Zoe Berg

Aaron Freeman, 35, was killed in a shootout with law enforcement agents executing a warrant at a Grand Avenue apartment. Two weeks later, with an investigation into the shooting — which also injured two officers — underway, more details have come to light about how the encounter transpired.

Around 5:34 a.m. on Jan. 29, officers from the West Haven Police Department and New Haven’s multi-jurisdictional Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force entered an apartment where Freeman was staying, according to a preliminary status report released by the Connecticut Office of the Inspector General. An ensuing exchange of fire involving Freeman, two West Haven officers and a Waterbury Police Department officer on the task force, left Freeman with gunshot wounds to his torso and limbs, and the two West Haven officers with lower body injuries. Freeman succumbed to his injuries.

When asked why officers attempted to serve the warrant so early in the morning, Sergeant Scott Allard, the WHPD’s public information officer, said that the circumstances were far from unique.

“That’s usually our protocol, if it’s permitted,” Allard said.

Body-worn camera footage from the two West Haven officers and the Waterbury officer released in the preliminary status report shows the officers knocking on the apartment door, identifying themselves as law enforcement and instructing the apartments’ inhabitants to let them in.

When no one opened the door, however, an officer let himself and the others into the apartment with a key.

The apartment the officers entered is part of the Mill River Crossing development, an apartment community participating in Elm City Communities’ Family Self Sufficiency program. Elm City Communities executive director Shenae Draughn, who oversees the Housing Authority of New Haven, told the New Haven Independent that the housing authority provided police with the key after being presented with the search warrant. She said there was “nothing exceptional” about Freeman’s case, and that the housing authority collaborates with police in the event that officers have a warrant.

Police officers with a warrant “can go in without notifying us, which has happened, and there are cases when they have asked us to comply with the law and system of executing” a warrant, Draughn said. “We recognize they’re going to go in either way.” 

Though Connecticut’s Office of Inspector General released its preliminary status report on Feb. 3, many questions about the details and justifications of the officers’ pursuit of Freeman remain unanswered. The content of the warrant has also been a source of confusion. 

The State’s preliminary status report referred to the warrant as a search and seizure warrant, which would allow the officers to search the premises of a specific location and collect evidence of criminal activity — usually items identified in the warrant. When officers knocked on the apartment door, they identified themselves as “police with a search warrant,” body-worn camera footage shows.

However, Allard said that the warrant was both a search warrant and an arrest warrant, which allows officers to arrest a specific individual.

Allard said that the WHPD no longer has the warrant. The Connecticut inspector general’s office, which does have the warrant as part of its ongoing investigation into the incident, said the warrant had been temporarily sealed.

Karl Jacobson, New Haven’s police chief, said that the Office of the Inspector General can take around a year to release a final investigation on an officer-involved shooting.

The two injured WHPD officers sustained bullet wounds to their calf and leg, respectively. Both were immediately treated at Yale New Haven Hospital, but released quickly. Allard said that the two officers are currently on leave due to their injuries, and that they will need to be reviewed by a doctor before returning to work.

Connecticut’s Office of the Inspector General, part of the Division of Criminal Justice, is located in Rocky Hill, Conn.