In a late-game mailer, mayoral contender Tony Dawson blasted John DeStefano for making the city the “4th most dangerous in America,” called opponent Clifton Graves a mayoral “puppet,” and pledged to “immediately” fire the police chief. Crank up the Truth-o-Meter!
Dawson’s attack flyer reached mailboxes last Thursday in the final stretch before Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary. (A similar flyer appeared in mailboxes a day later.)
In it, Dawson took aim at Graves and DeStefano. He didn’t mention his third opponent, Jeffrey Kerekes — indicating that it doesn’t help him to try to attack Kerekes because they are not angling for the same voters. On the other hand, Dawson and Graves are both competing directly for the black vote as their bases of support. All four candidates are set to face in Tuesday’s primary along with 16 sets of aldermen.
The Independent fed Dawson’s statements into its Truth-o-Meter, which judges the veracity of campaign rhetoric. Read below for the verdicts.
Claim #1: New Haven “The 4th Most Dangerous City in America”
Dawson used this claim, along with an unflattering headshot of DeStefano, as part of a broader attack on DeStefano’s record on crime. The claim comes from a ranking produced by a website called 24/7wallstreet, based on FBI crime statistics.
The ranking has been dismissed as statistically specious, because New Haven counts a limited geographical area as its city limits, while other cities include suburban areas in their geographic domain, driving their crime numbers down. Click here for a back story analyzing the claim; click here for analysis by Mark Abraham at Data Haven.
It’s true that with 25 homicides, the city has already surpassed the homicides in the entire last year. (There were 22.) Crime is a serious issue this year.
But the Truth-o-Meter rates Dawson’s particular “fourth most dangerous” claim as “dubious.”
Claim #2: Graves’ Record.
In a box inked in alarming red, Dawson ticks off reasons he believes Clifton Graves doesn’t have “the record we need.” He lobs two charges that Graves was “charged with tax evasion” and was “suspended by the Connecticut Bar Association.”
The Truth-o-Meter rates those are both as completely true; read more details here in a previous story.
Dawson’s third point — that Graves “worked for John DeStefano until June 2011” and is therefore a “puppet of DeStefano” deserves more examination.
Graves served as deputy corporation counsel for Former Mayor John Daniels, who preceded DeStefano. Most recently, he was hired as a contractor by the Board of Education to run a tutoring program for at-risk black and Latino boys. That makes him an outside contractor who did business with the school district, not a direct employee or “puppet” of John DeStefano.
The Truth-o-Meter rates that claim as “dubious.”
Claim #3: Dawson has “30 years’ experience in law enforcement.”
This claim appears on the reverse side of the flyer, where Dawson paints himself as “the only candidate for mayor with the experience to stop New Haven’s crime wave.”
Along the campaign trail, Dawson has also referred to himself as a lieutenant and a police officer. He said at Thursday’s debate that people have dismissed him as “just a security guard,” when he has a long record of experience in law enforcement.
Reached Friday, Dawson explained what he means by 30 years of law enforcement experience.
For the past 28 years, he has been a security guard at Yale-New Haven Hospital. For the first 22 of those years, he had arrest powers, he said. He went to the municipal police training program in Meriden, where other municipal cops get their certifications. He got his certification, which allowed him to make arrests on the premises of the hospital.
In his 22 years, Dawson said, he has made four arrests, including for disorderly conduct and for an armed robbery that took place at the hospital. After a dispute in which some Yale-New Haven cops arrested union organizers, Mayor John DeStefano and his police commission opted to take away the hospital police force’s constable powers.
Dawson estimated he has spent six years as a security guard, without powers of arrest. That doesn’t mean he isn’t enforcing the law, he said — if he sees people breaking the law, his job is to detain them until a New Haven cop with arresting powers arrives at the scene.
Dawson, who’s 52, argued that he has been involved in law enforcement even longer than he advertises on his campaign flyer; At the age of 16, he got hired by the city police force’s Youth Division as a youth counselor. That gave him the “authorization to go in the building and communicate with cops,” he said.
Dawson later worked in a victim witness advocacy program and for 16 years as a Hill alderman. He argued that all that work counts as “law enforcement” — whether it’s encouraging marchers on Winchester to act peacefully, preventing a kid from joining a life of crime, or encouraging a witness to speak up about a crime.
The Truth-o-Meter needle wavered in the middle of the dial: Dawson did have arrest powers for 22 years, but that is eight years shy of his claim. The meter found his definition of “law enforcement” to be overly broad.
Claim #4: I’ll Fire The Chief
On the same side of his campaign flyer, Dawson pledges that if elected, he will “immediately” fire New Haven Police Chief Frank Limon.
This claim is problematic because Limon does not serve at the will of the mayor. He has a four-year contract that ends on Jan. 31, 2014, according to mayoral spokesman Adam Joseph.
Under the city charter, Limon is considered a department head and cannot be unless there is due cause, “which may not be political in nature,” Joseph said.
Given this legal hurdle, the Truth-o-Meter finds it is “dubious” that a mayor could immediately fire the chief. If he did so, he’d be staring at a hefty lawsuit.
Previous Truth-O-Meter installments:
• Did Parking Fee “Double” When Yale Bought Lot?
• Bull’s‑Eyes, Errant Arrows In Debate Attacks
• 1 Picture, 2 Interpretations