Cops Arrest Reporter, Seize Camera

When two pressure cookers showed up on a Whalley Avenue sidewalk one recent late afternoon, police officers rushed to the scene. At one point, they found themselves hustling away a news reporter who got too close as he took photos. They handcuffed him, shoved him in a cruiser, grabbed his camera, and charged him with a crime.

The arrest was a footnote to a bigger story as dusk set in at rush hour on Dec. 6. The bigger story was how cops worked hard and risked their own safety under tense circumstances to protect people from what reasonably loomed as a potential disaster on the order of the Boston Marathon bombing, which had been carried out with nail-packed pressure cookers left on the street. (Thankfully these pressure cookers in Westville turned out to be empty and harmless, and the incident itself innocent.)

But the arrest of the reporter — the New Haven Independent’s David Sepulveda — is a story worth telling, too.

It is worth revisiting after the fact, for two reasons.

In a scene reminiscent of the classic film Rashomon, Sepulveda’s arrest reveals how different parties can honestly view the same scene in markedly different ways from different vantage points.

How the cops behaved after hustling Sepulveda from the scene raises separate questions. Their stated rationale for their actions suggests that, for all of New Haven’s self-congratulation about its success with community policing, two of that approach’s basic tenets remain stubbornly resistant to inculcation in the rank and file and even a district manager:

• The tenet that cops should use their discretion and view arrests as last, not first, resorts. And that they should especially try to speak with detainees to understand a situation before piling on charges.

• The tenet that cops should keep their hands off citizens’ cameras. Despite a new general order, public promises to obey it, a court order, the forced departures of two high-ranking cops, and a state law passed in part because of New Haven police misbehavior, the cops here just can’t seem to kick the camera-grabbing habit.

How The Cops Saw It

I heard at least four separate accounts of Sepulveda’s arrest from cops at the scene. All the versions were consistent. They didn’t have time to share versions of what they saw. They weren’t making it up.

The scene unfolded on Whalley Avenue near the southeastern corner of Harrison Street, outside the public library’s Mitchell branch and across the street from Congregation Beth-El Keser Israel.

Someone had called in to the police at 4:10 p.m. to report that appearance of the pressure cookers.

Officers rushed to the scene. They evacuated the library, the synagogue, and some nearby residences. The put up police tape and blocked off intersections on Whalley Avenue. They called in the bomb squad, which set up its van on Whalley a half block west of Harrison. Detective Rosa Melendez donned a protective suit to approach one of the pressure cookers, X‑ray photograph its contents, return to the van to have the photos analyzed, then repeat the procedure with the second pressure cooker. That took a while.

Meanwhile, patrol officers kept people away. At one point they saw Sepulveda on Whalley near the location of the pressure cookers. He had out his camera. He was taking pictures.

The officers yelled at him: Get away from there! Right now!

They saw him remain there — and crouch down, as though, in their telling, he was defying them and trying to evade them. They kept yelling, then got dangerously closer to the scene to escort him away.

Already tense because of the potential danger of the scene, they were furious at what they viewed as Sepulveda’s noncompliance with their order. They handcuffed Sepulveda, who is 64 years old, right away. Then they brought him to a parked cruiser blocking traffic at Emerson and Whalley. They took his Canon 7D camera. They placed him in the cruiser. They planned to drive him later to police headquarters and charge him with multiple offenses.

The Decision To Arrest

I was waiting with Independent reporter Markeshia Ricks at the bus stop on the Green at 4:20 p.m. when I first got word of the bomb threat. By coincidence, we were waiting to take a B bus to that intersection, because we were participating in an event scheduled that night at Beth El-Keser Israel (where I’m a congregant). Sponsored by Delta Sigma Theta, a sorority of African-American college-educated women, the event was a forum on the significance to New Haven of Donald Trump’s election.

Realizing it would take a while to arrive at the scene, I called Sepulveda, who lives a few blocks away from Harrison and Whalley. I asked him to go to the scene to interview evacuees and take pictures until I could arrive.

We decided not to take the B bus, since Whalley Avenue would inevitably be backed up because of the intersection closings. We waited for the Q bus, which travels down Edgewood, then over to Fountain.

As the bus neared the corner of Alden and Fountain, I was startled to see no police tape or any cruiser or any cops blocking the intersection of Harrison — even though that was the closest entry point to the scene.

I checked in with the police by phone, and was told not to enter that way. So Ricks and I got off at Emerson and walked to Whalley, where Sepulveda was handcuffed inside the patrol car far from the scene.

Officer Chris Landucci was by the cruiser, writing up Sepulveda. I asked him about the arrest. He and a colleague patiently explained how they were telling Sepulveda to get away from the pressure cookers. (Click on the video at the top of this story to watch that conversation.)

“There’s a police line. He’s not supposed to be beyond it. Nobody’s supposed to be out there except guys with bomb suits,” Landucci said. ​“We had to ask him several times” before Sepulveda complied.

Landucci imitated how instead of leaving, Sepulveda crouched down. He portrayed it as an elusive action.

“If you saw it,” he said, ​“you would be like, ​‘What is he doing over there?’”

I asked him if it was necessary to arrest Sepulveda rather than simply escort him from the danger area.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Landucci informed me. “‘Interfering with a police investigation.’ You understand? That’s the end of the story.”

In fact, police officers make decisions every day about whether to arrest someone and whether to press charges. They have discretion. They don’t have to arrest someone just because they can. Of course sometimes arrests are necessary, but sometimes they’re unnecessary, and sometimes they make a problem worse. Often they’re a way for officers angry about a citizen’s conduct at a tense scene to retaliate, especially when it comes to that catch-all offense ​“interfering with a police officer,” which translates into common parlance as ​“we can arrest you whenever we feel like it, and at least in New Haven, the state’s attorney always sticks by us.”

Advocates of community policing — including top police officials in their public pronouncements — argue that often it makes more sense not to aggravate a situation and place someone in the criminal justice system with an arrest. They say it makes sense to talk with people to resolve a situation first and understand it. If an arrest can be prevented, it should be, especially if a person who briefly appeared to disobey a request becomes fully compliant.

I asked Landucci to speak with Sepulveda. No dice. ​“You’ll be able to talk to him. In a moment,” he responded. That turned out to be the one untruth he uttered.

The Camera-Grab

I approached Sgt. Renee Dominguez, Westville’s top cop (a.k.a. district manager). She told the same story.

Dominguez was still fuming about Sepulveda’s actions. She said she was determined to charge him with a host of offenses. I apologized for his alleged disobedience of the order to move from the scene. And I didn’t contest her version of events; reporters have an understanding with the police that at crime scenes we have to obey their orders and not get in the way of their doing their jobs. If we disagree with an order, we wait until they’re finished with the job and everyone’s safe before arguing about it. Plus, I hadn’t yet heard Sepulveda’s side.

I asked Dominguez if she had to pile charges up on Sepulveda. She said she had no choice. I asked if I could speak with him. No luck.

Several other officers at the scene, including a supervisor, huddled with Dominguez. I wasn’t privy to the conversation, but they clearly talked her down a bit. She was now planning to limit the arrest to two misdemeanors, interfering with a police officer and — despite the fact that the police had failed to block off the Fountain-Harrison intersection and Sepulveda had never crossed a marked police line — trespassing.

But Dominguez said she wasn’t going to let him just walk. She had a point to make.

And she still had his Canon 7D camera. Which supposedly contained crucial evidence in a big-time criminal ​“investigation” — of the allegedly noncompliant photographer.

Dominquez returned to the cruiser to chat with Sepulveda. I asked to be present at the conversation. She refused.

I remembered what happened when another top cop — then an assistant chief — disapproved of a citizen taking photos of a crime scene with a cell phone. He ordered that citizen arrested, confiscated his cellphone — and, according to the findings of a subsequent internal investigation, ordered an officer to erase the camera’s memory card. I remembered how another sergeant grabbed a different citizen’s cellphone camera and arrested her after she video-recorded him roughing up a handcuffed arrestee. I was concerned about how Dominguez would deal with Sepulveda.

I followed Dominguez to the cruiser. She shot me a glare. She and Landucci ordered me in a threatening tone to back away — the first step, in my experience, to an arrest threat for ​“interfering.”

“Get back!” she yelled, glaring with fury that hadn’t abated since her initial apprehension of Sepulveda more than a half hour earlier.

So I kept my distance. I didn’t trust what Dominguez would do next (why else the need to do it privately?), but I didn’t want to risk a second arrest.

I found out later that my fears were justified. She told Sepulveda he could have the camera back but she wanted his memory card first. Thankfully Sepulveda, despite having been detained and handcuffed for over a half hour, had the presence of mind not to agree to turn it over. She had no warrant for it. Or any good reason for it.

Finally, he was released with a summons to appear in court.

How Sepulveda Saw It

Then I finally got to hear Sepulveda’s side of the story. I believed his version, too — even though it was markedly different.

He said he had walked up to the scene from Fountain Street. He never encountered police tape or police barricades from his approach from Fountain Street. Sepulveda spotted the pressure cookers but said he gave them a wide berth.

From across the street, he started taking photos. He’s a professional photographer. Photographers often crouch when they shoot an object on the ground. He crouched. To the cops that looked like an evasive action. (Or as Officer Landucci put it, ​“What’s he doing over there?”) In Sepulveda’s view, he was doing his job. And concentrating on it.

He was also using a flash because of the darkness and said he was not trying to hide.

He said that the moment he was told to leave the scene, he started back up. The cops said they had to yell at him several times. I believe both of them — I believe Sepulveda was concentrating on taking that quick photo, then realized he was being yelled at, and and walked backward, heeding police directives to get back.

“‘I’m backing up!’” Sepulveda remembered telling them as they yelled at him. ​“I wanted them to know I was following their directions.”

Either way, it was a brief encounter. Sepulveda did not after that brief moment act in any way that could be construed as defying police orders and was wearing an exterior ID badge.

He said the officers and Sgt. Dominguez rebuked him, then led him to the police car a block away at Emerson. He explained he was a reporter taking photos. He explained that no one had told him not to, that he hadn’t crossed any blocked-off areas.

Dominguez grabbed his jacket from behind and ​“pushed me forward like I didn’t have the ability to walk,” Sepulveda recalled.

At the police car, the cops went through his pockets, took his wallet, took his phone, emptied all his personal possessions onto the car hood, he recalled. ​“We will have to take your camera,” he recalled Dominguez telling him.

“Why?” he asked.

“For evidence,” she replied.

“Evidence of what?” he asked.

He remained in the car for at least a half hour. Dominguez at one point returned and informed him that she might take the memory card from his camera and hold onto it. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head in objection. She then asked him to show her the photos on the camera, he said. So he did. To her surprise, there were just a few photos, from a distance, of the pressure cookers.

The camera and personal items were returned after handcuffs had been removed a good 30 minutes after the incident began.

Sepulveda was understandably upset after his release from the car: ​“I was on public property and crossed no police barriers. Their perimeter was set way back up Whalley Avenue. They were angry because they perceived their perimeter had been breeched; I came from an entirely different direction. I kept what I considered a safe distance, but they were ready to trump up charges — and did,” he concluded.

But he didn’t want to make himself the story. He told me how much he values the work the police do and the dangerous situations they place themselves in to protect us.

An NHPD Disease

Still, the incident continued to eat at him. He felt unfairly treated and unnecessarily arrested.

It continued eating at me, too, for days. For years we and others in the public have wrestled with this police department on the question of cameras and citizens’ general rights. Despite repeated promises to the contrary, the department doesn’t even begin to take citizens’ rights seriously.

After that assistant chief, Ariel Melendez, had to retire from the force in the wake of a devastating police report — revealing him as a liar and a thug trampling on citizen’s constitutional rights  — the department wrote a new general order. They told cops that except in rare circumstances, they can’t take people’s cameras. They trained officers at the academy in the new order.

Then came that second incident involving the officer taking the citizen’s cellphone and arresting her. (Above is the video she took that angered the officer.) The police chief at the time said he couldn’t discipline the officer based on the general order, because he considered the general order poorly drafted. (He did discipline the officer, who subsequently retired, for excessive force in the handling of the other arrestee in the case.)

An attorney in both cases, the late Diane Polan, filed suit against the city on behalf of both citizens. The city settled the suit by paying $31,500 and making a promise in a consent decree to rewrite the general order and train officers in it. It then took years to make a minor tweak in the order to rewrite it.

And department brass continued to look the other way as officers violated citizens’ rights. A high-ranking cop slapped a cellphone to the ground in a Wal-Mart parking lot when a citizen video-recorded her in a dispute; then, according to an internal investigation, she lied about it. She wasn’t disciplined. She was promoted.

At a tense scene outside a liquor store on Whalley another evening, officers demanded that a distraught woman named Tyeisha Hellamns, a friend of an arrestee, back up from the scene while she took video. She refused. So they escorted her away. Instead of de-escalating the situation — in the style of special training brass made a public show of bragging about bringing to the department — the officer swore at and threatened the woman, took away her phone, and arrested her.

The officer had a legal right to arrest her. She had ​“interfered.” He also had the ability not to arrest her. Unlike a news photographer, the woman didn’t have an editor nearby to make her case. And she had more to lose in being thrust into the criminal justice system. Meanwhile, the officer’s rude treatment of the woman — watch it in the above video — violated New Haven’s stated policy of how to interact with the public, a crucial part of either building or losing trust with the public. He arrested Hellamns to make a point. The point he inadvertently ended up making is that some New Haven police aren’t so different from the cops we read about in other cities, after all.

New Haven’s police chief at the time spent days defending the officer. He finally acknowledged that the woman shouldn’t have been arrested (though he made no public statements about it). But there were no repercussions.

I’m not suggesting that cops should be fired, or even disciplined, in many of the tense situations in which they have to make fast judgments. Policing is a dangerous, difficult job. New Haven’s cops are dedicated public servants, some of the hardest-working people I know. They risk their lives for us. They deserve the room to make well-intentioned misjudgments.

But cops, like any public servants, should expect to have their actions and judgments reviewed by the public, and monitored by their supervisors. We entrust officers with awesome powers, to deprive us of our liberties or even our lives. Those officers are the products of their training and continued supervision.

And there’s no excuse for supervisors who fundamentally disrespect supposed agreed-upon policies and approaches of community policing. Or can’t control their temper.

When it comes to training and supervising cops in the area of respecting citizens’ rights, the department has failed. (See the above video and click here for a story about another example of anti-community policing. The officer in that case made an unconstitutional claim that he had the right to arrest a protester outside a restaurant because a diner inside complained that his wife didn’t like hearing the protest. In that case, too, the police chief never expressed the slightest concern with or disagreement with the officer’s actions or rationale.)

Just this past week the department promoted an officer to detective who’s being sued for, among other offenses, allegedly seizing a $700 cellphone camera from an irate citizen who recorded him during an arrest. (No sign of the phone-camera since.) The citizen said that when his lawyer later sought to have the phone returned, the police said it had been lost. Of course there are two sides to the story; the officer denies the charge. But it’s telling that higher-up cops didn’t even know about the lawsuit or the camera accusation when they made the promotion. The city’s own attorney in the case had been working on the case for months. He was familiar with the court file, which mentioned the camera charge. But even now the city isn’t taking camera accusations seriously. Supervisors never even heard about a supposedly missing camera.

A Suggested Rx

At this point camera-grabbing by New Haven police officers — and ignoring or making excuses for it at higher levels —is a medical condition in the NHPD, a disease that requires drastic measures to obliterate.

Here’s a suggested prescription for the department: Make the camera rule simpler. No camera-grabbing. Period. Ever. No ​“interference” arrests involving a camera. Ever.

And then enforce the rule. Discipline officers who flagrantly violate it. In cases that involve poor judgment but don’t merit discipline, at least talk about it — send the rank and file the right message, and share that message with a skeptical public. Hold district managers accountable when they lead their officers astray and set the wrong example.

Yes, there are isolated cases in which an officer may by law or department policy take away a camera. Rare cases. There are exceptions that allow it, but those exceptions are more often invoked to excuse the inexcusable, to bully, to seek revenge for minor misbehavior, or to punish citizens for seeking to hold police officers accountable for their actions.

So for now, officers need to hear that their supervisors order them never to take anyone’s phone or camera. Period. Even if they think they need to. Even if they think it’s legal.

If a police officer is angry at a citizen for using a camera, or for not instantly moving with that camera as far away from a scene or as fast as the officer thinks they should, the officer can escort that citizen away. But don’t arrest them. Don’t charge them with ​“interfering.” Because the police’s cavalier use of that term has rendered it meaningless.

Officers might want to talk with people before slapping on handcuffs and arresting them on criminal charges. They might see another side to the story.

No harm will come to the officers or the public if people keep their cameras. Even unpleasant people who lack proper respect for the cops. A phone’s not a gun.

In fact, such a directive might help build respect for the cops. Which will make the cops, and the rest of us, safer.