A week after a tense encounter involving a police officer who refused to provide his name and badge number to a man in Newhallville, the city’s police chief visited the scene of the incident to participate in a neighborhood cookout — where he spoke with residents about what went wrong and how p olice need to do better. That cookout took place midday on Saturday near Hazel Street and Shelton Avenue. Several dozen people turned out to enjoy hot dogs, burgers, and wings, as well as eggs and pancakes. The confrontation at the center of discussion, meanwhile, occurred the prior Saturday, July 18, at around 10:30 a.m. at that same spot. That’s where Yancey Horton — better known as Brother Born — has spent the past decade hosting free weekly community breakfasts. According to Horton, last Saturday, an officer had been parked across the street for several minutes when one of the free-breakfast volunteers, Tyrell Dorsey, arrived and got out of his car. The officer reportedly asked him, in a hostile tone, what he was looking at. When Dorsey asked for the officer’s name and badge number, the officer declined to provide it. Horton, who says he stepped in immediately, called it a jarring departure from what he described as an otherwise good relationship with local police. He posted about the incident on Facebook and reached out to the New Haven Police Department, saying his intent wasn’t to put officers “on blast” but to spread awareness. Within half an hour, he said, he heard from the neighborhood’s district manager, Sgt. Jarrel Lowery. The officer who reportedly refused to identify himself was Kyle Saleh. Lowery said that he wrote Saleh up for violating department policy requiring an officer to provide their name and badge number when asked. “Unfortunately, he was in the wrong for that,” Lowery said, adding that in his three-plus years as district manager, he’d never dealt with an incident like it. Police Chief David Zannelli said he learned of the incident after the fact. He came to this Saturday’s event specifically to meet with Horton in person.  “I didn’t even know this event was taking place,” Zannelli said. “When I was alerted to what happened, I wanted to come here and meet with Brother Born one on one to have a constructive conversation.” Zannelli said that Saleh is relatively new to the police department, having been with the NHPD for less than two years. “That doesn’t excuse the conduct,” Zannelli said, noting that the the requirement for an officer to share their name and badge number is a longstanding department policy. Dorsey, who has volunteered with the breakfast program for five years, said on Saturday he wasn’t holding onto the incident. “We are proud Black people over here that stand up men, productive in our community,” he said, adding that he hoped the officer would learn from it and that the department follows through with real accountability rather than “lip service.” Rodney Williams, whose business Green Elm Construction helped provide food for Saturday’s meetup, put it simply: “We are doing this for our community and the people that live here.” The breakfast itself has deep roots in the neighborhood — Horton has run it for over a decade, and this year the Community Soup Kitchen and the Community Park Enhancement Network (CPEN) partnered with him and Williams to help expand it.  Francine Gaworowicz, a longtime volunteer, was among those on hand Saturday. She offered a counterpoint, describing a New Haven police officer named Maxine Wright who regularly checks in on her and fellow volunteers during a separate weekly outreach effort elsewhere in the city. Gaworowicz said that this is an example of what community policing should look like. Both Horton and Zannelli described last Saturday’s incident as the first of its kind in the ten-plus years that Horton’s breakfast program has been running. Zannelli tied the stakes to the city’s broader progress this year on gun violence, which he attributed in part to improved community-police relations.  “My concern is that they were being strained,” he said, “and we want to make sure that we handle incidents and don’t make excuses when there are things that are done incorrectly.” Rodney Williams, State Sen. Gary Winfield, Miguel Pittman, and Officer Ismail Abdussabur on Saturday. Volunteers set up food and drinks for Saturday’s community cookout in Newhallville. Attendees line up at a food cart near the cookout on Shelton Avenue and Hazel Street in Newhallville. The post Community Cookout Calms Nerves After Tense Cop Encounter appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less