New Haven chief: Healthy communities ‘don’t need the police’

New Haven Police Chief Otoniel Reyes said that the underlying issues of poverty and injustice in the community need to be addressed, but not with the police.

“Some people say to me, ‘You’re a cop; you’re almost talking against having more police,’” Reyes said. “Well, yeah I am. Because the communities don’t need the police. If you want healthy communities, they are devoid of police.”

Reyes and other community leaders spoke at a virtual forum, “Policing in This Current Age: A Conversation,” hosted by the Jewish Federation of New Haven, Rev. Stephen Cousin and Rep. Themis Klarides. Reyes focused his remarks on the problems that communities face that police cannot solve and in some cases, are exacerbated by police.

“Our goal should be to rid our communities of police,” Reyes said. “That’s how we know we have gotten somewhere, the question is, are we ready for that right now?”

Reyes, who grew up in New Haven, said that there is much less crime on the streets than when he was a little boy. But he noted that the amount of poverty has remained the same and in some cases increased.

“The social economic issues that are still making it difficult for people to come out and succeed, education issues, all these systemic issues — if we want to stop the prison pipeline and we continue to have a large presence of police in a community and you have you have a community that is impoverished with kids who resort to selling drugs, you’re going to have police arresting kids for selling drugs,” Reyes said.

Adding law enforcement to the equation creates a cycle that ultimately results in more arrests and more people in prison, and Reyes said the way to stop the cycle is to take a look at the role of police.

“Do we need to hire good cops?” Reyes asked. “Of course we do. Do we need to make sure that we have good community-police relations? Of course we do. But to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you put law enforcement out there to handle community issues, they see drug issues and they address it. But in the same breath we say we don’t want our kids going to jail for low-level drug offenses.”

Reyes’s comments followed a discussion between other leaders and activists about the idea of “defunding the police” which has risen in popularity in the wake of George Floyd’s death and subsequent protests.

Rev. Keith King of Christian Tabernacle Baptist Church in Hamden said he is not in favor of defunding police.

“I think that is a term to suggest we don’t need the police,” King said. “There are times when people are committing crimes of violence when I think all of us would want someone with a firearm.”

He said the idea of defunding should not be so much about getting rid of the police as it is about determining the role of police alongside other professionals

“Are the police engaged in activities that other social professionals, other social services could handle?” King asked.

Issues like domestic abuse and traffic violations should not be handled by a police officer King said.