Re: More evidence of incompetence at the New Haven Police
The New Haven Police can't even make routine arrests let alone conduct a murder investigation. It's time for the State's Attorney's office to launch a full investigation of widespread incompetence there, including what also appears to be a deliberate effort to release misinformation to cover-up their misdeeds.
- Jeff
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Cops need more training, top state?s attorney says
By JoAnne Viviano, Register Staff April 25, 2000
NEW HAVEN ? Several arrests by city police officers each month are rejected by prosecutors because of "flagrant violations of someone?s rights," a top state?s attorney said Monday.
Supervisory Assistant State?s Attorney Cecilia Wiederhold said hundreds of charges are dropped because of problems with the way police handle a stop. The causes range from honest errors to obvious violations of personal rights, she said.
Wiederhold manages New Haven prosecutors in the Elm Street courthouse where misdemeanor and low felonies are handled. She said prosecutors reject such cases and send reports back to the police department for review.
The numbers show more training is necessary to teach officers how to handle themselves when making stops, said retired Capt. Rick Randall.
The comments came during a panel discussion sponsored by the Yale University Student Legal Action Movement and the People Against Injustice community organization.
Randall said more police training is also needed to enforce local policies. He said officers face a "balancing act" each day when they decide who to pull over.
A black man wearing a hooded sweatshirt walking though a middle class neighborhood at 3 a.m. has a 90 percent chance of being stopped if seen by an officer, Randall said. A white man in the same circumstances has a 50 percent chance, he said.
He said such stops are not necessarily bad but are "the reality of the job."
But Assistant Public Defender Beth A. Merkin said such practices can "evolve into something very bad."
Current law allows officers to pat down people they suspect of a crime, she noted. If young men are standing in their own neighborhood, on their own porch and turn the other way when a police officer drives by, that officer can search them, she said.
People Against Injustice member Barbara Fair of West Haven said she has also known officers to go a few steps further and illegally "strip search" men on the street with no apparent probable cause.
Randall, who retired from the department?s internal affairs unit, said the number of officers receiving complaints has declined in recent years.
The unit instituted a policy to keep track of community complaints against officers five years ago, he said.
Any officer receiving more than three complaints is referred to the police chief.
As a result, the number of officers reviewed each year has dropped from 15 to two, he said.
"If we do not begin to train our police officers ? they can only begin to use their best guess in quick judgment situations," he said. "And that?s just not good enough."
¸New Haven Register 2000
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