Grant helps build bonds between cops, youth
A grant from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving and the Travelers Championship will equip police officers in the Greater Hartford area to build better relationships with youth and young adults through training, education and community conversations.
The grant will award $400,000 over three years to the University of New Haven’s Center for Advanced Policing and the Tow Youth Justice Institute to create the Connecticut Institute for Youth and Police Relations, a yearlong program for officers in the Greater Hartford area. The first sixth months will be intensive educational training and after that, officers will work on a project that
addresses an area of need in the community.
Though the initiative has been in the works for over a year, it will launch at what is being called a critical time for police and community relations. Since George Floyd’s murder in Minnesota, activists across the nation and Connecticut residents have been calling for more police accountability, transparency and training on deescalation tactics.
“The Center for Advanced Policing is working to build bridges between the police and fragile communities through empathy, lived experiences, and training,” Lorenzo Boyd, director of the University of New Haven’s Center for Advanced Policing, said. “Our focus will be on fostering relationships by showing respect for the members of our Black community, cultivating compassion and empowering officers to enact change in their departments as well as in the communities they serve.”
The educational component will be taught by University of New Haven faculty and will focus on “changing approaches to situations that arise in the field and strategies for deescalating them while integrating restorative justice approaches.”
Danielle Cooper, director of research at the Tow Youth Justice Institute, and one of the creators of the program, said some of the training will focus on finding common ground between officers and the youth, understanding trauma, as well as exploring generational differences between youth and officers and the perception of the police within the community.
“We want to reduce the distance between officers and youth. We want to make sure those shared experiences can be discussed and learned from. How do we get more positive relations in the long term?” Cooper said. “I think some of the loudest, most painful cries we hear are coming from our young people right now. How can we continue to amplify their voices, acknowledge their concerns and bring them to the table.”
Cooper said the program will fill a need in Connecticut for more training and education around youthpolice relations.
“We know in terms of the training that is offered … only a small portion, about three hours, is focused on young adult issues and youth issues,” she said. “We want to augment that heavily. We felt like there was a gap and an opportunity.”
The Capitol Region Chiefs of Police Association has endorsed the institute’s mission and said they are honored to work with the Center for Advanced Policing and the Tow Youth Justice Institute.
“Providing comprehensive training to expand our officers’ skills and ability to use a restorative approach in their interactions with our youth is vital to successful youth engagement,” Windsor Police Chief Donald Melanson, president of the Capitol Region Chiefs of Police Association, said. “As seen throughout our nation, law enforcement must continue the important work of building trust and legitimacy with the communities we serve. Understanding the impact of trauma on youth and families and interacting with youth in conversation will go a long way toward bettering police-youth relations. These interactions will assist in developing lasting positive police relations to build a better future for all.”
Hartford Foundation President Jay Williams said area police departments have been receptive to the institute’s goals and participating.
“This program has received extensive support from local police departments throughout Greater Hartford, as their buy-in and commitment are crucial to the long-term success of this important initiative,” he said.
In addition to the training for police, the grant will fund community listening sessions and surveys of Connecticut residents to gather their perspectives on police and community relations.
This portion of the grant will be administered by Central Connecticut State University’s Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy. The feedback will be included in a final report by the state’s police transparency and accountability task force, founded by the legislature last year.
“Hopefully at the end we’ll be able to bring back some tangible ideas to the task force on how collectively the public perceives police accountability and transparency and what they would like to see happen,” Andrew Clark, director of the institute, said.