Cop Promotions Fuel Diversity Debate

The police commission promoted 14 men, 12 of them white, to supervisory roles, as the interim chief detailed a plan to return diversity to the department’s upper ranks in the future.

That was the outcome of Tuesday night’s latest monthly meeting of the city Board of Police Commissioners.

The three-hour virtual meeting took place online via Zoom. Over 50 people crowded into the digital space to observe and participate in a meeting that saw a double-digit churn in the upper, middle, and lower ranks of the local police department.

It also saw top brass, police commissioners, and members of the public alike grapple with the disappearance of Black and Hispanic supervisors to the lowest levels since the early 1990s, a downward trend that has accelerated this year.

During Tuesday’s meeting, nine current sergeants were promoted to lieutenants. They included Derek Werner, David Portela, Justin Marshall, Brian McDermott, Brendan Borer, Ryan Przybylski, Jason Weted, Michael Fumiatti, and Dana Smith.

Eight are white men; one is a Black man.

Five current officers and detectives were promoted to sergeants. Those included Christopher Alvarado, Steven Spofford, Michael Criscuolo, Eric Eisenhard, and Donald White III.

Four are white men, and one is a Hispanic man.

The meeting also saw the hiring of four new recruits — Tonisha Berrios, Andrea Moore, Chantel Davis, and Adrian Tudor — the removal of four recruits from the police officer eligibility list, and the tabling of the proposed hiring of an additional three recruits.

Now that Tuesday’s promotions are official, the department’s supervisory positions, which were already disproportionately white in comparison to the city at large, are significantly less diverse.

Among the department’s 22 highest ranking members — one police chief, one assistant chief, three captains, and 17 lieutenants — there are only three people of color. Among the department’s 37 sergeants, a full two-thirds are white. This is the first time since 1993 that the chief, assistant chief, and captain slots are all white. Only one of the city’s policing districts is led by an Hispanic cop; none is led by a Black cop.

All in a city where 30.6 percent of the population is Hispanic, 30.4 percent is Black, and 27.6 percent is white.

“We’re never gonna grow, we’re never gonna change, if we can’t look in, see our deficiencies, and begin to build a way to address them and move forward,” Domginuez told the commissioners as she laid out a plan for diversifying the department in the future.

Retired police Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur, who is currently a Beaver Hills Democratic alder candidate, offered a blunter assessment of the department’s present-day struggles to hire, promote and retain officers of color.

“We can’t have it both ways. We can’t want community policing, we can’t want better relationships between the community and the police, and then not hire people from the community that look like the community they serve,” he said during the public testimony section of Tuesday’s meeting.

“If we really want to be serious about how we do 21st-century policing, you have to look at aggressively recruiting and hiring people from the city and who look like the city.”

First Calvary Baptist Church Rev. Boise Kimber and Hill restaurant owner Miguel Pittman agreed.

“It seems we’re not hiring more people that really reflect our community,” Pittman said.

“With the Black community, we are 30-something percent of this city,” added Kimber. ​“When we look at the New Haven Police Department, where is the representation in leadership? We have just promoted three white captains. We’ve got eight white lieutenants tonight. … Where is the bench? How does this department represent the community where I live?”

Police Commission Chair Evelise Ribeiro said that those criticisms are well taken. She said the commission has a hiring and recruitment committee in place that is currently ​“looking into these concerns,” she said.

“Diversity Deployment Plan” Pitched

During her 30-minute ​“chief’s report” to the commissioners, Dominguez pitched the department’s new ​“diversity deployment plan.”

The goal: Make sure that the department hires and promotes more Black, Hispanic, and female officers going forward.

Dominguez said that the department currently has 319 sworn officers out of a budgeted strength of 408.

Thirty-nine percent of city officers are people of color, 17 percent are female, and 52 percent are white men.

As far as short- and mid-term promotions go, Dominguez said, the department hopes to go down the lieutenant and sergeant eligibility lists for further rounds of promotions by next spring.

If all goes as planned, the city should see the promotions of one Hispanic female lieutenant, one Black female lieutenant, and one white male lieutenant by next March, she said.

In that same time period, the department hopes to promote an additional six white male sergeants, two Black male sergeants, one Black female sergeant, and one Hispanic male sergeant.

The department is also currently conducting background checks on 176 entry-level applicants, and plans to start a new police academy class in September or October.

Most of Dominguez’s diversity plan pitch on Tuesday focused on recruitment and employee development.

Some of those new initiatives include:

• Buying a ​“recruitment trailer” that would allow the department’s recruitment team to travel to different city neighborhoods year-round and pump the NHPD with the help of a vehicle decked out in art, a TV screen, and computers.

• Using the Handshake app to recruit potential applicants from colleges, universities and all branches of the military.

• Building out a new ​“cadet” program that would hire 18- to 21-year-old city residents to work at the police department in administrative jobs where they could get to know officers and get a feel for the department before they turn 21 and can apply to become an officer themselves. Dominguez said this program would build off of the current Police Athletic League (PAL) program for 8- to 11-year-old New Haveners and the current ​“explorer” program for 11- to 18-year-old New Haveners.

• Implementing a new mentoring program within the department that would pair upper-level and lower-level police officers. ​“We do not do a good job of preparing one rank for the next rank,” Dominguez said. ​“We want to have a sergeant mentoring an officer, a lieutenant mentoring a sergeant, so that you’re able to see what the next rank does, so that you’re getting interested in the work of the next rank.”

• Creating a new ​“Subordinate Shadowing” program that would be a less formal version of the mentoring program. This would see a sergeant, for example, spend a day riding around with a district manager to see what their life entails.

• Partnering with local clergy and advocacy organizations like the NAACP Youth Council to target recruitment efforts at local people of color.

“I think the New Haven Police Department is doing so much more with so much less” than it used to have, she said. ​“If we’re able to give [officers] more training, more opportunities, we’re only going to continue to challenge them, which makes people happier in their jobs, and which makes them better in their jobs.”

Mentor Boost? Lateral Delays?

All of the commissioners who spoke up Tuesday night applauded Dominguez for presenting the plan and for actively working to diversify the ranks.

Some also underscored which parts they thought would be most effective at making sure more Black and Hispanic officers rise through the ranks, and which potential impediments still stand in the way.

Police Commissioner Tracey Meares, who consults nationally on policing reform efforts, said recruiting and hiring more Black and Hispanic officers, while important, will have virtually zero impact in the short- and mid-term on the lack of diversity in upper ranks.

That’s because the New Haven Police Department and the police union contract require that all supervisor positions, except for those of chief and assistant chief, be filled by officers who have risen from lower-ranking positions within the NHPD.

“Could you give us a sense of how long it takes for a person to come in and actually be eligible for leadership?” Meares asked.

And is it true that New Haven rules don’t allow experienced people from outside the department to come in and be a part of a list for, say, sergeant or lieutenant or captain?

Dominguez responded that one can test to be a sergeant after three years with the department as an officer or a detective. Then the officer has to be in a sergeant position for another three years to be eligible to test for a lieutenant. Then the candidate has to be a lieutenant for two years to be eligible to test for a captain.

So that’s a minimum of eight or nine years it can take to rise those ranks to leadership.

“And it’s not possible in New Haven to move more quickly, no matter how many years’ experience you have” with another department? Meares followed up.

That’s right, Dominguez said. So-called ​“lateral” hires do allow certified police officers who have worked for other departments to join New Haven’s police force without going through the academy. But, no matter their experience level, those laterals must start out as an officer and then rise the ranks like anyone else.

Police Commissioner and fellow police reform expert Michael Lawlor asked Dominguez to elaborate on the proposed new mentoring program.

Lawlor said that such a program could prove particularly beneficial for officers who struggle with the exams required to become eligible to be promoted to a supervisory position.

“The scores are down to the decimal points, and it has such a huge impact on who can be promoted,” Lawlor said. ​“I’m not sure we can change that. But we can certainly help prepare officers to take these critical exams so they can get the best possible score when they do that.

And mentoring — having a higher-ranking officer who has gone through the testing process helping a lower-ranking officer with advice on how best to study for such an exam — could help with that challenge.

Dominguez agreed.

“That is definitely one of the big advantages of putting together two people in a mentoring program,” she said. ​“You’re able to provide somebody [who can help] get you to a place where you’re at the best of your ability and have the most resources to do well on a test.”

Meet The New LTs

While much of Tuesday night’s meeting featured conversations and debates about diversity in the police department, a good chunk of the virtual meeting was dedicated to brief interviews with and celebrations of the newly promoted supervisors.

That part of the meeting shone a light on nine newly minted lieutenants in particular who have dedicated the past decade-plus of their lives to serving the public.

They included:

• Werner, a nine-year city police veteran and former U.S. Marine who currently leads the intelligence unit of the detective bureau.

• Portela, a 13-year city police veteran who currently runs the NHPD’s IT division, and therefore oversees all of the department’s radios and computer systems

• Marshall, a 13-year city police veteran who has spent the past two and a half years as the Hill North and Hill South district manager.

• McDermott, a 12-year city police veteran who runs the department’s detail room, responsible for placing and staffing officers and for payroll.

• Borer, a nine-year city police veteran who has spent the past four years as a supervisor in the downtown, Dixwell, and Newhallville neighborhoods.

• Przybylski, a 13-year city police veteran who has spent a decade on the city’s SWAT team and currently works in the major crimes division of the detective bureau.

• Weted, a 19-year city police veteran and former state Department of Correction (DOC) staffer at the Whalley Avenue jail who is currently in charge of the records unit.

• Fumiatti, a nine-year city police veteran who has spent the last two years as Fair Haven’s district manager. He’s also the officer in charge of the city’s hostage and crisis negotiation team.

• And Smith, a nine-year city police veteran who has spent the past two-plus years as the head of the recruitment and background division.

Since you get to see just about every single person who wants to be a New Haven police officer, Meares asked Smith, what are ​“three things that you really look for that give you a sense of who’s going to be an excellent officer for this department?”

“Just being honest about what you’ve been through in life,” Smith responded. ​“We all have a history. Just be honest. Let us be the judge of what is going on. But just being honest and life experience.”

“Just being truthful” in general is key, Smith said: As an officer, you have to go to court, write and sign reports, and ​“say what really happens in the field.” Being truthful is at the heart of accountability and integrity, he said.

And finally, ​“just being mature.” Officers deal on a daily basis with people from all walks of life, sometimes during the worst day of those people’s lives. Officers must be respectful, mature, and ​“on their level.”

Smith added that, in a perfect world, he’d like to see a minimum police officer age of 25, rather than the current minimum age of 21.

“Twenty one or 22 is kind of young,” he said. Someone a little older is often more mature, and has ​“more life experience under their belt.”