Group calls for body cameras, sensitivity in wake of Conn College incident
New London — Inspired by a Facebook event created Tuesday, a handful of residents on Friday morning peacefully protested across the street from the police station, holding signs bearing slogans such as “end rape culture” and “the NLPD needs body cams.”
Although not affiliated with Connecticut College, the residents took to the sidewalk in the wake of a domestic violence incident there Sunday that left three students in police custody, with one claiming police beat him for trying to help.
“I think there’s a lot of misunderstandings about what happened,” said Dylan Wardwell, referring to the incident that took place in the Jane Addams House dormitory about 1:30 a.m. Sunday. “Was there excessive aggression? We don’t know because none of us were there, which is why the police need to have body cameras.”
On Monday afternoon, one of those arrested — junior Lee S. Messier, 21, of Narragansett, R.I. — published a lengthy Facebook post in which he said he and a friend had intervened in a neighboring room where a man was yelling at a woman and a woman was yelling for help.
He said more than 10 New London and campus officers stormed in after the male perpetrator already had left, surrounding the distraught woman and ordered Messier and his friend to return to the room from which they came.
Messier said he, from a doorway, repeatedly told police the woman shouldn’t be arrested and that he could provide insight as to why. He alleged officers did not interview him, but rather worked to detain him, kneeing and kicking him in the back and head.
In a Tuesday news release, however, New London police said both the woman, later identified as Alicia Gorin, 22, of Centerville, Mass., and the man, Éamon O’Leary, 20, of Boxford, Mass., were “active participants” in the domestic violence situation.
Police said the “intoxicated” participants became “hostile” and “aggressive” when officers “proceeded with enforcement mandated by state law.”
They further said Messier exacerbated the situation and ignored several police directives not to interfere and to keep his distance.
Ultimately, Messier was charged with interfering with police, Gorin with disorderly conduct, third-degree assault and interfering with police, and O’Leary with disorderly conduct and interfering with police.
“It feels like there’s a basic lack of sensitivity on many levels that seems to be pervading,” said protester Matt Covey, explaining that he believes surrounding a victim of domestic violence with several “edgy” officers is as good as continuing the assault.
“I regret that I didn't get out here before now,” Covey said. “We're not out here because the most recent event involved white folks at a prominent institution. ... We're out here because there's a long-running accumulation of reports of this type of mistreatment.”
New London police Deputy Chief Peter Reichard said he couldn’t speak about the case because of the ongoing internal investigation of the incident, which police launched Monday. However, he noted that the New London Police Department was one of the first in the state to send its officers to Crisis Intervention Training.
Through the training, officers meet with mental health providers and those with mental illness to learn how to communicate and otherwise react when dealing with people in crisis.
He said officers train in diversity and the de-escalation of violent situations in and after academy, too, and that members of local mental health agencies often deploy with New London police to assist them when needed.
“I think most, if not all, officers are sensitive to the needs of victims,” Reichard said.
Reichard said the internal investigation is in the interview stage. As soon as all who are believed to have been involved or to have witnessed the situation are tracked down, he said, determining the truth will be a matter of seeing which statements are consistent with one another and which seem to be outliers.
“We try to run a transparent operation,” he said. “We have constraints, but we’re going to do our best to be transparent with the public at all times.”
Wardwell, however, called into question the concept of an internal investigation.
“There should be an independent investigation,” Wardwell said. “There’s only a limited amount of faith citizens can have that a police department accused of misconduct is going to effectively investigate itself.”
As for a body camera program, Reichard said it’s still in the works.
“We have two small federal grants in place, and we have a draft of a policy that nears the state policy on body cameras,” he said. “But there’s a large financial constraint that agencies are realizing with body cameras once they’ve had them in place for a while. That’s going to be a small hindrance for us.”
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