The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Few clashes between protesters, police
Milk, poured on Joe Grits’ face by fellow protesters, helped ease the pain. But the back of Grits’ head and shoulders, where the police-deployed pepper spray had also hit, burned all day.
At the time of the incident, Grits, a local rapper who performs under the name Joe Grit$, and at least two other protesters were attempting to enter the Bridgeport Police Department lobby to speak with Chief of Police Armando “AJ” Perez on May 30. Tension ensued.
“We wanted to ask the chief some questions about what changes were going to be made," Grits said in an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media. “Mostly everybody pays taxes in this city, so we shouldn’t be stopped from walking in the police station ... but (when Perez came out), he had a bunch of officers blocking him like he was the Pope or the king or something like that.”
According to Grits, the protesters believed they had the right to occupy the municipal space. But according to police, protesters ignored repeated requests to vacate the area, prompting officers to deploy pepper spray to disperse the crowd.
The Bridgeport incident was among many in which
the death of George Floyd, a black Minneapolis man killed by police May 25.
Four officers, including one who knelt on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes, have been arrested. But the killing, which was captured on cellphone video, has sparked nationwide protests that have, at times, devolved into violence.
Connecticut has not been immune to the unrest. Like Grits in Bridgeport, protesters in New Haven were also pepper-sprayed on May 31 after trying to enter the city’s police department, demanding to speak with Mayor Justin Elicker. According to cellphone footage from the scene, one protester was pushed to the ground by police.
A spokesman for the New Haven police department did not respond to requests for incident reports and information pertaining to police use of force during the recent protests.
Other police departments in municipalities where protests have occurred reported no use of force incidents as of Friday, according to a Hearst Connecticut Media survey of communities in Fairfield and New Haven counties as well as state police and the city of Hartford.
The Connecticut demonstrations have occurred each day for more than a week, often shutting portions of major highways as protesters march to local police departments. Some of these demonstrations have led to arrests.
State police detained two protesters in Bridgeport last weekend. Another protester was arrested by state police in New Haven and charged with interfering with an officer after he “became non-compliant by aggressively attempting to pull away,” state police said.
In Waterbury, where interactions between protesters and police were perhaps most fraught, 28 were arrested May 31. Demonstrators damaged police vehicles and one officer was injured, according to police.
“My experience was a little different than I think most protests that occurred in Connecticut,” said Waterbury Police Chief Fernando C. Spagnolo, whose department is processing a Hearst Connecticut Media public information request about whether there were any use of force incidents during the protests. “But my experience is extremely different from most protests that we’ve seen reported on by media throughout the country.”
The nationwide unrest, which has included violence and looting, did have some effect on Connecticut this weekend with the temporary closure of Clinton Crossing outlets in response to online threats of rioting. Other Connecticut businesses have boarded up their windows also as a precaution.
However, according to police and organizers, Connecticut’s protests have, in general, mostly remained peaceful and orderly. That is a credit to both law enforcement and protesters, one expert said.
“What you don’t see in Connecticut, for the most part, is riot gear, military vehicles, tear gas, curfews, ultimatums — the in-your-face kind of tactics that you see elsewhere in the country,” said Mike Lawlor, a criminal justice professor at the University of New Haven who was once an advisor to Gov. Dannel Malloy and former Connecticut state representative. “All of that is a form of escalation. When you get people who are very fired up, any push-back, regardless of what motivates it, is going to be provocative. We just haven’t seen very much of that in Connecticut.”
A peaceful approach
Spagnolo and other law enforcement leaders said much of their success has to do with communication with organizers and protesters.
“We try to meet or speak with organizers beforehand to work out a mutual plan,” Stamford Assistant Police Chief Thomas Wuennemann said. “If they are local, hopefully, we already have some connection through our relationships with the community. It appears that in most places, the violence is being perpetuated by people who live outside of the communities that are experiencing the violence.”
Norwalk Police Lt. Jared Zwickler said his department partnered with organizers ahead of the city’s protests to try to allow their voices to be heard.
“Our goal was to ensure the safety of everyone involved,” Zwickler said. “We continue to strengthen ties to our community and address concerns as best we can. The safety of our communities is our primary goal.”
Since the protests, Spagnolo said he’s employed an open-door policy, meeting with members of the Waterbury community and trying to advance the dialogue about police brutality and find common ground in the wake of protests, which he said at times has taken a negative turn. According to Spagnolo, officers were harassed by a small segment of protesters and police cars were damaged on May 31.
“It was a difficult day in Waterbury,” Spagnolo said. “But we still stand by the black community. We stand behind the black community in this country about the real issues of systemic racism. Black lives matter and police brutality needs to come to an end. We need more transparency and better communication. Their voices need to be heard and we understand that. We want to work in that direction. Our ears and doors are open.”
Protesters, too, have largely attempted to strike a peaceful tone.
Lesline Banks, a social worker and organizer for March for Justice, which organized a demonstration last week in Stamford, said the goal of her group was to demand justice in a peaceful manner.
“The whole cause was for us not to protest,” Banks said of the Wednesday event. “We don’t call it a protest. It was a march and I specifically explained that it would be about prayer. That was our purpose. That we would go out and pray for our city, pray for the world and talk about people who have lost their lives unjustly.”
Nicole Rincon, an organizer with the group Justice For Brunch, which coordinated a May 31 protest in Stamford, said isolating a clear message for demonstrations and communicating with law enforcement have been key. Attempts by police to deescalate tense situations have also helped.
“Maintaining that peaceful consistency is why I have yet to see the (police) show up in riot gear or anything different than regular uniforms . ... But I think as long as dialogue between the Stamford Police Department and Justice For Brunch continues, I think demonstrations can continue to be peaceful,” Rincon said. “It’s difficult to maintain peace when police show up weaponized.” Lawlor said the mostly positive outcomes of recent protests are likely due, at least in part, to more than a decade of reform and reevaluation of policing in Connecticut and nationwide.
The blueprint, Lawlor said, is former President Barack Obama’s 2015 guide on 21st Century Policing, which at the time was endorsed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and urges a series of strategies to restore trust between police and the communities they serve.
“I think in large part, many Connecticut police departments have embraced some of these proposals,” Lawlor said. “The first thing on the list, and arguably most important, is police legitimacy. What that means is, if you can find a way to build trust between police and community ... you see less crime.”
Room to grow
Still, there is room for improvement.
Nationwide, there have been calls to defund police departments. Other organizations, like 8 Can’t Wait, are calling for a series of police reforms to curb violence and improve relations between police and the black community.
According to Lawlor, the future of policing may have a lot to do with the November presidential elections.
“If the administration in Washington changes, the new administration will likely come in with a mandate to do something very comprehensive,” Lawlor said. “Or if (President Donald) Trump gets reelected, maybe the opposite will happen.”
Lawlor said he anticipates new regulations governing police use of force and encouraging greater transparency from law enforcement and further discussions on things like qualified immunity — a legal doctrine that protects police from lawsuits — and the accountability of officers.
Responding to everyday problems that may not pose an immediate risk to public health and safety — like mental health issues, homelessness and situations involving troubled youth — might also be taken off the hands of police, Lawlor said.
“It’s important to have police and provide public safety,” Lawlor said. “But a lot of what they do on an everyday basis is not like that. So can we have a different organization that can handle that, that don’t come with all the baggage police come with?”
But whatever the reforms, on at least one point, police, protesters and experts agree: The response to Floyd’s death has been unique.
“What is happening right now is completely unprecedented,” Lawlor said. “The awareness of the need for reform has been around for a while, but it’s been supercharged by recent events.”
In Spagnolo’s 28 years of police experience, he’s never seen verbal personal attacks on officers like he witnessed during these protests. He commended his officers, while also acknowledging the anger of the community he serves.
“I understand the anger and I understand, or I believe I understand, and can empathize with where it’s coming from,” Spagnolo said. “I’m not black, so I can never fully understand. But as a government official, I think I can empathize.”
But barring reform, tensions persist between protesters and police. Demonstrations planned statewide in the coming days and weeks abound.
Banks, who was adamant in her calls for peaceful protests, emphasized the dire need for accountability.
“We want action,” Banks said. “We want things to be better. We want to see things resolved and resolved correctly and we want to see perpetrators are getting what they should get for crimes they’ve committed. I believe in forgiveness, but when we do things that are wrong, everything has its consequences.”
And Grits, for one, said he felt dehumanized by police in Bridgeport.
While there was no physical altercation, it took about 20 minutes for his vision to clear after being pepper-sprayed — all as a result of what he viewed as a peaceful request for discourse. Underlying the interaction was still a feeling of hostility.
“It was a calm walk in. And the police tried to close the door,” Grits said. “I feel like they were treating us like animals.”
justin.papp@scni.com; @justinjpapp1; 203-842-2586