For nearly six hours, about 100 protesters — including Yale students — blocked the staircase and escalators that lead from the station to the tracks to demand that Rep. Rosa DeLauro call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and stop voting for military aid to Israel. Organizers wrote in a statement to the News that the goal of the sit-in was to “end business as usual” during what they described as a genocide in Gaza. Israel disputes charges of genocide. Several event attendees told the News that they participated with the intention of police arresting them.

Dave Steckel, the MTA media liaison, wrote to the News that the nine people arrested were issued misdemeanor summons for second-degree breach of peace, which is the “intent to cause inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm or recklessly creating a risk thereof.”

Event attendees disputed the number MTA police offered, saying that 13 people received charges of breach of peace. Steckel declined to comment on the discrepancy, and the News was unable to independently verify either count. The News could not confirm whether Yale students were among those arrested.

During the sit-in, which lasted from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., protesters chanted “Free, free Palestine” and “Get up, get down, we’re anti-war in this town” as they blocked the main stairwell and escalators to the platform. protesters hung a banner over the timetables that read “DeLAURO STOP FUNDING GENOCIDE.” 

According to multiple attendees and video obtained by the News, the protesters directly at the top and bottom of the staircase and escalators locked themselves together with bicycle locks and PVC pipes. While this blocked the stairs and escalators, passengers were still able to get from the station to the tracks using the building’s elevators. 

Around 11 p.m., at least nine and possibly as many as 13 attendees on the bottom floor of the station blocked the elevators to provoke arrest, according to several attendees. They were quickly arrested by MTA police. The rest of the protesters left the station around the same time. Some protesters continued demonstrating outside the station past midnight. 

Steckel wrote that no protesters were detained in a cell after the arrests, and all protesters left the station by 11:00 p.m. Some protesters continued demonstrating outside the station past midnight. 

“We wanted to escalate so that people in ‘lock boxes’ could get arrested because we wanted the image of law enforcement cutting them up,” said one attendee, to whom the News granted anonymity due to safety concerns. “That was the whole purpose of being locked down — you are intending to be arrested after law enforcement ‘unlocks’ you.”

Breach of peace is a Class B misdemeanor in Connecticut and carries penalties of up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Advocates in New Haven and across Connecticut have protested since October in support of a permanent ceasefire to end Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, through which Israel has killed over 32,000 people in Gaza, though experts believe thousands more to be dead. Israel has undertaken the offensive in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in which Hamas killed 1,200 people and took over 250 people as hostages.

The sit-in was organized by what several attendees interviewed by the News described as a collection of individuals who took issue with DeLauro’s support for military aid to Israel and refusal to call for a permanent ceasefire. 

“The point of direct action is to disrupt the business as usual, and really bring attention to these causes,” Abdul Osmanu, a Hamden Town Councilor who attended the sit-in, said. “Oftentimes the needle really doesn’t move without any real meaningful direct action.” 

Osmanu also argued that DeLauro was ignoring the will of her constituents, citing polling that shows the majority of Democrats support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

On March 7, DeLauro — who represents New Haven — put out a statement calling for a six-week ceasefire.

“We must work to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza, free all the hostages held by Hamas, and enact a six-week ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict that allows for the protection and survival of innocent Palestinian civilians caught in the middle of war,” DeLauro wrote. 

On March 22, DeLauro voted for a $1.2 trillion government funding package which passed overwhelmingly and included $3.3 billion in aid to Israel’s military.

DeLauro did not respond to a request for comment on the sit-in or arrests.

The protesters also held an Iftar — the evening meal that breaks the fast for Muslims observing Ramadan — during the sit-in. Osmanu, who is fasting for Ramadan, said that people brought water, dates and pizza, which enhanced the sense of community among the protesters. 

Adam Nussbaum ’25, who participated in the sit-in, said that he had met with staff from DeLauro’s office earlier in the day alongside a delegation from Yale Jews for Ceasefire and described the meeting as frustrating. The protest, by contrast, brought him hope. 

“I think it can easily feel cynical, and in moments like these, seeing so many people rally and put their bodies on the line — saying that we won’t stand for this injustice and this sort of death-making is very moving,” Nussbaum said. “I feel very inspired by it. It just makes me feel like we will win.”

One bystander, who asked only to be identified by their first name Ty due to fear of retaliation from their employer, told the News that they arrived at Union Station around 7 p.m. to catch a train. They said that while they could have gone around the protest to board, they felt “uncomfortable” with breaking the line and wanted to support the ongoing protest.

They added that the protest was “very peaceful” and “powerful,” and that they believed the police were aggressive in their removal of protesters from the stairwell area. Ty ended up taking a train on Friday instead.

Shilpa Patel, a worker at the Sbarro in Union Station, said that the MTA Police “did their job” but that the police were not able to control the protesters as they blocked the escalator and elevator. 

According to attendees and video of the event obtained by the News, more than 30 police officers from four departments — New Haven police, Amtrak police, MTA police and Connecticut State police — were present at the protest, though only MTA police made arrests. 

The Union Station sit-in followed a protest on the New Haven Green Thursday afternoon where approximately 100 Yale and New Haven community members gathered to urge New Haven officials to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. An organizer for the New Haven Green protest told the News that the rally on the green and Union Station sit-in were planned separately. At the end of the rally, the organizers informed protesters that they could march to Union Station to support the action. 

DeLauro has represented New Haven since 1991.

Anika Arora Seth, Khuan-Yu Hall and Kenisha Mahajan contributed reporting.

The post Pro-Palestine protesters arrested at Union Station appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The team was led by a trio of high-scoring seniors  Daniel Ma ’23, Michal Gerasimiuk ’23 and Daniel Sheinberg ’23 — and featured Arthur Delot-Vilain ’25, a self-described “lower level getter of questions.” The Yalies went 12-5 over two days of gameplay at MIT in which the Yale cohort pulled away from their opponents over a dominant 17 games. They placed fifth overall in the country and the highest of any team that was made up solely of undergraduates.

“It was great,” Sheinberg, who serves as one of the co-presidents of Yale Student Academic Competitions, said of the win. “Job’s finished. We can rest.”

Quizbowl is an academic quiz competition in which players compete head-to-head to answer questions on a variety of academic subjects, ranging from chemistry to mythology. 

Yale’s team boasted a wealth of experience. Three of the four players returned from winning the undergraduate title last year. Expectations among the quizbowl community were high.

“I think we were definitely the favorite coming in because we won last year — the undergraduate title — with a weaker team,” Sheinberg said.

The Bulldogs’ primary competition for the undergraduate title was Brown University, who they had beat out for the title on a dramatic final question the year before. For the team, especially the seniors, Brown was a familiar foe. For Ma and Delot-Vilain, some of the Bears were opponents from as far back as high school quizbowl.

The tournament started well for the Yalies. They breezed through the preliminary matches with a 6-1 record, far exceeding what was necessary to qualify for playoffs.

“We avoided being silly,” Delot-Vilain explained of the team’s early success.

The early games included a 440-90 blowout of Columbia University, a traditional powerhouse at the collegiate level. The round featured Ma answering a question about Montreal so quickly, an astonished moderator asked if he was from Quebec. Ma is from New York City.

Yale faced only one setback in the initial games when losing to a team from The Ohio State University. A competitor for the Buckeyes was a graduate student that had been playing collegiate level quizbowl for almost two decades.

The team also avenged their loss in the tournament last year to the University of Texas at Austin. They faced a comfortable match against the Longhorns team.

After clinching a playoff berth, the team broke for lunch — pizza for the seniors, a halloumi BLT for Delot-Vilain — and then returned for what would prove to be their most challenging set of games, starting off against what Gerasimiuk described as “the evil empire”: the University of Chicago.

Chicago, who wound up getting second in the tournament, featured a typically strong team that  included Matt Jackson ’14, who is pursuing a graduate degree at UChicago. Jackson, who attended Yale as an undergraduate, guided the Bulldogs to multiple national championships before finding success on “Jeopardy!”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Chicago held Yale to their worst game of the tournament. The Bulldogs only answered five questions correctly out of 20 asked.

Yale bounced back over their next four games, winning three of them and only losing to a Stanford team that tied them for fifth overall. The team capped the day with a shocking — and razor-thin — upset over the Georgia Institute of Technology, the team that ended up winning the overall national championship.  

“They beat themselves,” Ma explained of the victory. Georgia Tech floundered, missing five questions where they buzzed in first and Yale did just enough to capitalize.

After a night spent in Harvard dorms, the team returned Sunday morning feeling confident about their chances of securing the title over Brown with five games left to play.

Yale had a solid second day of competition, dispatching Duke University, Cornell University and the University of Florida without much difficulty. But the team did feel like they missed an opportunity to outperform expectations with losses to the University of Maryland and Brown.

“We probably dropped two games we shouldn’t have dropped,” co-president Gerasimiuk said. “Had we not done that we would have been playing in the final sequence.”

Unfortunately for Yale, they did lose those two face-offs, running into a Maryland team whose best player had his best round against them, and then incorrectly answering eight questions against Brown, a single-game record for the tournament.

Despite the missed opportunity, Yale did secure the title they came to win, clinching the undergraduate prize with a massive come-from-behind victory over Cornell in which the team rallied after getting only two of the first eight questions. 

Cornell had also won quizbowl’s other national championship tournament the week before, making the victory even more satisfying.

“I think in many ways for me, [the game] embodied how quizbowl should be,” Ma said. “No negs until the last question, great sportsmanship on either side.”

Despite securing the national title with two games to play, Yale did not realize they had won until much later, when they got lunch with their vanquished opponents — Brown.

Over still more halloumi BLTs, Brown filled Yale in on their record, and the team realized they did not have to play in a final because they were already national champions for the second year in a row.

“It took a really long time to find out,” Sheinberg said. “But it was worth it. It was really fun.”

Yale last won national championships in consecutive years in 2011 and 2012. 

The post Yale wins quizbowl national championship for second year in a row appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The program allows Fellows and Associate Fellows — who can be faculty, staff and other Yale affiliates — to form connections with each other and with students over a four-year renewable timespan. Head of College Thomas Near described Saybrook’s Fellowship as a sort of college “social network,” wherein students are able to reach out to specific Fellows based on individual interests and expertise.

Though Fellows are often associated with the University, colleges can nominate and appoint non-Yale employees per year as Associate Fellows. This year, Head Near nominated Fiasco, and Fiasco accepted.

“He’s a big fan of Yale because he’s essentially participated in every one of the Open Yale Courses online on YouTube,” Near explained.

Fiasco’s journey to becoming a Fellow started at an entirely different academic institution: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fiasco has been at MIT for a year as part of its MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars Program, where he taught a course at MIT called Rap Theory and Practice, a technical exploration into the creation of rap music. 

Fiasco also worked with MIT faculty to understand the neurophysiology of spoken word art and rap. While there, he met computational biologist and Yale Assistant Professor Brandon Ogbunu GRD ’10, a member of the same program.

“Lupe represents the kind of thinker that Yale champions,” Ogbunu told the News. “He had a very big impact on MIT.”

He and Ogbunu collaborated on projects and talked, and eventually Ogbunu invited him to take part in a College Tea at Saybrook. 

Nathan Mai ’25 attended the February College Tea, and described the experience as “surreal.” He said that Fiasco had been one of his favorite artists since he first heard the rapper’s feature on “Touch The Sky.”

“He really struck me as a cerebral guy when he was talking,” Mai said. “There were moments where he was quoting Aristotle next to A$AP Rocky… He had all sorts of little influences from everywhere. He seems like a very curious guy.” 

From the tea, Fiasco and Near bonded quickly — near, like Fiasco, is from Chicago, and connected with Fiasco’s music.

“We grew up in different geographic parts of the city, but we both faced very similar pressures, and I’m a white dude, and because of white privilege I was able to escape trouble,” Near noted.  “Lupe escaped trouble…by being an artist.”

His favorite song? “Kick, Push.” the lead single off Fiasco’s first album: “Lupe Fiasco’s Food and Liquor.”

Near nominated Fiasco as an Associate Fellow, and Fiasco was chosen this past March.

“Proud to announce I’ve been chosen to be a Saybrook Fellow at my OTHER favorite school in the whole wide world outside of MIT…@Yale,” Fiasco wrote on his Twitter on March 30. “Shout to Tom Near for nominating me to a place where against all odds two Chicagoans found a home in the Ivy League. #SayBrookCollege #SAYWHAT”

Mai had been following Fiasco’s MIT class from afar, and praised Fiasco’s desire to bring rap music into the university as an art form worth being studied as poetry.

Fiasco will likely continue living in Cambridge in the fall, but Near and Ogbunu are hopeful that he will establish a physical homespace at Yale in some capacity over the next year.

Sartaj Rajpal ’25, who produces hip-hop and house music, praised Fiasco’s lyricism, and said he was particularly excited about the opportunity to learn from such an accomplished hip-hop artist.

“ I will be spending some time in Saybrook that’s for sure,” Rajpal told the News. “I’d love to work with him at some point”

Near and Ogbunu both noted that Fiasco would be a resource for students interested in the arts.

The college will work with the rapper to set up lectures and talks — and perhaps even to establish a course for Fiasco to teach. 

“I love the fact that we have communities where we can bring people all together, regardless of who they are …. We all come together and we find community,” Near explained in closing. “I don’t think there’s a lot of institutions where that happens.”

Lupe Fiasco headlined Yale Spring Fling in 2011. 

The post Lupe Fiasco named Saybrook Associate Fellow appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The student advocacy group began circulating a resolution at the end of March which urges Yale to cut ties with G4S — a British private security company that provides Yale Security with the technology to track swipes into campus buildings. Y4P alleges that G4S has been involved in a litany of violations of human rights around the world, including in Israel and South Africa and at the United States–Mexico border.

The Y4P resolution has been co-signed by 19 student and New Haven organizations, and a petition calling for Yale to divest from G4S has also amassed over 100 signatures.

“With this campaign, specifically, we want to provide students with an outlet to engage in the issue that’s very relevant to them,” said Craig Birckhead-Morton ’24, who is a co-chair of Y4P. “It’s not just about Palestine, in this case, because G4S, broadly, is a part of the system of mass incarceration that’s existed in this country since the 90s.”

When asked to discuss Yale’s relationship with G4S, Ronnell Higgins, Yale’s associate vice president for public safety and community engagement, provided an “independent review” report by two British academics who concluded that G4S’s activities in Israel were not in violation of international law.

“Yale University takes social responsibility and association with vendors seriously,” Higgins told the News. “AMAG Technology has assured the University that it is committed to providing worldwide apolitical, ethical, and socially responsible services. They also affirm a commitment to treating matters of human rights seriously and ensuring that the company conducts its business in a way that meets internationally recognized human rights laws and standards.”   

According to G4S, the service it provides to Yale is the Symmetry SR Retrofit System, which is manufactured by AMAG Technology, a company owned by G4S. Yale upgraded 5,200 access card readers and 947 door controllers to AMAG’s system beginning in 2014. 

G4S did not respond to a request to comment for the article.

G4S’s Human Rights Abuses

In their resolution, Y4P details a series of G4S clients and services that they allege are in violation of international human rights standards.

Within the United States, the resolution criticizes G4S for helping Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol in “imprisoning and deporting refugees.”

G4S was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2018 for keeping four women shackled for hours in suffocating heat. The company was serving as a contractor for ICE and kept the women in a windowless, airless van for a 282-mile trip between migrant detention facilities that took 19 hours longer than it should have, according to the lawsuit.

“G4S is a huge company that has a lot of different arms, where they generally profit off of the securitization and the military industrial complex,” said Rebecca Wessel ’24, a member of Y4P.  “Namely in Israel, but also in other places, they help with a lot of work that ICE does at the border to detain migrants, and have also been involved in human rights abuses in prisons all over the world.”

Y4P also highlights an April 2019 report by the Council on Ethics for the Norwegian Government Pension Global Fund which determined that G4S committed systematic human rights violations against migrant workers it employed to work in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The Council found repeated instances of G4S misleading migrant workers about their wages and working conditions. Workers also universally reported having their passports illegally confiscated by G4S, and several told stories of being forced to work while sick. 

In the conclusion of their report, the Council recommended that the Norwegian pension fund divest from G4S “due to an unacceptable risk that the company is contributing to systematic human rights violations.” And in November of 2019, the pension fund followed the recommendation, adding G4S to its list of excluded companies. 

In South Africa, Y4P organizers took issue with G4S operating Mangaung Prison, the second-largest private prison in the world. At Mangaung, G4S has been accused of torturing a prisoner to death, as well as forcibly administering electric shocks and anti-psychotic drugs to inmates to keep them subdued.

Birckhead-Morton emphasized that the violence G4S committed in South Africa was part of a legacy of European colonialism, with a wealthy British corporation imposing its will on a country that was largely Black and still impoverished.

“It’s gotten so bad, both in Britain and in South Africa, where some of these prisons, which were privatized and contracted out to G4S have been revoked,” Birckhead-Morton said. “I think once people hear that, there’s no doubt that they’ll want the university to cancel the contract.”

In Israel, Y4P organizers point to G4S’s 25 percent ownership stake in the Israeli security company G1 Secure Solutions, which until 2016 was completely owned by G4S. According to NGO WhoProfits, G1 Secure Solutions provides security services to Israeli settlements in areas of the occupied West Bank, settlements which are in violation of international law. 

Higgins did not respond directly to the allegations against G4S in the resolution. 

History of divestment

A number of prominent organizations have divested from G4S for their involvement in human rights abuses. 

On top of the Norwegian pension fund blacklisting G4S, the United Methodist Church did the same in 2014, explicitly citing the company’s then-involvement in Israeli prisons. The Danish pension fund MP Pension also divested from G4S in 2020, referencing the company’s “risk of repeated human rights violations.”

At Columbia University, students were successful in pressuring the university to divest from G4S in 2015. The University of California system also divested from G4S following student pressure the same year, and Cornell followed suit the next spring.

“Because of all the complicity, we are hoping that Yale can end its contract,” Wessel said. “We’ve seen other universities make similar choices, so we feel like it’s a realistic ask.”

Theia Chatelle ’25, the political action coordinator for the Yale Women’s Center, explained the center’s decision to sign on as part of their broader mission of fighting for justice around the world, whether that involves supporting student activism in New Haven or Palestinian organizers abroad.

“It’s Yale involving itself with evil corporations doing evil work around the world,” Chatelle said. “And I think drawing a line in the sand that says, ‘no, we as students are not okay with this’ is really important.” 

G4S made approximately $425 million in profit in 2020.

Correction 4/20: A previous version of this article misattributed quotes from Higgins to Houston. The article has also been updated to reflect that Yale does not have a contractual agreement with G4S, as well as that Yale did not purchase card readers from AMAG Technology but rather converted 947 existing access control panels to the AMAG SR panels.

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The show runs from April 13 to April 15 at the Educational Center for the Arts Theater on Audubon Street. It features YD’s classic mix of dance styles, ranging from contemporary to classical ballet. The anniversary will also be marked by an alumni reunion, something the company has never done before. 

“I’m really excited to have the alumni here this weekend; we’re having alumni all the way back from the origin of the company,” YD Co-President Sophie Mickus ’24 told the News. “It’s very fun to see the evolution of the company over the last 50 years.”

That evolution — which Mickus and Co-President Rhea Cong ’25 described as the incorporation of new styles such as hip-hop dance and competition jazz — was on full display in the group’s Wednesday night dress rehearsal, which featured dances set to music by artists as stylistically diverse as Frank Ocean and Nancy Sinatra. 

Mayah Monthrope ’25 told the News that she thought “Golden” was more “mature” than previous YD shows, adding that the themes of this program were “a little bit more subtle.” 

One dance, set to Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black,” featured heel-clad dancers and chairs as props. Another, titled “Final Groove,” saw performers step on each other in a sprawling, 14-person dance set over a love song about addiction.

Nora Faverzani ’23, who choreographed “Final Groove” for her last show with the company, spoke passionately about the stylistic mix she had achieved.

“It doesn’t really fall into any specific category or style of dance,” Faverzani said. “It’s most similar to contemporary dance, which is flowy, and somewhat technical, stemming originally from a combination of ballet, jazz and hip-hop influences.”

As is YD tradition, the show’s final dance is a full company piece, featuring choreography by the group’s co-presidents. Taylor McClure ’25 told the News that the company piece was the dance she was most excited about presenting. 

Dancers expressed excitement about the collaborative nature of the show, which was the result of weeks of choreography and rehearsal. 

“Everyone comes from a serious dance background, which often means a toxic dance background.” Madeline Art ’25 said. “And I think the fact that it can be such a healthy place is wonderful.”

For McClure, the opportunity to choreograph in a student-run environment had been a rewarding part of her YD experience.

“A lot of times [choreography] is finding what works,” McClure said. “It’s kind of awesome that you get to have the opinions of everybody introduced instead of just a dictatorship of, ‘Okay, we’re gonna do this.”

As for the alumni reunion, the co-presidents have planned an exciting weekend, including a Saturday brunch at the Graduate Hotel, a happy hour and a reserve section at the Saturday night show. 

Cong estimated that approximately 40 alumni would be in attendance, including a large number from the tap class of 1978, simply because one of them had found the link online and sent it to their internal chat.

“I think that having the alums coming and having everyone thinking about the fact that it’s been around in pretty much the same form for 50 years is like, ‘Oh yes, it’s been that special for so many hundreds of people,’” Art said.

At press time, a few tickets for both shows were still available for purchase.

The post Yaledancers is “Golden” for their 50th anniversary show appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The flyers —which were folded into plastic bags and dropped throughout New Haven’s East Rock neighborhood and southern Hamden — featured a variety of racist and antisemitic language. Specifically, the flyers took issue with Lucas’s push to rename Whitney Avenue after Edward Bouchet, the first Black person to receive a doctorate in the United States, who graduated from Yale with a PhD in physics in 1876.

“It certainly was concerning,” Lucas said of the flyers. “It’s disturbing but not deterring.” 

Lucas, who is not Jewish, was informed of the flyers by Yale Police. According to New Haven Police Department Assistant Police Chief Bertram Ettienne, the NHPD is continuing to investigate who created and distributed the flyers, and has asked the FBI to assist in the investigation. 

One section of the flyer reads, “Jews like Robert Lucas continue to spew their anti-White hatred toward Whites and insists Whites feel guilty for slavery.” The flyers focus on a theory — often cited by white supremacists — that Jewish people were primarily responsible for slavery in the United States. That belief has long been debunked by professional historians. The flyers were very similar in design and content, and had the same email listed at the bottom as antisemitic flyers found in Stamford, Connecticut in March. 

At a press conference convened by local elected, faith and community leaders on April 5, East Rock resident Paul Wessel described finding a flyer outside his house one morning.

“There are other people who are willing to serve up somebody who’s the cause of their ills. Sometimes they point to Black people, sometimes they point to brown people, sometimes to transgender people, sometimes to immigrants,” Wessel said. “And it’s all intended to divide us in ways that are not helpful and aren’t who we are.” 

Both New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker and Hamden Mayor Lauren Garrett were in attendance at the press conference. The mayors strongly condemned the incident and emphasized their rejection of any and all hate within their respective municipalities.

“It is hurtful to our community members, it is hurtful to people to walk out of their door and see this kind of crap in front of their door,” Garrett said. “So I’m here today to stand against hate.”

The flyering occurred amid a surge of antisemitic hate crimes in Connecticut. According to an audit by the Connecticut chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, 2022 saw a doubling of antisemitic incidents in the state from the year before. 

Rabbi Brian Immerman of Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden praised the outpouring of community support he had seen in response to the flyers, and spoke about the importance of solidarity in the face of hate. 

“I am incredibly grateful for everybody standing here who is standing with the Jewish community today to say no to antisemitism and that it is not acceptable in any form,” he said. “Jews are not afraid of antisemitism. We protect ourselves from it.”

The targeting of Lucas comes as the graduate student has stepped up his campaign in recent months for both Yale and New Haven to “rethink Eli Whitney.”

Lucas penned an op-ed in the News in February, arguing for the renaming of Whitney Avenue. In the article, he highlights the impact Whitney’s invention — the cotton gin — had on the production of cotton in the American South, and how that greatly increased the demand for enslaved labor in the United States. Lucas also discussed another Whitney invention — the Colt revolver — a weapon instrumental in the federal government’s westward expansion and theft of Native land.

In March, Lucas sent a letter to the Board of Alders, asking them to formally consider changing the name of Whitney Avenue. He told the News that he has also reached out to the faculty chair of the Eli Whitney Scholars Program and is waiting to hear back from a University advisory committee on the matter.

As for renaming the street after Bouchet, Lucas is in favor of but not committed to the idea of using Bouchet’s name.

“Bouchet is great. It’s really not only changing the street name,” he told the New Haven Independent in March. “To bring about change, you at least have to agree there’s a problem.” 

The School of Management is currently located at 165 Whitney Ave.

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The 70-page report concluded that the officers involved were at fault in the June 19 arrest, which left Cox paralyzed from the chest down. Charges against the five officers cited behaviors including “recklessly handling” Cox during the incident, failing to turn on their body cameras, swearing at Cox while he was injured and giving “untruthful” statements to investigators.

New Haven Chief of Police Karl Jacobson has recommended to the Board of Police Commissioners that the four involved officers who are still employed by the department should be fired.

“The announcement that Chief Jacobson is recommending termination of the 4 police officers is but one step in the process of seeking justice for Randy Cox,” Cox’s attorney R.J. Weber told the News. “Ultimately, the justice we seek is for Randy Cox to live a full life as best he can, given the brutal, life-altering injuries he has suffered at the hands of these New Haven police officers.”

Details from the Internal Affairs report depict a chaotic scene when Cox was removed from the police vehicle after his arrest. The report documents the officers’ use of improper force to remove Cox, who was visibly injured at the time, from the vehicle. In statements given to the investigators, officers stated that they believed that Cox was intoxicated despite having no definitive proof of this. 

The five officers involved in the investigation have been charged with misdemeanors for their role in paralyzing Cox, though his family and attorneys have decried those charges as inadequate.   

The New Haven Board of Police Commissioners will hear the case in late April and will make a final recommendation on the employment of Officers Oscar Diaz, Jocelyn Lavandier and Luis Rivera and Sergeant Betsy Segui. Ronald Pressley, the fifth officer involved in the incident, voluntarily retired before the investigation finished.

Inside the report

The report details the timeline of events leading up to the collision that paralyzed Cox, as well as his mistreatment by officers once he arrived at the NHPD Detention Center. It also includes summaries of the interviews of the officers by investigators, and ends by detailing the litany of laws and department policies that were violated during Cox’s time in custody. 

The first breach of department policy that the report notes was by Diaz, the officer who was driving the van and paralyzed Cox when he stopped suddenly to avoid a collision. Diaz failed to call medical personnel to the scene of the accident and instead directed the ambulance to the detention center, delaying immediate care for Cox.

Once Cox arrived at the detention center, the report faults the officers for acting without “compassion” or “remorse” when Cox told them he was injured. The report lays out numerous instances where officers discounted Cox’s pleas for help, claiming that Cox “was drunk” and “faking it.” 

Lavandier, one of the officers who received Cox at the detention center, stated in her interview that she dragged his limp body across the floor into a cell. She explained her behavior by stating that “they thought he was highly intoxicated, faking, or just exaggerating.”

The report also highlights Segui’s misconduct throughout the incident. As a sergeant, Segui was in charge of supervising the other officers’ behavior at the detention center. She did not wear her body camera during the incident. 

Segui also lied to investigators about the sequence of events, according to the report. During her first interview with Internal Affairs, Segui told investigators that she had not heard radio transmissions from Diaz calling for an ambulance. But in a Word document obtained by investigators titled “Randy Cox” which Segui began writing the day after the incident at the request of the Sergeant on duty, she wrote that she did hear the transmissions.

Segui initially told investigators that she did not know why her Body Worn Camera did not have footage, but later said she left it behind because she was rushing to the scene after seeing lights and hearing sirens. Diaz’s body camera footage shows that there were no sirens. The report cites her for misleading investigators with changed testimony on her Body Worn Camera. 

The report also highlighted violations of the code of conduct by two additional police officers who were not arrested and had not previously been held at fault.

Sergeant Steven Spofford, the supervisor in charge of Cox’s arrest, was found in violation of department policy for failing to hear or react to Diaz’s radio transmission where he describes Cox’s injury.

In a previously unreported incident, Officer Roberto Ortiz, who was working in the booking area of the detention center, was recorded on camera telling Cox to “man the fuck up” while he was being placed on a stretcher by EMTs. Ortiz also violated department policy by failing to wear a body camera.

Community reacts

Gregory Cerritelli, Segui’s lawyer, wrote to the News that he was “not surprised” by the police chief’s recommendation of termination. He noted that the department has changed 50 policies since the June 19 incident and argued that the officers are being made “scapegoats.” 

“I fully expect these officers to be fired,” Gerritelli wrote to the News. “There is no due process at this stage of the proceedings and the entire process lacks fundamental fairness. It is obvious to even a casual observer that these officers are being used as scapegoats for a department that had, and has, woefully inadequate training and policies.” 

Jacobson told the News that officers were called in to interview with Internal Affairs and legal counsel during the process and also had one-on-one conversations with Jacobson. 

According to Evelise Robero, the chair of the Board of Police Commissioners, the officers will be able to defend themselves during the public hearings slated for late April. They will also receive a minimum of a 28-day notice before the hearing takes place and can opt to make any part of the proceedings private.

Jorge Camacho, policy director of the justice collaboratory at Yale Law School, said the officers would likely fight the disciplinary action, since negative action from the police department could be used against officers during a pending criminal trial. 

“I anticipate that we may see some pushback from the officers themselves or their lawyers who try to contest the firing,” Camacho told the News. “So I imagine that as part of their overall defense strategy, they’ll contest any adverse findings of any kind, including administrative findings of wrongdoing within the department.” 

The five officers involved have all been charged with two misdemeanors: reckless endangerment in the second degree and cruelty to person. They were arrested on Nov. 28 and released on $25,000 bonds. They have all pleaded not guilty to the charges, with their criminal trial still ongoing. 

NAACP Connecticut President Scot X. Esdaile, who has helped represent the Cox family, told the News that the recommendation is a “move in the right direction,” but he also questioned why it took nine months for the recommendation to be made. 

“When the Tyre Nichols investigation was expedited, it took 20 days,” Esdaile told the News. “This recommendation has taken nine months. Our ancestors taught us that justice delayed is justice denied, and we hope and pray that the New Haven Board of Police Commissioners does the right thing and makes sure that Randy Cox and his family receives justice now!” 

Jacobson told the News that the city was not able to move as quickly as the Nichols investigation or others because of parameters set by the current police contract and the current city charter. Camacho further explained that the nine month period was “normal” for a case with heavy media coverage considering the process that must be followed in an IA investigation. 

Mayoral candidate Liam Brennan told the News that while the decision to fire was a positive step, the amount of time taken for the report to be written was representative of a city administration which “remains out of fresh ideas” with “no appetite to innovate for New Haven’s public safety.” 

Brennan, who serves as the inspector general of Hartford’s civilian review board, has previously criticized Elicker and the city’s Civilian Review Board — a board empowered by the city’s charter to investigate complaints of police misconduct — for not acting forcefully enough against malfeasance. 

“Chief Jacobson’s decision to recommend firing the officers involved in paralyzing Randy Cox is the right move, but it also comes much delayed,” Brennan told News. “The terrible events surrounding Randy Cox’s injuries should be a cause for a full-scale reevaluation of how we conduct policing in New Haven. Instead, City Hall remains out of fresh ideas with an unsupported Civilian Review Board and no appetite to innovate New Haven’s approach to public safety.” 

Cox has also sued the city for $100 million dollars for violating his civil rights, with the lawsuit ongoing.

The post Internal affairs investigation concludes officers involved in Cox case violated NHPD policy appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The pilot program, Elm City Compassionate Allies Serving Our Streets, was launched last November, after Mayor Justin Elicker first proposed it in August 2020 in response to local protests over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. The program’s crisis teams — made up of one social worker and one “peer recovery specialist” — have responded to over 275 calls, with just over a third of those calls being responses to 911 emergency dispatches.

“We’re not going to let this fail. This is here to stay,” said Ta’LannaMonique Lawson-Dickson, a member of COMPASS’s Comunity Advisory Board, at a Feb. 17th press conference on the program. “And this is just the beginning, more systems are going to be created from this, more supports are going to be created from this. I’m excited to see what that’s going to look like in the future.” 

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker agreed, describing the results of the pilot as a “huge success” and endorsing an expansion of the teams.

As of Feb. 17, 37 percent of COMPASS responses were made to emergency situations after being requested by the police or fire department. Crisis team members highlighted instances where people were dealing with mental health crises or domestic disputes, but they can be called for any situation where first-responders determine they would be more helpful.

Of the calls that come from the 911 dispatch, 65 percent of calls for COMPASS were requested by New Haven Police.

At the press conference, NHPD Chief Karl Jacobson emphasized his excitement about the pilot’s progress. 

“It takes a long time to get somebody from a position of substance abuse and homelessness to the other side,” Jacobson said.“The police need help. We need help. And this is the help. It’s a breath of fresh air to have the backing, we can call someone else who has better skills than us for other things.”

The majority of the cases the team had dealt with— 63 percent — were not in response to emergency situations but rather self-deployed dispatches by the crisis team while they drove around New Haven. COMPASS’s current schedule has one two-person team in the field every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“When we go out to outreach, it’s amazing that people remember our names, they come to us,” said Nanette Campbell, a COMPASS Recovery Support Specialist. “I remember an incident where a woman was in crisis, but she remembered my face, and she let me allow her to get the help that she needed.”

Eventually, that woman let the team admit her to a hospital.

One aspect of the COMPASS program that city officials touted was their ability to follow up with people they met multiple times, so that they could connect them with or stay in longer term social service programs, including for those suffering from mental illness, dealing with substance abuse issues or in need of permanent housing.

But Dr. Jack Tebes, COMPASS’s director and a Yale psychiatry professor, said at the press conference that one of the biggest challenges facing the team was the massive waiting times to receive social services in New Haven, especially for those seeking permanent shelter or housing.

 “We also recognize the time that it will take to build trust with individuals that may have lost faith in the system,” Tebes said. “It’s no surprise to anyone probably that we have a shortage of beds, insufficient housing and the experience of waitlist after waitlist after waitlist.”

When asked about the issue of waitlists, Mehul Dalal, New Haven’s Community Services Administrator, agreed with Tebes assessment, describing the situation as a “huge challenge.” 

Dalal highlighted the city’s plans to use $5 million federal dollars for “deeply affordable” housing, on top of a litany of other investments, to help alleviate the waiting list for housing and make the crisis team’s job easier.

The city is considering several ways to expand the program, and in July will expand the time the team is in the field from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m.

“Next year, we’re gonna decide whether we expand to 24 hours of services, or we have overlapping teams during peak hours,” said Carlos Sosa-Lombardo, the director of the Department of Community Resilience. “ We will look at the data and make an informed decision when the time comes.”

The COMPASS team’s average response time to emergency dispatches was 13 minutes.

The post Four months in, New Haven leaders praise crisis team’s progress appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The individuals were leaving Newhall Street in Hamden when they were arrested by New Haven Police in connection to the shots fired between two cars that occurred near Science Hill on Monday morning. Police have also recovered four firearms, one of which has been linked to the shooting. 

The shootings prompted lockdowns at schools across the city, potentially due to a  miscommunication between police dispatch and the Board of Education security’s team, leading  the BOE to believe that an active shooter was inside a New Haven school. 

“Through investigative efforts by NHPD’s shooting task force and criminal intelligence units working with state and Hamden Police, we determined that the persons responsible may have fled to a house on Newhall St. in Hamden which police have identified as a known location for criminal activity,” New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobson said at a press conference on Tuesday. 

Both individuals, one a 19-year old from New Haven and the other an 18-year old from Bridgeport, have been charged with criminal possession of a firearm, possessing weapons in a motor vehicle, pistol without a permit, high-capacity magazines and larceny of a motor vehicle. 

The department has recovered 23 casings around the area of the shooting. They also obtained a search warrant to search the Newhall St. house and obtained two more firearms that police suspect have also been involved in shootings around the city. 

New Haven police were dispatched to 31 Lawrence St. at 8:54 a.m. on Monday after witnesses reported two vehicles chasing each other while rounds were being fired from at least one of the vehicles. According to NHPD, no person was hit by the gunfire, but one parked vehicle was struck by a bullet. 

Yale Police issued a Yale Alert email at 9:02 a.m. informing students about the shooting. The Yale Police Department then issued an all-clear at 10:39 a.m. 

Shortly after responding to the call, NHPD located one of the two cars, an Acura MDX in Fair Haven with “numerous bullet holes.” The Acura had been reported stolen out of Hamden on Feb. 26.

“A short time later, members of the Shooting Task Force, Criminal Intelligence Unit, and the Hamden Police Department located the Dodge Durango in Hamden,” Public Information Officer Capt. Rose Dell wrote to the News. 

Ben Berkowitz witnessed some of the incident after dropping children off at school. Berkowitz witnessed the Dodge Durango barge into the intersection on Whitney Avenue, where he was driving. 

“I then saw a man lean out of the car and I could see a pistol,” Berkowitz told the News. “I turned left, and I could hear gunshots. I stopped near a woman who was hiding behind a tree and called 911 and the officer who responded found three bullet casings.” 

The shooting forced 10 schools into a full lockdown on Monday. Not all schools that faced lockdowns were close to the area of the shooting, leading to questions as to why a lockdown order was issued. 

According to Jacobson, New Haven Public Schools security regularly monitors police radios to monitor for threats. When NHPS heard of the shots fired on Monday morning, they instituted a lockdown in some schools. The lockdown order was expanded to more schools in New Haven when NHPS officials feared that the shooting was moving and thus posed a threat to a wider radius of schools. 

Jacobson told the News that the miscommunication probably came from police dispatch describing the shooting over radio as an active shooting, leading NHPS to believe that there was an active shooter in a building instead of two cars shooting between each other. 

“I am worried about any miscommunication related to school security but am also relieved that it resulted in lockdowns, as opposed to the opposite of what could have happened,” BOE board member Darnell Goldson told the News. “I have confidence that the police and school security will correct the communication issues. At the end of the day, it is better safe than sorry.”

Jacobson told the News that the department plans on reviewing the procedure of communication with NHPS to ensure that “traumatizing active shooter” lockdowns are prevented as often as possible. 

New Haven Public Schools serve 19,000 students. 

New Haven Public School students and parents have expressed frustration about the multiple lockdowns that schools in the city have seen in recent months.

“It’s extremely frustrating, and a lot of students are fed up with the constant threat of violence and instability in places where we are supposed to be safe,” Board of Education student representative Dave Cruz-Bustamante told the News. “I applaud all the students, teachers, administrators and workers who get us through this, and I hope we start to center healing justice more after these events, rather than pretend like they never happen.” 

The two cars involved in the shooting, according to New Haven Police Department public information officer Rose Dell, were a Dodge Durango and an Acura MDX. 

Later in the day on Monday, police found the Acura MDX in Fair Haven riddled with bullets, according to an NHPD press release. The Acura had been reported stolen in Hamden on Sunday.that Police also found the Durango they believe was involved in the incident on Leeder Hill Road in Hamden. 

The post Two arrested for local shooting as NHPD reviews reporting procedures to New Haven Schools appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Yale College students were notified of the arrest Tuesday in an email from Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell and Associate Vice President for Public Safety & Community Engagement Ronnell Higgins. The email offered a rough timeline of events as well as YPD’s reasoning for the arrest.

In their joint email, Higgins and Campbell wrote that YPD responded to a report of a student threatening to harm another student and potentially possessing a firearm. YPD obtained a warrant, searched the student’s room and arrested the student without incident.

“During the investigation, officers found an unloaded handgun, significant quantities of a controlled substance, illegal drugs, and evidence of additional drug-related activity,” the email read. “The student was placed in custody without incident, and Yale Police confiscated the handgun. Criminal charges are being considered for several drug offenses.”

The email also stated that the arrested student was no longer enrolled at Yale, but Campbell did not clarify whether the student was expelled or if the student voluntarily withdrew. The student, who has been granted anonymity to protect their privacy, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Consider professional help for managing your image and check ways to remove your mugshot if you or someone you know is in a similar situation and worries about the impact on reputation.

The arrest occurred on the evening of Wednesday the 15th, with three students telling the News they witnessed the arrest around 6:30 p.m. YPD sent a Yale Alert email to students in Franklin at 10:28 p.m. notifying them of “police activity at Benjamin Franklin College.” The email, which has been obtained by the News, stated that there were no injuries or ongoing threats to students. At 3:35 a.m. Thursday morning, YPD issued an all-clear email to Franklin students.

“I can say that YPD followed normal policies and protocols and I am proud of the work that the women and men of this department do everyday and this case is no exception,” Campbell wrote to the News.

Citing an ongoing investigation, Campbell declined to comment on the status or timeline of the YPD’s investigation.

“I’m just really glad that the incident was concluded without any physical injury to anyone involved,” Franklin Head of College Charles Bailyn told the News.

Yale College Undergraduate Regulations prohibit the possession of firearms and other weapons on campus. 

Update, Feb. 22: A previous version of this article stated that the student was arrested for possession of a handgun and illegal drugs. In fact, criminal charges are only being considered for the drug offenses. The article has been updated.

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