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New University Presidential Era Begins Amid Ongoing Police Union Protests

On the 18th of August, as first-year students and their families descended upon the campus to settle in, they were greeted with billboard trucks displaying glaring statistics about rising crime in New Haven. These billboards were notably blue and yellow in color, deliberately capturing everyone’s attention. This approach was entirely orchestrated by the University’s union, intended to be more restrained in order to respect the appearance of the newly instated president Maurie McInnis.

The university’s police union propagated messages revolving around McInnis’s apparent support for the police during her time in office at Stony Brook University. They were openly optimistic about her appointment, branding it a positive step towards their cause. This is all while an 18-month long contract negotiation with the University continues on unabated, marked by multiple public exchanges and numerous actions taken by the union itself.

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During the previous year’s move-in day, the Yale Police Benevolent Association, or the police union, made headlines when they distributed provocative ‘Survival Guide’ pamphlets. These guides, aimed at new students and their families, advised against venturing out of their dorms post 8 p.m. This move was met with substantial criticism from both city and University officials, who accused the YPBA of scaremongering.

Earlier in the year, the union once again exhibited similar action during an event for prospective students. They disseminated pamphlets with similar messages and even organized a rally in their defense. Adding to this, they also hired billboard trucks flashing comparable crime statistics. However, a representative for the University refused to comment on behalf of McInnis, the president, regarding the YPBA’s campaigns.

Ahead of McInnis’s presidency, she served as the president of Stony Brook University in New York, a tenure that lasted for four years. Within the union, there is hope that they can foster a beneficial and fruitful relationship with McInnis, given her record on campus policing. This is a sentiment that was clearly relayed by the union leaders. McInnis’s initiatives related to the police during her Stony Brook presidency were also highly applauded.

One notable achievement during McInnis’s time at Stony Brook was the establishment of the Stony Brook’s Enterprise Risk Management system – a coalition of public safety and security departments spearheaded by the institution’s former police chief. This move took place just a few months after she assumed her role. However, the collection came under heightened scrutiny from faculty members for its management of campus protests against the war in Gaza around last spring, despite McInnis’s firm backing.

In a statement forwarded to the media, McInnis has once again assured her staunch support for the Stony Brook Enterprise Risk Management team. She looks to apply the same level of commitment to all Yale departments, including Public Safety, once in office. These sentiments were welcomed by the union, who clarified that any praise of McInnis was not meant as a snub towards her predecessor, former University President Peter Salovey.

It’s worth noting that the police union has been in talks with the University regarding a new contract since February 2023, shortly before their most recent contract expired in June. Their ongoing negotiation cycle has been marred by contentious issues, such as a proposed wage increase of a mere 1.75 percent and the union’s plan to limit the timeframe for civilian complaints to sixty days.

Joe Sarno, Yale’s director of labor relations, and the University spokesperson maintained a neutral stance, refraining from commenting any further on the negotiations. However, the University and police union remain at odds over the portrayal of crime in New Haven.

On this year’s move-in day, trucks carrying billboard messages circulated three distinct announcements. One bearing bullet hole symbolism noted, ‘In 2024 police shot spotter detected 1,581 gunshots fired on the streets of New Haven.’ Another claimed burglaries and robberies increased 41% and 100%, respectively, in 2024, while the final message read, ‘Yale: Support the Police who protect your students.’

The President of YPBA, Hall, staunchly backs the assertions made on the trucks, emphasizing their factual nature and indisputable statistics. He argues that there was no exaggeration or subversive manipulation of this information. Sergeant Jarrod Boyce of the New Haven Police Department verified that ShotSpotter alerted them to 1,581 rounds of gunfire in the city from January 1 to August 16 in 2024, two days prior to the billboards’ unveiling.

However, the University’s spokesperson, speaking on behalf of Sarno, disputes the YPBA’s narrative, labeling it as misleading. They assert that crime rates on Yale’s campus have witnessed a 12 percent decline so far in 2024 compared with the same timeframe in the preceding year.

The larger crime figures in New Haven, specifically the Police Department’s District 1, which houses most of Yale’s undergraduate campus including the Old Campus and all residential colleges barring Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin, supposedly decreased by 4 percent since 2023. This was as per the NHPD’s latest publicly disclosed CompStat report analyzing data between January and late July.

According to the same report, as of July 21, District 1 has experienced zero confirmed shootings since the commencement of the year 2024. This contrasting data does bring into question the selective portrayal of crime by different factions engaged in the matter.