Ellie Park, Multimedia Managing Editor

An external review of the Yale Police Department’s arrests of four pro-Palestinian protesters on May 1 found that the arrests did not follow “best practices” but concluded that the officers had probable cause for each of the arrests.

The University, at the request of Head of Public Safety Duane Lovello, commissioned the review on May 5, four days after the YPD arrested four individuals — two Yale College students and two non-Yale affiliates — associated with ongoing campus protests against the war in Gaza and Yale’s investments in weapons manufacturers. 

Photo and video recordings of the arrests obtained by the News show that four officers — including Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell — tackled one arrestee and held them on the ground for at least 90 seconds. Another arrestee was tackled by an officer who grabbed their neck before two other officers helped restrain them on the ground. Neither of the two tackled arrestees were Yale students.

Chase Rogers, the former Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, conducted the review with Day Pitney, the law firm at which she is now a partner. Lovello announced the completion of the review to the Yale community on Aug. 26 and summarized its findings, but the report has not been made publicly available in full.

“Several officers had difficulty communicating with one another [during the arrests] due to the noise volume of the protest, which made it challenging to assess the situation clearly,” Lovello wrote in the August statement to the Yale community on the completed external review. “Regardless of the factors involved, I share our community’s expectation that members of YPD hold themselves to the highest standards, and we must take responsibility when we fall short.”

Lovello explained in his statement that the review found two “lapses” in YPD conduct during the arrests. First, he wrote, the officers “did not follow best practices” for crowd control while arresting the student protesters. Lovello noted that the students’ arrests were peaceful. 

Second, the review found that a YPD officer used tactics “inconsistent with YPD policy and involved disproportionate use of force under the circumstances” to arrest the non-Yale affiliate whose neck was reportedly grabbed.

Lovello’s statement acknowledges Campbell’s involvement in the arrest of the other non-Yale affiliate. However, he wrote, the review concluded that Campbell did not use excessive force in that arrest.

The News was not able to reach Campbell for comment. 

Day Pitney completed the review using interviews and statements by students, police officers and administrators, as well as a “comprehensive analysis” of footage from police body and vehicle dash cameras, according to Lovello’s statement.

The News was not able to reach Rogers or Day Pitney for comment. When asked for more details on the process of conducting the review, Lovello referred the News to his May 5 and Aug. 26 statements, which announced the review and its completion, respectively.

When the News requested YPD’s communications with Day Pitney and Rogers, who conducted the external review, as well as the documents or records YPD handed over as part of the review, YPD Lieutenant Sabrina Wood responded that YPD has “no responsive documentation” to provide.

“Our agency was not involved in the external review by the Day Pitney Law Firm,” Wood wrote.

Officials from the University’s Office of Public Affairs and Communications did not respond to further inquiries to clarify the review process.

Lovello lays out next steps

At the end of Lovello’s statement, he outlined steps that the University is taking to improve the service it provides to the Yale community. 

These steps include requiring additional training on crowd control and use of force for the YPD chief and leadership team, improving communications equipment and protocol for loud circumstances, and providing “clearer resources” on the legal implications of an arrest and on Yale’s free expression policies.

Lovello also noted that the University would be “taking personnel action in appropriate cases that follows department protocols and the collective bargaining agreement” but did not specify how the action would exactly look. 

Alex Taubes, a civil rights attorney who has been involved in prior litigation relating to the pro-Palestinian protests at Yale, told the News that he was “deeply concerned” by the external review’s findings.

“The conclusion that officers use tactics ‘inconsistent with YPD policy’ and potentially ‘disproportionate use of force’ raises serious questions about potential civil rights violations by the Yale police,” Taubes said. “It’s likely that there’s grounds for further legal scrutiny of the University’s actions.”

In particular, Taubes conveyed that he wished the University outlined specific disciplinary measures that it would take against officers who had engaged in such tactics.

Lovello’s statement revealed that the University shared the external review’s findings with the Connecticut state attorney — the office that has the power to pursue criminal charges against the four protesters arrested by YPD. 

“Because YPD is a fully commissioned police department, arrests made by YPD are turned over to the New Haven judicial district, and decisions about pursuing criminal charges are made by the state prosecutor’s office,” Lovello wrote. “We have shared the external reviewer’s findings with that office, including the finding that not all these arrests followed best practices.”

Officers request access to report

On Friday, four days after Lovello released his statement, YPD officer Mike Hall, who leads the Yale police union, sent a letter to Lovello requesting that officers have access to the full report compiled by Day Pitney.

“We believe that our analysis of the Day Pitney Review report would be beneficial to our members and the University, especially since the Review determined that our member’s actions at the protest and subsequent arrests fell short of best practice benchmarks,” Hall wrote on behalf of the Yale Police Benevolent Association.

Hall wrote that YPBA members felt “ambushed and insulted” by Lovello’s post and by what he described as “the unsubstantiated allegations of the utilization of a ‘disproportionate’ amount of force” in one of the arrests.

Both Yale students arrested on May 1 are being charged with criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct. The News reported in May that both non-Yale affiliates were charged with criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct, and one was also charged with interfering with a police officer. Neither of those cases is currently listed on the Connecticut judicial website.

Lovello told the News that Day Pitney’s original findings were presented to University administrators, including himself.

The four arrests on May 1 took place on Alexander Walk, the pedestrian-only continuation of Wall Street between College Street and York Street.