Yale Police Records Made Public

The Freedom of Information Commission of Connecticut voted unanimously Wednesday to subject the Yale University Police Department to the same rules as public police departments after a New Haven public defender argued that the police have been exhibiting a double standard in their arrests.

The decision requires the Yale police to make their records publicly accessible—the standard applied to all government agencies.

“If you dress like a cop and you act like a cop, you should be accountable like a cop,” said Janet R. Perrotti, the New Haven public defender who brought the complaint against the Yale police.

Last spring, a black teenager was arrested and taken to jail for riding his bicycle on a sidewalk just outside the Yale campus. Perrotti, who suspected “police misconduct” and called the arrest “clearly a case of racial profiling,” said she was denied access to certain information because of the offender’s age.

Perrotti—who dubbed the Yale police a “secret society”—filed a freedom of information request in June asking for the information.

“I wanted access to the police personnel records,” Perrotti said. “I didn’t want any personal information. I just wanted to see if there were any records of misconduct.”

Yale has now released the records in this case, according to Perrotti. But as for the larger precedent, Perrotti said she expects that attorneys for Yale will appeal the ruling and that the issue will be fought through the courts.

“I anticipate that when all this is said and done, this little hassling of a kid on a bicycle will cost Yale $200,000,” she said.

The result of the New Haven hearing stands in contrast to the outcome of a Massachusetts lawsuit filed by The Crimson, which sought to force the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) to release detailed crime reports.

In 2006, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in University’s favor.

Similar to its Yale counterpart in terms of delegated state authority, HUPD is a private entity deputized by the Commonwealth.

HUPD officers are designated with a “special” status, although they have many of the same rights as public policemen, including the right to carry firearms, to make arrests, and to issue warrants.

Despite these similarities between campus police and traditional departments, university forces have been considered subsidiaries of private entities and thus have not been required to release police reports to the public.

But Wednesday’s ruling established a precedent that places campus police departments within the scope of public record release laws.

After The Crimson lost its lawsuit in 2006, former State Senator Jarrett T. Barrios ’90 sponsored a bill that would force campus police departments to comply with the freedom-of-information standards of public agencies.

“It’s unbelievably hypocritical to give a force that kind of power and not hold them accountable,” Crimson President Malcom A. Glenn ’09 said yesterday.

But Harvard has expressed concern about making all police records publicly available.

Kevin Casey, Harvard’s director of federal and state relations, said yesterday that some individuals might not seek help from police if they believed their problems would become “front page news.”

The Yale police, for their part, may face broader disclosure requirements than HUPD due to differences between Massachusetts and Connecticut laws. “Connecticut law defines a public [agency] differently than Massachusetts law, by including within its rubric non-public agencies that are the functional equivalent of a public agency,” said Robert A. Bertsche, The Crimson’s attorney, in an e-mailed statement.

Yale police also have full jurisdiction throughout New Haven, operating in partnership with New Haven police officers in a different enforcement scheme than HUPD.

The Yale police’s expanded jurisdiction played a role in the Freedom of Information Commission’s ruling.

Freedom of Information Commission Public Education Officer Thomas A. Hennick said that if Yale declines to appeal the ruling, then “the precedent would be set that they are the equivalent of a public agency.”

Andrew M. Mangino, editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News, called the ruling “really a big step forward.”

“I think it will promote the notion that even private institutions should be subject to the same sort of transparency that our society has recently put on public ones, and that will add a great deal to our reporting,” he said.

Mangino declined to comment on whether the Daily News would takes sides in an appeal.

—Staff writer Alexandra Perloff-Giles can be reached at aperloff@fas.harvard.edu.