would they stop? It’s a little bit troubling. It’s an overreach.”
Constitutional?
Former New Haven Assistant Police Chief John Velleca, too, expressed concerns about the incident.
Technically, Velleca noted, cops can arrest any three people standing “idly” on a sidewalk, under Sec. 18 – 17 of the city’s Code of Ordinances. (It reads: “No persons shall assemble idly and remain in crowds upon any footway, sidewalk, or crosswalks in any streets or in any of the public squares of said city, or before any church or public building, or before or within any cemetery in said city, and all persons to the number of three (3) or more so assembling, and refusing to disperse when commanded so to do by a police officer, special constable, or mayor of said city, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be punished by a fine of not more than fifty dollars ($50.00) for each offense.”)
But, Velleca continued, courts have ruled similar ordinances, enacted in the late 20th century as part of the War on Drugs, are unconstitutional.
“Once it’s challenged, it will be shot down” as well, he said of the New Haven ordinance during an appearance Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
But even if not, such tactics are a bad idea, Velleca argued. “It encourages arbitrary enforcement. … This is a job for the drug unit. … Go for a coffee at Starbucks for an hour” and then “move in” and people spotted engaging in criminal activity. “Everyone else has to be left alone.”
Velleca also questioned the use of lying in this situation. He said it’s much different from, say, seeking to coax a confession from a murder suspect by falsely suggesting you have other evidence. In public enforcement and crime-prevention actions, he argued, “You’re not out to b.s. the public.”
Meanwhile, the two officers escaped getting ticketed for riding on the sidewalk. Which, for non-cops, is illegal in Connecticut.