Thomas Breen photo
Emma Jones at vote: CRB needs diverse voices like Steve Hamm’s.
The Board of Alders all but unanimously rejected the mayor’s nominations of a retired cop and of a Wooster Square journalist/filmmaker to serve on the retooled Civilian Review Board — earning applause from police accountability activists in attendance, and words of frustrated caution from the movement’s matriarch.
That vote took place Monday night during the monthly meeting of the full Board of Alders in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall.
The board unanimously voted to approve six of Mayor Toni Harp’s 11 CRB nominations, and all but one alder unanimously voted against the other five for the CRB, which will have subpoena power to explore citizen complaints of police misconduct. Morris Cove Alder Sal DeCola cast the sole vote against turning down former West Haven cop Bob Proto.
Board members cast the votes with barely any public debate or explanation.
Many in the crowded room clapped and cheered as the alders turned down the nominations of former West Haven cop Bob Proto and Wooster Square filmmaker and journalist Stephen Hamm.
Emma Jones, the guiding force for decades behind the movement that led to the city’s newly created police oversight board, offered a different perspective.
The Board of Alders on Monday night.
Some CRB supporters criticized Hamm at last month’s Aldermanic Affairs Committee nomination hearing for being a “centrist,” for having an inadequate understanding of structural racism, and for harboring latent sympathies towards police officers as evidenced by his new community policing documentary. Jones, on the other hand, praised Hamm as someone who would have brought to the board a set of skills and experiences different from those of any other nominee: a reporter’s commitment to pursuing the truth and a professional writer’s ability to communicate clearly and persuasively.
“He impressed me,” Jones said about Hamm. “I thought of him as a great possibility for the board.”
The six mayoral nominees approved to serve on the inaugural CRB are: West Rock Democratic Ward Committee Co-Char Iva Johnson, police accountability activist Jewu Richardson, Faucett, Newhallville Community Management Team Secretary Nina Faucett, Yale neuroscience PhD Richard Crouse, Fair Haven landscaping company owner Jayuan Carter, and Dixwell educator Jean Jenkins.
The five mayoral nominees turned down by the Board of Alders on Monday night include: Hamm, Proto, Connecticut College Associate Professor of Art Chris Barnard, Quinnipiac Meadows Community Management Team Co-Chair Donald Spencer, and University of Bridgeport constitutional law professor Ryan Knox. Roth spoke up during the meeting to explain that the reason Knox was not able to make it to last month’s Aldermanic Affairs Committee nomination hearing was because he was stuck in Bridgeport, with roads closed due to torrential downpours, and that he did not know whom at the city to contact about his unexpected absence.
Jones, who has been advocating for a New Haven CRB with subpoena power for the past 22 years ever since East Haven police chased, shot and killed her son Malik, said the CRB will be legitimate only if it is fair, diverse, and unbiased, both towards police officers and towards victims of police violence. All CRB supporters should advocate for members based on their capacity for justice, fairness, humanity, and collaboration, she said.
“We want a variety and a diverse group of people who understand how to work with other people,” she said, “and be fair to the process.”
“If we put everybody on the board who looks alike, who thinks alike,” she said, “we may end up in more trouble than we bargained for.”
Emma Jones with nominee Jewu Richardson.
She remained skeptical of Proto’s nomination, she said. She argued that the CRB should be populated entirely by civilians, and Proto is a recent retiree from the West Have police force. The board should, however, consider hiring or bringing on pro bono a police officer who can help the civilian members understand exactly how the police department functions, Jones argued.
Ultimately, she said, she has spent too many years researching and fighting for a CRB to see it be delayed or even scuttled by demands that the all of the members adhere to a certain ideology.
“We can’t be so close-minded,” she said. “My son, Malik Jones’s blood is on this CRB. I have to think fairly” for both police and civilians who ultimately come beofre the board.
Stephen Hamm.
After the hearing, Hamm said he appreciated Jones’s perspective and said he didn’t regret submitting his name for the CRB nomination process, or penning an op-ed for the Independent in which he pushed back at his critics as “bullies.”
“This board will be effective the more it focuses on the truth,” he said, and the less it focuses on historic injustices perpetrated by police, particularly against people of color. An officer should not be punished simply for belonging to a historically unjust system of law enforcement, he said, if he or she has truly done nothing wrong in a particular incident.
“You’ve got to be fair to people,” he said.
The alders, for their part, said little to nothing during the meeting about why they were voting for or against any given nominee.
The only two alders to publicly share any thoughts on particular candidates were Newhallville/Prospect Hill Alder Steve Winter, who praised nominee Nina Faucett’s “thoughtfulness, thoroughness, and kindness”; and Downtown Alder Abby Roth, who said she was impressed by Hamm’s presentation to the Aldermanic Affairs Committee but was persuaded to vote against him because of his ill-judged, overly reactive online debates with critics after the committee hearing.
Otherwise, Board of Alders Majority Leader Richard Furlow introduced each of the 11 nominees by name with the recommended disposition of approval or “leave to withdraw.” Then Hill Alder and Aldermanic Affairs Committee Chair Evelyn Rodriguez would read a rote statement about how the committee had held a five-hour hearing on the nominations, had listened to public testimony and deliberated among themselves, and had decided to recommend approval or denial of each accordingly, with no further explanations of why.
After the meeting, mayoral staffer Esther Armmand said that the the mayor will now return to the list of names originally submitted by the city’s 12 community management teams to decide which new nominations to make for the CRB. The ordinance states that each of the city’s 10 police districts must be represented on the board, she said. Besides that criterion, the mayor’s office will decide on nominations based on diversity of ethnicity, experience, and background as well as degree of interpersonal skills and ability to collaborate, Armmand said.
Per the ordinance, the board can have up to 15 members, with a minimum quorum of seven. One of those members must be an alder, and at least two must be at-large members appointed by the Board of Alders. Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers declined to specify when the alders plan to put forward their nominees for the board.
“It’s gonna happen soon,” she promised.