Alumnus alder reacts to racially charged run-in

In early August, Ward Two Alder Jelani Lawson, MC '96, was standing outside a barber's shop waiting to get his hair cut. Relaxing and smoking a cigarette, Lawson noticed a New Haven policeman across the street moving a homeless man along. When the officer realized that Lawson, who is African American, was watching him, he shouted, "Hey, you, move along." Lawson retorted, "Since when is smoking a cigarette illegal?" At that point, a Yale policeman appeared on the scene and told the New Haven officer, "It's okay. He's a Yalie. Aren't you an alderman?" Surprised, Lawson replied, "Yes, but that has very little to do with standing on the street smoking a cigarette. I shouldn't have to be a Yalie to not be bothered." Lawson sat down with The Yale Herald last week to discuss the incident and race relations in New Haven.

The Yale Herald: How did the incident make you feel?

Jelani Lawson: Like a second-class citizen. I felt as if as a black man walking around New Haven I was an automatic suspect. It's either you're a servant of the University, a Yale student, or a member of the New Haven community. Servants are allowed to walk around. Students are allowed free reign. But if you're a member of the [New Haven] community and you don't look like you belong on Yale's property, and you're around for too long, the police are definitely going to move you along.

YH: How do you compare your experience as an African American man at Yale with your experience in the streets of New Haven?

JL: Yale is a world unto itself. The issue that we really need to be discussing here is not necessarily race, but class. The University is an elite institution whose [community] is generally wealthier than the people who live in New Haven. I think that there are walls built around the University based on class lines. If you dress a certain way, if you talk a certain way, you can be accepted in this area. But if you don't, you're liable to be treated differently. My experience has been that the police have harassed me until I identified myself as a Yale student. At that point, their tune changed.

YH: How can a citizen file a complaint about racial discrimination by New Haven police officers?

JL: You can always file a complaint with the [New haven Police Department (NHPD)]. New Haven doesn't have a civilian review board, so that's not an option. It does have a Board of Police Commissioners. Right now I would say accountability measures are fairly weak.

YH : Why did you decide not to file a complaint against the New Haven policeman?

JL: I didn't see the point. This wasn't the first time. I was harassed by Yale police on a number of occasions while I was an undergraduate at the University and I seriously understood where they were coming from. They probably thought, `You have a black man standing on the street doing nothing. He's probably causing trouble, so let me go over there and move him along.' He had to understand how I felt. I understood how he felt. And to file a complaint with the police department, what was going to be done? Was the officer going to be reprimanded? No. Was he going to be fired? No. I might have gotten a letter of apology. What would that really mean?

YH: Do you believe the NHPD deals ineffectively with reports of alleged racist incidents involving its officers?

JL: Well, the thing is, what do you do in a situation like that? Was I harmed? No. I was just agitated for 10 minutes. It was a situation where I felt the cop was acting in a slightly prejudicial way. There is something called community policing. It means that you have to get to know the police in your area. By filing a complaint, I would have created an antagonistic relationship between myself and the officer and I didn't feel that it needed to go there. The guy knew he was in the wrong. He probably thought, `Oh, he's a Yalie and he's an alderman. Oops, don't I feel like an asshole?' Nothing else. Maybe he'll think twice next time he deals with somebody. He doesn't need to receive an official reprimand to do that.

YH : How did you feel about the fact that the New Haven police officer was a black man?

JL: I think that question presumes that black people aren't prejudiced against other black people, which is completely untrue. There are good black people, there are bad black people. There are good white people, there are bad white people. The fact that he is black shows me how insensitive he is to people in his own community.

YH : Do you think racial discrimination by New Haven and Yale police officers is a major problem?

JL: I have heard of several incidents from people about what they felt was unfair treatment by Yale or New Haven police. As to whether or not this is an epidemic--I don't know. I'm sure a lot of the cases don't get reported just because people internalize it, just as I have.

YH : How do you approach these issues as an alder?

JL: I could march on Yale and scream, `Stop the prejudiced cops! Fair rights for black students at Yale.' But I don't really feel that what happened was a 100 percent completely egregious violation of my civil rights. Also, there is a law that says it's okay for police to move people along on the streets if they are standing in a drug zone.

YH : The law says that a person can be found guilty of loitering for `manifesting the purpose of soliciting enticing or procuring another to engage in such illegal activity, and such a person refuses to cease such conduct when ordered to do so by police.' You were just standing there smoking.

JL: But officers have a certain amount of discretion in enforcing the law. He could have said, `Well, you're on Dixwell Avenue. There are drug dealers on Dixwell Avenue. You could have been out there soliciting. You could be standing here smoking a cigarette waiting for someone to walk by at a certain point and time.' On the Board of Aldermen, I might see if I could work with some colleagues to eliminate that law. When it was enacted there was a need for a law that would [allow police officers] to get people off the streets if they were loitering. I guess maybe I have internalized the harassment to a certain degree and just accept it and know that it is a condition of my existence in New Haven. You can meet with the University and say this is really bad and they will tell you that it won't happen again. But based on my experience, I wouldn't be too confident that anything would change.

Photo by Julia Tiernan.

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