“2nd Chance” Lawlor Tapped For Local Role

Mike Lawlor, who helped Connecticut change its approach to criminal justice, has been tapped to help New Haven figure out how best to police itself, as a member of the city’s Board of Police Commissioners.

Meanwhile, New Haven has new requirements for its commissioners.

Mayor Justin Elicker has nominated Lawlor, a former prosecutor and state representative and top gubernatorial aide, to serve on the commission.

The Board of Alders, which received the nomination as a communication at its meeting Monday night, will now review the nomination, then vote on it.

Lawlor is a former co-chair of the state legislature’s Judiciary Committee and a former state undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning who took a lead in designing and shepherding to passage former Gov. Dannel Malloy’s ​“Second Chance Society” legislation, which greatly reduced the number of people in state prisons and helped ex-offenders straighten out their lives. Lawlor also helped craft ​“Project Longevity,” a federal-state-city law enforcement effort that has helped reduce violence in New Haven by targeting young people most at risk for being involved in violence, then offering them a choice between help going straight and long prison sentences. Lawlor, who lives in Morris Cove, is currently an associate professor who teaches about criminal justice at the University of New Haven.

If approved by the full Board of Alders later this fall, Lawlor would join on the commission Tracey Meares, a Yale Law School professor and national police reform expert whom Elicker appointed and the alders confirmed this summer.

Also on Monday night, the alders approved an ordinance amendment that requires that new police commission members complete mandatory training within six months of joining the board.

That training includes a ride-along with a city officer, a familiarization with de-escalation and use of force policies and procedures, and an overview of the police department’s Internal Affairs division. (See more below on these new training requirements.)

“Our city and our nation are in the midst of an overarching and urgent conversation about policing,” East Rock Alder and Legislation Committee Chair Charles Decker said during Monday’s full board meeting. He said that comprehensive training for the city’s citizen-led police oversight body is one critical part of that ongoing work.

Keeping New Haven A Leader In Reform

During a Monday afternoon phone interview with the Independent, Lawlor said he’s interested in joining the civilian oversight body for the local police department in part because of the current local, statewide, and national ​“historic moment” for deep thinking about the proper roles and responsibilities of law enforcement.

“The New Haven police department has always been a national leader in reform, with community policing and that sort of thing,” he said. ​“It’s perhaps better situated than most places to embrace some of the reforms being discussed” across the country.

He cited the city’s new proposed emergency crisis response team that would have social workers and health care professionals respond to certain 911 calls rather than sworn police officers with badges, uniforms, and guns.

“To me that capability is very much a part of the future of policing in this country,” he said. ​“It’s very interesting that New Haven is pursuing this.”

He said he expects more resources to flow down from the state and national levels in the coming years to help fund such types of police reforms. The role of the police commission, he said, will be in part to help brainstorm how best to implement such a program were it to be adopted in New Haven and to ​“ensure that the kinks are worked out” upon adoption.

Lawlor was asked about the suite of new police accountability reforms included in the state law successfully pushed by State Sen. Gary Winfield this summer in the wake of mass protests against police brutality. ​“In my opinion, what was enacted is just the first installment in what is certain to be a series of reforms at the national and state levels next year,” he responded. He said he believes his statewide experience and expertise puts him in a good position to help the police commission and department navigate these new requirements and more reform laws to come.

Lawlor added that he believes one of his primary duties as a police commissioner, if he were to be approved for the role, would be to publicly articulate the end goals of the criminal justice system as he sees them based on his decades of experience and expertise.

He said he believes the three primary goals of the system and of related reforms are to reduce crime, to reduce spending, and to restore confidence in the system for victims of crime, for historically marginalized communities, and for the general population as a whole.

“When people lose confidence, crimes goes up,” Lawlor said.

When asked about the new mandatory training requirements for police commissioners, Lawlor said they sound to him like a good idea. He said he would be more than happy to undertake such training, even though he has already done much of what the city is now requiring of commissioners, including police ride-alongs.

“I’ve been in every prison and every courthouse and every jail in the state,” he said. He said he has spent ample time with police officers and parole officers and people who work at just about every level of the criminal justice system. ​“I think it’s really important so that your decisions are based off of some basic grasp of the reality” of what it’s like to work as a police officer today, he said.

Lawlor’s appointment now advances to the Aldermanic Affairs Committee, which will host a formal interview of the police commission candidate next month before sending the appointment back to the full board for a final vote.

Click on the above video to watch Lawlor discuss his criminal justice views during a recent episode of WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.”

Ride-Alongs Now Required

Also on Monday night, the full Board of Alders unanimously voted in favor of the ordinance amendment requiring city police commission appointees to complete mandatory training within six months of joining the board.

The ordinance amendment lists the following areas and tasks as part of the training, though not necessarily the entirety of it:

A. Review of the bylaws of the commission and the general orders of the New Haven Department of Police Service

B. City Ordinance & State Statute authorizing & empowering Police Commissions and Civilian Review Boards

C. Freedom of Information Guidelines training

D. An overview of the organizational structure of the New Haven Department of Police Service

E. An overview of the Internal Affairs Unit

F. A review of the current collective bargaining agreements concerning the New Haven Department of Police Service

G. A ride along with a police officer.

H. De-escalation & Use of Force familiarization

I. Interview Techniques

J. Parliamentary Procedures

K. Emergency Communications

The ordinance amendment states that the training shall be coordinated by the city police department’s training officer, that completion of the training shall be certified by the city’s chief administrative officer and announced at a Board of Police Commissioners meeting, and that a certificate of completion shall be provided to each commissioner upon finishing the mandatory training regimen.

Click here to read the full ordinance.