Crisis Team Complaint Laments Lack Of Plan

A recently filed state labor board complaint by New Haven’s police union claims that the city failed to provide cops with a clear ​“program operational plan” in the runup to the start of training for a long-delayed effort to send social workers instead of police officers in response to certain 911 calls.

Those concerns are detailed in a five-page Connecticut State Board of Labor Relations complaint filed on Aug. 29 by Elm City Local President Florencio Cotto against the City of New Haven.

The Independent recently obtained a copy of the full complaint after first reporting on the existence of the complaint in this article from Sept. 22. 

“Bargaining has not concluded and no new policy or revised operational plan has been given to the Union, yet the City has announced a program start date,” the police union’s complaint reads. ​“The City has violated Section 7 – 470(a)(4) of the [Municipal Employees Relations Act] by failing to bargain collectively in good faith with the Union.”

It goes on to ask the labor board to order the city to ​“bargain in good faith with the union regarding the impact its program may have on the bargaining unit members’ working conditions.” It also calls for the city to ​“cease and desist” the planned start of the program, to ​“make all affected parties whole,” and to pay the union’s costs and attorney’s fees.

Click here to read the police union’s labor board complaint in full.

The program at the center of this complaint is called COMPASS, or Compassionate Allies Serving our Streets. Top Elicker Administration officials first announced their intention to launch this program back in the summer of 2020 in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality. The mayor, top city social services staffers, and COMPASS’s director have described the yet-to-launch program as sending specially trained social workers and ​“peers with lived experience” instead of cops to certain 911 calls related to homelessness, addiction, and mental health concerns.

The full labor board complaint offers further insight into why the police union wanted to slow down the rollout of the already long-delayed program. 

“It’s very disappointing that the union submitted the complaint,” Mayor Elicker told the Independent for this previous story about the police union complaint. He said he did not understand the union’s allegations of bad faith negotiations.​“They could have submitted it any time over the many months we’ve been talking about this program. … I’m concerned that this isn’t about COMPASS, but more about contract negotiations.”

“It is truly disheartening to learn that following our first negotiation session for a successor contract, that someone would​‘leak’ the Labor Board complaint to the press,” police union lawyer Marshall Segar told the Independent for that same previous article. ​“The ground rules for such negotiations prohibit press releases and the discussions are confidential. Without revealing the substance of our discussions with the City, COMPASS has been and will continue to be a negotiable item between the City and the Union. The Union will not comment any further and plans to investigate this​‘leak’ fully.”

"Suspend Implementation Of COMPASS Until Bargaining Has Concluded"

So. What does the Aug. 29 complaint actually say?

To quote from the document itself:

“The Union filed a demand to bargain regarding the implementation of the New Haven COMPASS Team. 

“The Union and the City have met several times to discuss the impacts of the COMPASS Team.

“While meetings have taken place, no substantive discussions on program specifics have occurred primarily due to the lack of program operational plan.

“Recently, the City did supply the Union with an operational plan to some extent, but when the meeting was held to discuss the plan it was learned that the plan had changed.

“The Union was not given the updated plan in advance of the meeting.

“The parties agreed to meet once all documents were available.

“The very next day, the City announce[d] in the press that COMPASS Team training for police officers would occur in September of 2022 with a program start date of October 2022.”

What Cotto is presumably referring to in that latter sentence is an article the Independent published on Aug. 18, on the two-year anniversary of the mayor’s initial announcement of plans to launch a non-cop emergency response initiative.

In that article, city Community Services Administrator Mehul Dalal and COMPASS Project Director Jack Tebes said that the COMPASS Team planned to start training city police officers, firefighters, and 911 dispatchers on how the program will work in September. Tebes said in that article that the pilot program for COMPASS would then start in October.

In an accompanying petition for ​“interim relief” included along with Cotto’s labor board complaint, police union attorney Segar calls on the state labor board to ​“suspend the implementation of the COMPASS team until such time as bargaining has concluded.”

“The Safety concerns associated with the COMPASS Team are of such a nature that bargaining unit members may suffer irreparable physical and professional harm,” Segar wrote.

“The City (COMPASS TEAM) may suffer physical and professional harm because the bargaining has not concluded nor has an operational plan been fully developed. The City will be exposed to increased liability if the program is implemented prior to the conclusion of bargaining.”

And, he wrote, ​“It is the Union’s belief that the safety concerns raised are of such a significant magnitude that interim relief is warranted and such safety concerns (Board Decisions) favor the Union’s claims.”