♪ > > This week in the Wheelhouse.

> > And police use of force whose disproportionately impacted what can be done and gridlock in DC.

> > And the the > > for Connecticut Public.

I'm Frankie Graziano.

This is the Wheelhouse.

The show that connects politics to the people.

Got your weekly dose of politics in Connecticut and beyond right here.

Researchers at UConn have access to data that other states don't capture because of that.

They know a lot about policing and its impact on the people in the community.

These efforts reveal what many advocates for criminal justice reform had been saying for years.

That police use of force disproportionately impacts black residents.

This hour, we'll dive into the numbers and learn more about what lawmakers can do with them.

But first, the federal government shutdown continues.

And as it does, we have an update on how it's being viewed right here in Connecticut.

Lisa Hagen, federal policy reporter for Connecticut Public, and Connecticut Beer joins us now in the Wheelhouse.

Lisa, thank you so much for being here.

So good to see you this morning.

> > Thank you.

It's great to be back.

It's great to see you.

And I hope you're coming with good news.

I want to know what's the what's the latest on the shutdown?

Lisa, you're down there on Capitol Hill.

Whatever Congress's version.

> > Maybe of the Vatican, white smoke versus gray smoke is are you picking up any signs that deliberations are sort of ending here?

> > I don't have a great metaphor for you and that way.

I have no, no.

We're still down in DC in Congress.

There is still a stalemate.

Plenty to dive into and what it's going to mean.

both sides remain at an impasse.

They're dug in.

The shutdown is dragging on.

I think it's now hit the second longest and it's, you know, are we?

So we saw that days for not knowing what's going to > > I think I did this with happen.

you on the phone a couple of weeks ago.

Let's try to help the viewers and listeners here understand.

What might happen.

kind of give us maybe that white smoke or gray smoke kind of thing > > would it be?

> > Lawmakers working together Ave easily is going to be working together.

so votes happening.

But maybe people gathering in like working groups.

> > Yeah, I think there's no if you live, there's no significant negotiations going on at this moment.

Obviously, that is what lawmakers would like to see and do obviously to get out of this impasse in the standoff.

It remains to be seen whether that can happen.

We're seeing at least this week them both will be taken in a way that.

can maybe try to get past the gridlock, but it wouldn't necessarily open up the full government.

There might be a vote coming tomorrow on paying essential workers.

Now, basically everyone is waiting on back pay again, I don't I don't expect much movement on that.

But they're definitely trying to find new strategies for a way out of this.

But, you know, I think you and I talked about this.

It's possible that this keeps dragging on.

Will there be external pressure, things happening just, you know, outside of everyone's control because Earth and government funding that may be unlock this, it remains to be seen.

> > Duggan, that is a big term or turn a phrase that we're hearing here from Lisa Hagen with them being dug in.

> > I'm interested in hearing what our federal delegation is saying about the shutdown.

> > What are one or 2 hardlines?

Maybe they're taking here.

When I talk about our federal delegation, of course, I'm talking about the law recorded Himes and I try to do this game right in everybody, but I can always do it.

And then of course you have Jahana Hayes.

Rosa DeLauro, you know the whole game.

There are a congressional delegation > > they're all on the same page there.

All.

They're all fighting for.

Basically these expiring health care subsidies.

It's people who are on the Obama care Affordable Care Act exchanges who get these, you know, again subsidies to cover parts of their premiums and beasley of those subsidies expire at the end of the year.

Premiums will skyrocket in a bunch of different ways.

Actually seen a report that I think the 4th Congressional district, which is represented by Jim Himes in the Southwest Corner back at the some of the largest premium spikes in the country.

And so that is what they're pressing.

They'd also like to you know, these Medicaid cause that are coming in the future from the big beautiful bill.

They would like to see those think that's a little bit harder but plays I think they're really kind of focusing on these ACA subsidies.

That's an immediate concern.

That would be these immediate cuts coming in the near future and they also want to, you know, try to ensure that President Trump and his administration can't overruled.

Congress is spending authority.

And so there's a you know, it's is it to threefold kind of strategy, but they're really kind of focusing on the health care messaging.

> > You recently met a nurse down there that actually works here at Backus Hospital.

Who is she?

And what did she have to say about the government shutdown?

> > She's worried again about this kind of twofold, health care crisis that's unfolding.

One again, worried about Medicaid cuts.

We don't know when exactly those are going to come.

You know, sometime in the new year to, you know, 2, 3, years down the line and she's also worried about the fact that there is a shutdown happening and that there could be spikes in premiums.

But, you know, for her hospital specifically and this was no priors.

All of this.

There was a lot of shortages at with staff and stuff like that.

And so they are they're just worried that, you know, with changes coming to health care at the federal level, this could just continue to have a ripple effect and health care across Connecticut.

> > Affordable health care tax credits at the center of this fight.

As you mentioned, earlier least according to NPR, Republicans argue this could be hammered out after Republicans our bar after lawmakers work to end the shutdown.

Sorry.

Democrats disagree.

What other business in Connecticut and beyond might be sort of stuck in queue here until the shutdown ends.

> > Yeah, that's that's definitely the big one.

I mean, exactly.

As you said, Republicans want to you handle it as a stand-alone measure.

I think they've already kind of try to offer that saying, hey, will, you know, least in the Senate will take a vote on this.

If you allow the government to open up and just vote on this bill that doesn't include healthcare messages or health care policies.

Democrats are pretty firm and that they want fight this together and keep them couple together and so that is tell me.

I mean, just just funding each agency is at a stalemate.

I mean, again, what we're talking about, what were you know in this current shutdown fight is just keeping the government funded at current levels that's just that's that's from a previous, you know, fiscal year.

This was during the Biden administration.

What's currently has taken is not moving is just completely new funding for the government for all 12 different agencies for fiscal year 2026.

So that's the bully at a standstill.

And then, you know, you're going to see.

If there's no movement on this and we continue to shut down 30 a backlog.

There's also the annual defense policy bill, the NDA that always gets pretty much punted to the end of the year.

That always gets dealt with kind of in December.

Still possible that that's, you know, that will get handled at the end of the year around the holidays.

But, you know, again, with really happening in Congress right now, the Senate continuously taking votes on the same bill.

The House not even in session right now.

It's just a backlog in Congress.

> > Let's sort of demystify this for people for a second because the argument is always going to be around who's got the power in DC the balance of power.

But just in this particular case and this is why Democrats are getting blamed for a lot of it.

But we're going to miss if I this for folks.

I think just to help people understand you need in order to get this through the Senate.

You're going to need 60 votes right?

> > Yeah, that's it.

I'm bipartisan agreement.

Yes.

And that is why the Senate is the key to all this because you can get things through a simple majority in the house, which is what they already did and not on final passage.

You, you know, you can get a simple majority, but to do you know, in these Waukee terms of the cloture vote and it's getting past the filibuster.

But you need 60 votes and there are not 60 Republicans.

That's why you need Democratic votes.

> > And then for Democrats, if if somebody were to say, hey, because you need the 60 votes, their fault, it's just agree with that.

With the Republicans.

Well, they would say not so fast.

We have our own policies that we want to try to push through.

And we're really concerned about those health care premiums.

And then you have with Senator Murphy is told, I think both of us and his concern is that any kind of funding that you give the Trump administration at this point?

You're not sure where that might go.

That was a big worry that he had when he came on the show and that could be particularly a big concern when you're talking about.

Federal troops or at least the National showing up in places and things like that is the concern that Democrats have that if they fund the government, it could be used sort of elsewhere, the money that they that they that they released to the federal government.

> > Yeah, I think it gets lost in all this because, you know, again, Democrats are really hyper focus on the health care messaging and and trying to extend these health care subsidies that that, again, that is a part of their shutdown approaches.

Well, is trying to pressure the administration saying, hey, we have, you know, that's the power of the purse.

We hear that term a lot.

Congress has the authority to spend an approved money the way they see fit.

And, you know, a lot of this money that's already been approved by Congress in previous years is not being.

It's not being spent at all is being moved around by the administration.

So they just want to ensure that, hey, we're going to improve as money is going to be used the way we intended.

And so that is a part of the strategy.

I know there's some, you know, frustration even from Republican appropriators.

You know, the ones who get to make all these decisions they want to also do have their money spent in such a way.

But that is also approach this.

But again, a lot of this has just been taking a back seat to the healthcare messaging.

> > And then as we kind of mentioned earlier, many Republicans would say, hey, get yours, probably do a CR and then we can move on to other businesses that kind of what they're thinking at this point.

> > Yeah, I mean, there are already having to maybe change revised plan.

And I mean, the CR, the continuing resolution again, that's what keeps the trail.

there's always got The team is defined the terms, but I had.

Yeah.

So this continuing resolution which we keep again flat funding, it was to go to November.

21st.

I mean, we're already a month away from that 30 talking about need to come back and extended a little bit longer.

There's talk to Republicans about just doing a full year CR.

They've done that in the past.

They pretty much what they did to get us to the current situation.

The current month right now but, you know, I don't know where it's going to land.

It's possible that Congress king keep deciding to fund things the way they've been funded and not do new funding and the that sometimes can amount to funding cuts because a lot of times when you get to a new fiscal year, you are increasing funding in some ways.

And so it's it's unclear how long we're just going to keep operating on the short-term bills.

> > I don't know where it's going to land either, but I'm glad that we have you here to talk about it because we're on a roll here trying to just to just try to break this down for the regular Connecticut resident or the regular America for people to understand.

So let's now talk back about the backpack.

I think you mention that this something that not just necessarily the back pay, but there's also an effort underway within the federal government to try to make sure that essential workers get paid and continue to get paid.

Can you give us an update on that?

What about pay for military workers?

> > Yes, so typically in a shutdown, there are there's people who are furloughed because they're not considered essential and they will not be working.

They will not get back pay and so are they will get back pay once the government opens.

There are a number of essential workers, TSA agents, those in the military.

There's others that are just deemed necessary who are federal employees that continue to work throughout a shutdown and do not get paid and so the government shutdown ends.

And so there have been efforts among the Trump administration to try to move money around.

Keeps Iran certain programs funded Lake wickets, the women infant and Children's Nutrition Assistance program.

They have tried to keep that afloat.

Candidate has done the same as well.

There's also no movement of trying to move money around to pay active duty military who again are working without pay currently.

It's my understanding they did not miss their most recent paycheck.

It's unclear if you know, when we get to the next paycheck, if they will get if they will also be able to fund that.

And so there's an effort in Congress right now to try at least in the Senate side to try to hey, essential workers to give them the back pay that they've missed and to keep paying them as the shutdown goes on.

I don't know if that's going to land.

Democrats are already wary of that effort because they say it specifically.

Senator Murphy said that he doesn't know what that's going mean that President Trump can pick or choose who gets paid, who deemed essential during a shutdown.

But at least that's the movement right now.

And so, you know, we'll see how that lands.

Probably tomorrow.

But I there's at least an effort to try to pay some people already shut > > We often talk during the down.

shutdown and I've been there when it happened when the last one happened in 18 19.

I believe it was the government shutdown.

We often talk about the U.S.

Coast Guard Academy in new London and workers.

They're generally missing out on pay in the absence of government funding.

What can you tell us about local efforts to maybe support those families and even other families who are federal workers furlough.

> > Yeah.

I've talked to Foodsha this.

They were pretty integral last time in the 2018, 2019 shutdown and so they were doing these mobile pop-up food trucks going to specific areas in the state where there is a little bit more of a federal work force.

Again, a lot of those essential employees who are working during a shutdown and not getting paid and so they had said similar to last time they were up at Bradley.

They we're bringing, you know, the mobile pop-up trucks up there.

They had food boxes at Tweed in New Haven.

And so there's already efforts to try to provide food and some kind of help to these workers who are having to just, you know, again, work without pay.

Also, some efforts down at the Coast Guard Academy, even though it's my understanding that the Coast Guard at least got their most recent paycheck.

And so, you know, I think in all of this, as we you know, again, we're we're at the point where this is the second longest shutdown.

It's possible we can get to the longest if we cross that.

35 day Mark, but we can talk more about But November 1st is going to be the real the real big marker of where we could start to see what's on a number of people missing.

Well, we've 2 people missing paychecks that we would see snap potentially are running out in Connecticut.

They've already warned about that heating assistance through life.

He could also run out and there's also concern of these head start early childhood programs also running out of money.

But on the staff of really the big one.

And so I think everyone looking to November, first of is there going to be a breakthrough or the people beyond just the federal workforce really going to feel ease these > > We'll continue to monitor cuts.

that because that's going to be important.

That's that's that's something called the pressure point.

And you mentioned that earlier I want to kind of focus in on those pressure points.

That least in this last question.

I'm going to ask you, we talked about signals from lawmakers earlier regarding a potential potential deal.

Those are some that you mention for November.

1st, what are some other ones that get maybe regular people like you and I are people that are not lawmakers that are up in arms that could make a statement.

Everybody up in arms here.

> > Well, again, November first is going to be a real crucial one.

Again, you're going to see, especially lower income families.

And again, these are not necessarily federal workers all but people losing nutrition assistance, people that henschel losing energy assistance or, you know, their 3rd child care beyond that.

I mean, we've already I this on this morning that some airports are just seen a lot of delays.

You know, TSA workers, they're just air traffic controllers.

They just might not show up for work because they're getting paid or they're sick or they need to take time off and they're not getting paid.

And so you're going to see some of the residual effects and as we get, you know, we're about a month away from Thanksgiving holiday travel is just going to ramp up to.

That, that that could have a pretty catastrophic effective people all over the country are trying to travel and can't because there's major delays and travel tend to be a pretty big pressure point and shutdowns.

> > It's the year of the air traffic control worker.

If you think about it, we remember how about how tough people who are thinking that that life could be when you had that plane crash in Washington, D.C., earlier in the year involving the military plane.

And that might just be the beginning of it for those folks because now they're not necessarily.

Some of them are not necessarily getting paid during the government shutdown.

So again, a situation where the holidays are coming up.

That's something that maybe you're pointing to here Thanksgiving.

Obviously the December holidays as well.

Now you're having that happen and potentially people having a call out of work.

But I guess what the most important thing that you mentioned there in terms of November.

One.

The I don't want you to have to speculate on this but lie heap is a big thing that you brought up there.

We don't even know about the future of that program and whether or not energy will keep going on and their snap benefits, which people have been talking about.

And those kind of dwindling.

So do we know anything about a willingness from congressional Republicans to maybe keep those programs in place.

We know that they did there maybe talk about some kind of with funding and extending that during the shutdown.

Is there any kind of urgency to keep those programs here in light he penned a snap.

> > Great ray and they and again, they as you said, they move money around for wake.

It's unclear if they have the funding or or the willingness at the federal level to keep those programs running at least, you know, the Department of Agriculture is the one that's kind of running staff.

And they've just indicated to states, including Connecticut, saying the funding is going to run out in about 2 weeks and we're not going be able to pay out benefits for starting that was start November first, see their monthly benefits.

And so it's really if the government that the federal government cannot find a way to cover these programs to keep them afloat.

The onus once again, it's going to be on Connecticut to see whether they can keep it afloat and if they can keep things running, there is a willingness and there's from state officials to try to figure out what they can do.

It's a possibility that the state could from the money get reimbursements.

That is unclear in all of this.

They're already kind of doing that so quick.

And so I again, this November first deadline is pretty crucial.

The could be a pressure point, but I think it's when you're really going to see the true full force.

You don't the brunt of the shutdown on not just federal employees and that in some ways people not going to national parks, people having delays that, you know, people who depend on food heating and air and, you know, being able to afford all these bills really going to have to make some tough decisions and maybe not having those benefits to support them.

And at that point will be about 5 days from the longest shutdown that we've had.

So exactly very important to watch these markers.

These potential pressure points.

Lisa Hagen will be following them.

> > At CD public that Organ C D near Dot Org.

Lisa, that was tremendous.

Thank you so much for doing this for us.

> > Thank by Mr.

Find a little bit you did.

That was a lot to get through.

But coming up after the break, we'll talk about police use of force and the impact it has on Connecticut residents.

> > What are your criminal justice solution call now?

888-720-9677, a 7 to 0, 9, 6, 7, 7, call us or hit us up on our YouTube street here in the Wheelhouse.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ This is the Wheelhouse from Connecticut Public Radio.

I'm Frankie Graziano.

Not all of Connecticut's residents are policed equally.

New data shows that police continue to use force on certain segments of the population at higher rates than others.

> > Joining us now to explain what the tells us.

Jim hugging investigative editor for the Accountability Project report, Connecticut, Publix, not Republican, Connecticut Public's, investigative reporter Team.

Jim, thank you so much for calling for jumping in today.

Glad to be here with Hope they'll wake up during the same type of ties and also with a scan of her own project manager with the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy.

The Eye Mrp at the University of Connecticut also manage the Connecticut racial profiling Prohibition Project since 2012.

Can.

Thank you so much for being here.

Great.

Thanks for having me.

If you have any questions about our state's policing, give us a call.

8, 8, 7, 2, 0, 9, 6, 7, 7, We can have a big-time policy conversation here.

I've talked to Ken, as has Jim for the last few years about this work.

So very important work.

Let's hear more about it, Jim.

You're recently reported on how Connecticut police.

Are using force on the job force, meaning many things from pointing guns at people to some doing them with electrical shots.

Researchers have been collecting data on this now for several years, including obviously with cans doing.

Can you walk me through some of the major findings Sure.

So this is a really novel initiative that Connecticut has set up that's been underway for the last several years directed by Ken and his colleagues.

> > police departments around the state are required to now report into a centralized repository when they're using force.

And it's something that kind of a dozen virtually no other state does at this time.

And so it's it's allowed us to have inside for the first time in a really comprehensive way into how these encounters are playing out.

A few major findings.

One is that it we think that the use of force is relatively rare when police encountered people.

It's a little hard to say because, again, we don't really have a huge corpus of data to look at from other places to benchmark this.

candidates colleagues found that about 1.6% of the roughly 100,000 arrests that happened in the state and there's some type of use of force.

And in terms of diving within the numbers, we do see a racial disparity in how use of force plays out.

Ken found black people are subjected to forced at a higher rate compared to the rate of arrest.

It's a 41% of subjects and use of force incidents were black compared to 34% of total Rusty's.

So overrepresented in that number for why people you can kind of what those numbers are around, what people underrepresented.

56 1% of subjects compared to 63% of arrests.

Tease.

So obviously, you know, that is concerning finding that deserves some further attention.

And I think that's work that folks that you come want to do in the future and then one other number that really stood out to me because we did some reporting on this a few years ago.

Is that a really significant share?

These incidents involve someone who the police, you know, observed and believed to be in some type of emotional distress and that those incidents per higher likelihood for injuries, something going wrong.

And so it's another matter that really deserve some public public policy attention.

And so to get that information, you talked about police officers having to input data and not necessarily data but information about each use of force and things like that into a computer, right?

So I mean, they're going to have to actually talk about the outcomes.

> > And certain things were kind of things.

Are they implementing as they're reporting in what's happening.

> > Yeah, this is the data collection processes really fascinating, especially for somebody like somebody was that itself would be And it's been an evolving process that I'm sure he can talk about.

That started with kind of putting the Senate to standardize paper form.

I think they're now at the place where police departments are able to use electronic system put this.

But it is a it's a really comprehensive look at how each encounter played out from the perspective of each individual officer that was involved and goes into their, you know, their perceptions that each stage what happened as they moved through this kind of force escalation from perhaps issuing a verbal command, moving on to get a striking someone are using more serious force than that.

So it allows you to know like not only kind of the bare outlines of what happened, but what the officers were kind of thinking and understanding about the circumstances as as they unfold in sure.

And that's very important context.

This is where I'm gonna bring you in.

Ken, I want to.

> > Think about it this way.

The collection of this data and the way that you all do this work.

One nuance to it is that if you looked at University of Chicago data, I think a few years ago that I actually sent it to can ask them about it.

When you look at this data and you talk about maybe even FBI crime data or something like that.

It might show disparities.

But it might also not give you the full picture or they might not be collecting the data properly.

And it might not help you when you're trying to argue in front of lawmakers that you need to see some kind of change.

But this is where you're kind of group comes in and does the work sort of the right way?

Can you help us understand what it takes to do that for sure.

96 towns in the state of Connecticut that have their own police department.

We have 169 towns.

We have 13 special police agencies that with the tribal police university police DMV have their own policed and then we have the state police.

We have about 8,000 police officers across those 100 plus policed departments in the state of Connecticut.

And when we started this work, they all did things a little bit differently.

They all collected information on force incidents differently.

And each department to find force differently.

So, for example, when we started this in 2019, the Hartford Police Department would send us a use-of-force report every time they placed handcuffs on a subject, know their forces use, but they physically touched the subject in order to put handcuffs on them and they counted that as use of force.

I'd have maybe neighboring communities that, you know, unless somebody was physically struck or tased or had a gun pointed at them.

They would fill out a use-of-force we spent a lot of time over the last several years trying to get everybody.

First of all to it to have this same definition of force, right?

So when X happens, you complete a report and you reported 2, the state.

And even though we're one state and we're not a large state with that many different agencies making their own interpretations of laws or programs, it becomes a bit challenging.

So we had to work really hard to try to create a standard system.

And again, we're one of the only states in the country that does this the way this is done in most other jurisdictions, every police department, there's hundreds of thousands of them across the country.

They determine what forces they determine, whether it's documented by an officer.

They determine what they do with that data here in the state of Connecticut, we've standardize that.

And then the information comes to us so we could try to understand what this is telling us.

Can we shape policy and practice?

We haven't always been it's a it's a work in progress, meaning we've made significant improvements in the way this information is collected over the last 5 years.

But I think if you read the report, we produced a couple weeks ago, that report also tells a story that more work needs to be done.

Use of force.

That could mean many different things.

You guys are trying to get a standard definition.

Can you help us with that standard definition that the towns are having to use now?

Sure.

So every police officer now in the state of Connecticut has to report when an incident either does cause or may cause physical injury.

And so we've defined that in Connecticut to say any time you strike an individual with a hand and elbow in the foot closed fist as an example.

So that sort of physical combat used that Taser, what they refer to as an electronic defense weapon, you threatened to use a Taser.

That's a force pepper spray OC spray less lethal projectiles.

Overuse very infrequently.

But think of like a a bean bag or a pepper ball.

Maybe and then obviously a firearm is the most serious use-of-force that a police officer can use.

And one of the big changes we made in 2022.

In Connecticut as we started requiring police officers to report when they on holster point and threatened to use their firearms even if they don't a discharge.

Their firearm is important to know that you are in a situation where you could have possibly used a firearm and cause serious physical injury on an individual.

This is data that you and your team have been collecting a police department's, I think since 2019, at least the actual use of force data we're at now is kind of broken down by the police officers as they collected.

Can you expand on how the process differs now from previous years collecting the data sort of the dark days before 2019, I guess.

Yeah.

So again, every department had their own form their own system, their own definition of what should and shouldn't be reported one of the big changes we made, which may seem small is that prior to our engagement in this program, we knew what forced police used.

And so we knew that police officer.

told you to stop they threatened you with a Taser and then they taste you.

But we didn't know what the subject was doing.

Why the situation was escalating.

And we also didn't know the order in which forces use.

So you could look at the information, make a logical inference.

Well, I told you to stop a threat and use the Taser and I taste you.

But most of the situations aren't that clean and so one of the substantive changes we made was to have police now in Connecticut, not only report the actions they took, but there also reporting the actions that the individual they interacted with talk.

So I gave you verbal commands.

I told you to stop you threaten me with a weapon.

I point my Taser at you told you look, if you don't stop, I'm going to tase you.

You started to charge me with said weapon.

I then deploy my Taser and you are now mobilized.

Just understanding how these situations escalate with a significant improvement in how we a look at this data and part of it as the collection of data in getting that.

And that's kind of where we're Connecticut Public was in a prior to 2019.

We're looking at can drones work that he's doing with the CT Rp 3.

> > And we're trying to understand this and we're seeing that certain departments, maybe the flag for having racial disparities in traffic stops or there's incomplete sort of information.

So you can't necessarily now what your ultimately doing is helping departments not necessarily helping departments and want to act as if you're some sort of shepherd here.

But departments now can collect sort of uniformed a day here or at least everybody could do the same way.

So that you can't necessarily be one police station in the state of Connecticut, which was Bridgeport at the time, was always telling us.

Well, we just don't have computers and we can't really get this kind of information.

But now sort of you have to comply with the law.

So I think now everybody's kind of uniform, I think, unfortunately, in the most recent report that we publish, yes, the documents that they have to complete our uniform.

But the report we publish still tells us a story about incomplete reporting.

So for example, the Bridgeport Police Department in the 18 months we looked at told us that they had 24 incidents of force.

Now, the East Hartford Police Department reported over 100 and students of force.

It's not that East.

Hartford used force 4, 5, times the rate of Bridgeport is that East.

Hartford was much more diligent about properly reporting the incidents that did occur.

And Bridgeport wasn't right.

And so we're still working on, you know, at the end of the day, the law requires that departments determine when an incident meets the threshold for reporting to the state.

And we rely on departments honestly and accurately reporting their incidents.

Right?

We're dealing with 100 plus agencies.

It's on the agency to ensure they're complying with the law.

I think what the report that we produce tells us is that there are some agencies that are really diligent in good about reporting and those others, unfortunately, that are left diligent.

But this is police accountability just as we have all kinds of public accountability measures here in the state of Connecticut, at least now you have a report that will tell you where where these incidents are happening or at least where some people might not be complying with the data here.

If you find that like this experience looking at the numbers kind of matters.

So I think it kind of goes back to what I asked you about the University of Chicago or FBI crime data.

You can't just throw together a set of data.

You need to have the right people kind of looking at it right?

Of course, kind of electing into context matters.

So, you know, one of the big takeaways from this report, Jim, covered a lot of them already.

right, that there are some racial disparities, right?

So we continue to see that black individuals in particular are more likely to have force used against them.

Particularly if you compare that to the arrest data, we also know that people in clear mental health distress or more likely to be involved in a situation where force is used by law enforcement.

Now the reasons for that are complex and so what we try to do in our work every year, Mr.

Try to help policymakers understand what the data does and doesn't mean so sure there's a disparity.

But why is there a disparity?

What are the factors that are contributing to that disparity to what degree do police have control over those factors?

And can we do anything to reduce the disparity?

Those are all questions we work to try to answer by better understanding the data.

Very important context to have and we're appreciative to have can.

And Jim, on the show, we're going take a quick break.

This is frankly, Graziano for the Wheelhouse.

We're going explore how Connecticut's police officers are responding to this data are the reforms, though, that you'd like to see when it comes to police use of force or do you think that things May should maybe go a different way?

Give us a call.

888-720-9677, 8, 8, 7, 2, 0, 9, 6, 7, 7, here in the Wheelhouse.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ This is the Wheelhouse from Connecticut Public Radio.

I'm Frankie Graziano.

A new report from the Institute Huge and Municipal and Regional Policy.

At UConn analyzed police use-of-force incidents across the state.

They found that there are racial disparities in how municipal police use force.

They also found that a significant share of incidents involving people with mental health challenges are responded to with violence.

So with me, Ken Brown, whose team spearheaded the collection of the also with us, Dean, investigative editor at Connecticut Public, Jimmy shared earlier people experiencing emotional distress are being policed more forcefully, then some other groups.

When you look at the data or at least the disparities in the data, can you talk to me about some of the some of your reporting on this issue and to the Reporter's notebook on this and it's kind of what speech or interests can just help me out.

Kind of how the police departments across the state are approaching this problem.

Sure, I this isn't a subject that we did some reporting on a few years ago when Ken and his team put out their their first version of Look at this data.

> > And found back then that similarly the finding is that of the incidents that involve use of force, a significant share of those involve a subject to that police believe was in distress.

They know they use this term emotionally disturbed, but someone that they kind of get on scene and this gets cleared of them, that it's somebody who is going through some kind of mental distress and we look at the time and started to understand some of the models, the police departments in Connecticut specifically are experimenting with to try to to try to better address the situations because they do involve, you know, they present the opportunity for injury and for risk.

Both to the police are there and to the subjects and part of that is, you know, if you look at the latest numbers, they categorize that something like only like 6% of the time they they they perceive the person involved to be non aggressive, which means most of the time that police are showing up in finding someone in this situation, they are feeling under threat.

And so you can see how a situation like that is one that you want to de-escalate or try to find some way out of police are trying a few different things and there's a longstanding program to train police officers to handle the situations that call it a crisis intervention training in a really significant number of police in Connecticut have been through that program.

I think it's more than 5,000 as of a few years ago.

So that in a lot of departments when they get a call like this, you have people who have specialized training were called out to the scene and part of it is, you know, they can recognize, you know, particular signs of a particular distress.

But also, you know, one of the trainers from New Haven told me it's a way that police can also just generally be become more empathetic to people who are in these situations and that can, you know, maybe produce different outcomes.

More recently, we've seen some some real novel experiments around things like social workers being involved in the response.

Chr works here with some of the department's around kind of the Greater Hartford area.

And so you might have a social worker from that organization who comes out with the police department when they get called out to one of these calls.

We also have models were social worker is an embedded right into the police department.

We went out to Waterbury and observed one of their social workers working on cases know do things like, you know, if they're hanging around the office that look back at what were some of the 9-1-1 calls that we got in the last week.

I will say to be recognize any of these people.

Can we call the family and see if we can give them support or they'll go out to the scene themselves.

And then I think the most progressive end of this, we have departments who are experimenting with having an alternative to the police department.

So you might have appear responders or social workers, clinicians who will go out to the scene so that you don't have an officer there in a way that that, you know, perhaps might not present the same risk of escalation.

So 1, 1, area where that's been successful is right here in Hartford with its heart team.

That's the Hartford Emergency Assistance Response team.

They partner with the Capital region, Mental Health center of the community renewal team in Wheeler Clinic and some of those staff will come out to nonviolent calls for service.

the mayor had an event last year to celebrate what a success that's been for the community.

Any success stories really quickly of of Alice police departments that are like, hey, we want to know a little bit more about the data or > > maybe at some of these departments that he's talking about that are trying to to to try to make sure that they could kind of work on their efforts to police and communities there.

Anybody reaching out and trying to work with the on very closely.

We've seen over the last 5 years, a number of departments across the state start to integrate social workers into into their agencies.

Madison, I think the cave in Willimantic are good examples of agencies have really invested in trying to bring in other professionals that can deal with people and clear mental health distress.

I think it's important for people to remember Connecticut police officers believe it or not go through some of the most hours of training of any recruit in this in the country over 1300 training hours.

This states, for example, down south the officers get 400 hours of training and sent out the road.

But we also have to be mindful that when we train police officers, we you know, they were duty belt.

And you've got a taser and a gun and a baton and handcuffs and then we send them to the scene.

Sometimes of people that are unclear.

Mental health distress and then sub in for a surprise that they use the tools that we give them, that we train them on.

And that's the model, right?

And so, you know, when we look at, I'm not surprised to see a higher share of force being used on people in clear mental health distress.

We also see from the data that they're more likely to be > > armed or a threatening themselves or another individual.

And the police show up and they used the tools they've been given.

And so some of what I think the data tells us is we need to find a way to help that population maybe before police intervention.

You mention Addison shout out to Jack Drum, the chief there.

was very helpful in showing a young reporter about some of these body cams and ways that they were trying to work.

> > They're policing efforts down there.

We do have a color here who has concerns about the self reporting component of data collection quasi you're on the air.

Go ahead to sheriffs to share your concerns.

> > And make any help high.

Hi, I just really want to commend.

And that he could department for these assault ahead the rest of the country.

reported area that really shows in the society.

We live in here.

Committee could pass a very good you know, relationship between the people and a police dog, which you and after losing of the state and the shows my concern, Russia is that if you are correct Sunday talk to understand this situation.

You need to call it a detached from both sides of the participants.

In my view, Euclid to do tests from the police and then allegedly tossed from the person most you know, did.

Did we it?

Oldest foes.

Meaning the person that the Taser was used on.

For example else, you have a situation where this a domestic abuse situation in the couple's home please go in day and top only to the month include a talented month and come back without collecting data and a woman.

So you have trick shot.

What happened to?

> > Kwasi.

I appreciate this is a good way to cover and to advance the conversation.

Your thank you so much for your comment.

I'm going to kind of put this.

You now can.

Is that what how's that possible?

Could you then reach out to people who are actually being in involved in these the use of force cases would involve them filling out the same kind of survey.

Is that something you've ever explored?

> > Well, look as a researcher at the public University.

I always think the more data the better so your crilley and asked me and for that, right.

But somebody's got to do it.

But the but there would obviously be challenges in terms of trying to actually gather that I think we do have the advantage.

What are those challenges of the challenges are finding the individuals, their willingness to do it, having that capacity?

Right?

Look, this is run on a shoestring budget at UConn and it's me and one other person we're trying to manage.

Thousands of use-of-force reports coming in on a regular basis and then, you know, you really need the resources to build up the capacity to even try to randomly sample a number of individuals in each department that had force used against them.

It's a brilliant idea.

One that we should explore and certainly one that should be posed to the Legislature is, look, there may be ways to think through this probably not gonna be able to serve everybody.

I do think one of the advantages we have in 2025 our body cameras.

So we can do more than we could even 5 or 6 years ago where we were just getting the officer's perspective.

Now, we can also look at body worn camera footage and see for ourselves at least more of the contacts that led to that incident.

Nothing he can't do, though.

And that's a good question, though, by by Kwasi.

And I appreciate that perspective.

> > Some context from state Senator Gary Winfield, who I spoke to is a sponsor of the 2019 bill that paved the way for this data to be collected.

Winfield says he wanted to highlight a set of incidents where mental health condition didn't really allow for civilians to respond to police in the way police put baby like.

And that's kind of what we're getting to a gym and and of course, now maybe having new ways to respond to things if his hope in in collecting the stated was that ultimately would demonstrate through the data that there would be the impact and maybe impact on training going forward to reduce those incidents.

What does this day to demonstrate to you, Ken?

And could spur a change in state legislation or at least may be the way that police police, you know, first of all, I think one of the biggest impacts of program and if this data collection effort is the same thing we stall, we started to collect data on traffic stops right?

Transparency changes behavior.

Just the act of filling out the report knowing that somebody within and outside your agency is going to look at it knowing that somebody is going to try to better understand your thinking, we'll change your behavior in the future.

And so that to me is still your biggest return on investment ROI.

Transparency, the more transparent we can be about what police do and how they do it.

The better I think we see police respond.

And I also think the better public policy we can make are no longer operating in a world of anecdotes.

Well, you know, somebody tells a story.

This happened to me.

Stories are important.

But what's also important is to understand if that was a one-off or if there's a pattern or practice of a certain type of behavior occurring or where policymakers need to focus on what the report also says.

They clearly need to focus on individuals in mental health distress are we doing enough for that population?

Is the amount of force being used small or large, depending on how you look at.

Look at the information in future rounds of data collection.

I want to ask is quickly and then maybe get 30 seconds for you to respond.

What additional information and data would you like to access?

Maybe it's more honing in on the situation you're talking about.

But > > are you going to need more resources from the state to do this?

And then what kind of data are you looking for?

We made one really big change and started in October.

Police will now tell us what happened to the individual after the force.

Did they arrest them?

Did they send them to the hospital as a part of a mental health call or did they do something else?

That was a piece of information that was missing.

There's an assumption that everybody was arrested.

A lot of these people are very likely ending up in the hospital on a 72 hour.

Mental health hold and the other thing that would really round this out is actually information on arrests that don't result in force because you need a comparison group.

I want to do that for everybody that was arrested for burglary or robbery.

5% of those people had force used against them.

And then where there are racial disparities within that.

So the piece of data that's really missing is actually not the force information.

It's all of sudden trip.

Alice choose not to use force.

You've been listening to Ken Barone, project manager with the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy.

I Mrp at the University of Connecticut.

He also has managed the Connecticut racial profiling.

> > Prohibition project since 2012 can appreciate you coming on the show so much.

Thank you.

Also listen to Jim head of the investigative editor for the Accountability Project, Connecticut Public's, Investigative Reporter Team.

I want to point you to some recent reporting that they've done too on a on a terrible situation happening out of New Britain.

Please go to CT Public Dot org for more on that reporting and check out him in May says Reporter's Notebook today show produced by Chloe Win a dazzling program.

It was edited by Patrick Scale.

Our technical producers dealing or a special thanks to test terrible negative Fitzgerald, Connecticut Public, visuals team and our operations team download the Wheelhouse anytime on your favorite podcast app.

I'm Frankie Graziano.

This is the Wheelhouse.

Thanks for listening.

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