YPBA's truck from April 2024, Ariela Lopez, Contributing Photographer

A pair of conspicuous yellow and blue billboard trucks flashing messages of rising crime rates in New Haven welcomed first-year students and their families to campus on move-in day on Aug. 18. 

The trucks — commissioned by the Yale police union — are part of what union leadership described as a  “subdued approach” to union messaging due to the arrival of the University’s new president Maurie McInnis this summer. The police union, “pleased” with McInnis’s appointment, highlighted her apparent support of campus police during her presidency at Stony Brook University. 

Active contract negotiations between the University and the police union have dragged on for 18 months, a period marked by public tension and repeated union action. 

On last year’s move-in, the Yale Police Benevolent Association — the police union — distributed “Survival Guide” pamphlets, advising students to avoid leaving their dorms after 8 p.m., to new students and families. Then, the YPBA came under fire from both University and city officials for “fear mongering.” The union distributed pamphlets, held a rally and commissioned billboard trucks with similar crime rate messaging during an event for prospective students in April. 

“In light of the new President of Yale University, we thought it appropriate to undertake a more subdued approach in our actions on Freshman Arrival Day,” YPBA President Mike Hall wrote in a statement. “We thought that the Sign Trucks alone would suffice to apprise the students of the potential dangers within the City, without the need to disseminate written materials as we did last year.”

A University spokesperson declined to comment on behalf of McInnis on the YPBA’s actions.

The YPBA has publicly branded New Haven as a dangerous city during the past four contract cycles, often aiming messaging at new or prospective students. 

While the University spokesperson expressed support for union members’ right to rally peacefully, she condemned the police union for intentionally stoking fear in new students and their families with “misleading, disturbing, and inflammatory rhetoric.” 

YPBA touts McInnis’s record on campus policing

Hall conveyed the union’s hope that it will be able to “cultivate a good, productive relationship” with McInnis, whose appointment to the presidency was announced in June.

Before arriving at Yale, McInnis served as the president of Stony Brook University in New York for four years. Hall lauded McInnis’s police-related initiatives in her former post.

“President Maurie McInnis appears to support the police, and we hope to cultivate a good, productive relationship with her in the future,” Hall wrote. “During her four year tenure at Stony Brook University, Ms. McInnis supported the police and expanded the Public Safety Department. Moreover, Ms. McInnis created a Risk Management Office in an innovative and proactive approach to campus safety.”

McInnis founded Stony Brook’s Enterprise Risk Management program, a collective of public safety and security departments headed by the school’s former police chief, just months after assuming her role as the university’s president. The program — and McInnis, whose support for it was steadfast — came under intense scrutiny by Stony Brook faculty for its handling of campus protests against the war in Gaza last spring.

In June, McInnis sent a statement to the News reiterating her full support for the Stony Brook Enterprise Risk Management team and expressing that she looks forward to meeting with “all departments at Yale, including the team at Public Safety” upon taking office.

Hall clarified that his approval of McInnis was not intended to slight her predecessor, former University President Peter Salovey.

“We believe that former President Salovey was supportive of the University Police Department,” Hall wrote. “When President Salovey decided to leave the position, we didn’t know whether the next Yale President would be someone who backs the police. When the University announced that the next President would be Ms. McInnis, we were pleased with the choice.”

The police union has been negotiating a new contract with the University since February 2023. Their most recent contract expired in June of that year. Points of contention in the ongoing negotiation cycle include what the union deems as a lackluster 1.75-percent wage increase proposal and a YPBA proposal to impose a 60-day statute of limitation on civilian complaints.

Joe Sarno, Yale’s director of labor relations, and the University spokesperson did not comment further on the status of negotiations.

University and police union debate portrayal of New Haven crime

During this year’s move-in, the trucks flashed three distinct billboards. 

One, adorned with bullet hole graphics, warned: “In 2024 police shot spotter detected 1,581 gunshots fired on the streets of New Haven.” The second claimed that in 2024, burglaries are up 41%, and robberies are up 100%. This slide also included a quote attributed to an unnamed “Yale mom”: “She became terrified; I would have come sooner to pick her up, but I was out of town.” The last billboard read, “Yale: Support the Police who protect your students.”

YPBA president Hall wrote that the statistics posted on the trucks are “factual and a matter of record,” and that the YPBA did not embellish or manipulate them.

Sergeant Jarrod Boyce of the New Haven Police Department confirmed that ShotSpotter notified the police of 1,581 rounds fired citywide from Jan. 1, 2024, to Aug. 16 — two days before the billboards were published. 

The University spokesperson commenting on behalf of Sarno called the YPBA’s rhetoric “misleading” and claimed that the crime rate on Yale’s campus decreased by 12 percent in 2024 so far, compared with the same period in 2023.

Overall crime in the New Haven Police Department’s District 1, which encompasses most of Yale’s undergraduate campus, including Old Campus and all residential colleges except Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin, has decreased by 4 percent since 2023, according to the NHPD’s latest publicly available CompStat report, which analyzed data from Jan. 1 through July 21.

As of July 21, there have been no confirmed shots fired in District 1 since the year began.

YPBA’s previous contract, which was settled in 2018, took 28 months and over 70 bargaining sessions to settle.