Mirroring nationwide movements to defund law enforcement agencies, students called on the University to defund, dissolve and disarm the Yale Police Department. Their demands were rejected with promises to reform. 

On the morning of April 16, 2019 officers from the Hamden and Yale police departments fired 16 rounds of bullets at Paul Washington and Stephanie Witherspoon at a traffic stop in New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood. This incident sparked protests across New Haven, calling for justice and greater accountability from the institutions involved: New Haven Police Department, Hamden Police Department and YPD.  

Student organizations including Black Students for Disarmament at Yale as well as Concerned and Organized Graduate Students began demanding that the University dismantle the YPD, citing data compiled in a 45-page report analyzing the YPD’s crime logs by the Abolition Alliance at Yale.

“Very bluntly, why does the YPD exist?, the BDSY petition reads. “The organization has the same goals as Yale Security, the same power as the New Haven Police Department, but, most importantly, none of their accountability or oversight.”

University President Peter Salovey, meanwhile, has defended the need for the YPD. He and YPD Chief Ronnell Higgins claimed that the YPD made strides in implementing changes suggested in a report on policing commissioned by the University following the 2019 shooting. 

YPD was established in 1894 as the nation’s first college police department and is independently owned and operated by the University. The department now has nearly a hundred officers across their patrol, emergency services and investigative units. 

Questions regarding YPD’s jurisdiction swirled when Washington filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut against 14 parties including Yale, New Haven, Hamden, HPD officer Devon Eaton — who performed the initial traffic stop, and Yale officer Terrance Pollock, who also responded to the call over the shooting. Activists in New Haven criticized the “triple occupation” of New Haven by NHPD, HPD and YPD during a march that shut down parts of the I-95 highway in June 2020. 

A State’s Attorney investigation in October 2019 determined that YPD officers are legally granted the same powers and jurisdiction as NHPD officers because YPD officers are appointed through the New Haven Board of Police commissioners. Following that ruling on YPD jurisdiction, Salovey told the News that theYPD worked with the NHPD to ensure that YPD would “only police agreed-upon designated areas.” 

BSDY circulated a petition in June 2020, mirroring calls to defund police rippled across the nation. The petition, which earned over 8000 signatures, called on Yale to disarm and dismantle the YPD. In September 2020, BSDY then sent an open letter to the University again asking Yale to dissolve the YPD. 

The petition encouraged the University to first disarm YPD, then implement a differential response system that would allow non-officers to take emergency calls, next defund and dismantle the YPD by 2023 and finally “serve and uplift Black and Brown communities” by reinvesting YPD’s budget.  

The need for a differential response system was among 88 suggestions included in the University commissioned report to assess policing at Yale. The 79-page 21st Century Policing Solutions, or 21CP report, was released in March 2020. Salovey told the News a year later that the University had worked to implement most of the changes proposed in the report. 

“Policing should serve as one component within a network of other care-based campus resources,” Higgins wrote in an email to the News at the time. “I believe culturally responsive, localized approaches to policing are most desirable and produce the best outcomes.”

AAY then released a 45-page report in April 2021 analyzing YPD’s activities. The report claimed based on YPD crime logs that the YPD disproportionately targeted Black and Brown community members and that the department in general was largely ineffective. AAY examined YPD’s clearance rate, which are cases where an officer charges or arrests someone for a crime. YPD’s clearance rate, according to the report, was 8.05 percent between 2011 and 2018. NHPD and the state of Connecticut meanwhile held clearance rates around 21 and 23 percent. 

Former BSDY Chair Jaelen King ’22 told the News in November 2021 that students would feel safer around campus without the YPD. 

BSDY Chair Callie Benson-Williams ’23 also said that she felt the 21CP report recommendations were insufficient. The reforms, Benson-Williams said, were “mainly about just funneling more money into the police department.” 

She also criticized the 21CP report for neglecting to address distinctions between YPD and NHPD jurisdiction. 

Salovey in November reaffirmed his commitment to maintaining an armed police force on campus. “An important point is we’re not going to stop just with the 21CP report,” Salovey said. “We’re going to be continually improving organization with respect to the YPD and Yale Security and keep trying to learn from the community on what is working and what is not.”

75 percent of all university campuses in the U.S. employed armed officers in 2011-2012, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. 94 percent of colleges authorized officers to carry sidearms and chemical or pepper spray.

Salovey said to the News that having an armed police presence on campus is necessary to “protect students from armed intruders on campus.” The report from AAY claimed that from 2015-2019, only 2.46 percent of all crimes the YPD logged were related to reports of assault and weapons.

Higgins has served as YPD chief since 2011.

SOPHIE SONNENFELD
Sophie Sonnenfeld is Managing Editor of the Yale Daily News. She previously served as City Editor and covered cops and courts as a beat reporter. She is a junior in Branford College double majoring in political science and anthropology.