Dozens of soon-to-be New Haven cops were asked Thursday to imagine themselves watching a fellow officer choke someone to death — and decide how they’d react.
That challenge came from Police Chief Dean Esserman as he and Assistant Chief Al Vazquez visited the police academy to discuss the latest controversial cases in New York City and Ferguson, Missouri, with the two classes of cadets currently being trained to join the force.
Esserman then recounted the meeting and repeated the message to a packed room of 70 top cops and community leaders at the weekly Compstat data-sharing session at 1 Union Ave.
Paul Bass Photo
Mayor Toni Harp (pictured with, from left, Assistant Chief Luiz Casanova, Esserman, and Assistant Chief Anthony Campbell) accompanied the chief to the Compstat meeting and thanked the New Haven force for showing restraint in handling post-Ferguson protests and overall demonstrating a better brand of policing.
Two large protests have taken place in New Haven in the week since a grand jury decided not indict a white officer for shooting dead an unarmed 18-year-old black man. Another local protest is planned Friday over a Wednesday decision by a New York grand jury not to indict a white police officer who choked to death an unarmed black 43-year-old man accused of illegally selling “loosie” cigarettes.
“With two academy classes going on, the biggest mistake would be to be silent,” Esserman told the Compstat room. “Silence is for cowards.”
He repeated a message from the earlier meeting with the cadets: “The words ‘serve and protect’ mean something. The word ‘guardian’ means something.” (the two classes have 69 cadets total.)
Esserman asked officers to put themselves in the place not of the New York cop who choked Eric Garner to death, but of the other cops who saw him do it while Garner cried out for help.
“Would you have put your hands on that officer and said, ‘Step back and let me help you?’” Esserman asked. “Would you have listened to Eric Garner say 11 times, ‘I can’t breathe,’ and try to help him? Would you have had the moral courage to have stopped that officer?”
Most cops face a “moment” of moral challenge like that in the course of their careers, Esserman said. Several high-ranking members of the force told the rookies about times they’d stepped between another officer and an arrestee to de-escalate an encounter that could turn violent. At those moments an officer needs to remember not just the procedures, but the “purpose of policing,” Esserman said: to serve the community, the law, and the constitution.
After he spoke, Mayor Harp thanked the cops for dramatically reducing crime this year while also pursuing community policing.
As of Nov. 30, shootings have dropped 13.1 percent, murders 29.4 percent, and armed robbery 23.6 percent in 2014 compared to the first 11 months of 2013. The year-to-date figures have dropped steadily since a peak in 2011 — homicides 61.3 percent overall, non-fatal shootings 57.3 percent, and shots fired 58.8 percent.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
The Nov. 25 downtown post-Ferguson protest.
Harp noted that some protesters taunted police during at this downtown protest on Nov. 25 (pictured). “Surge on us,” one speaker told the assembled cops. “We’ll surge on you.”
“Your officers did not arrest. They did not act out of having been abused by the public,” Harp said. “Because they understand how important it is for the public to speak out. because they are mature, we did not have the problems they had in Ferguson,” where protesters and cops had violent clashes.
Harp, who as an alderwoman in the early 1990s helped craft New Haven’s community-policing program, said the approach has paid off. She said hears from many members of the public that they feel safer than before.
“The type of policing we do … is hard,” Harp said. “It requires that your officer sand you police yourselves” and “relate to people who aren’t [always] easy to relate to.
“You do it with dignity. And you make me proud.”