Yale on gunpoint police stop:
this is not Ferguson

The highly publicized Yale police stop—at gunpoint—of an African American student on Saturday has caused “personal pain,” university officials acknowledged tonight in a message to the Yale community.

The message—signed by President Peter Salovey ’86PhD, who is white, as well as Police Chief Ronnell Higgins and Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway ’95PhD, who are black—stops short of either defending or criticizing the gunpoint encounter, which occurred as police searched for a burglary suspect near Trumbull College. Shortly after an officer drew his gun on Tahj Blow ’16 on Cross Campus, police arrested a suspect nearby. 

Blow’s father, writer Charles M. Blow, drew national attention to the incident on Twitter and in his New York Times column. In his tweets, the elder Blow invoked last year’s protests over the police killings of black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York. 

In response, the Yale administrators write: 

Let us be clear: we have great faith in the Yale Police Department and admire the professionalism that its officers display on a daily basis to keep our campus safe. What happened on Cross Campus on Saturday is not a replay of what happened in Ferguson; Staten Island; Cleveland; or so many other places in our time and over time in the United States. The officer, who himself is African American, was responding to a specific description relayed by individuals who had reported a crime in progress. 

Without naming the student, they say that he “closely matched the physical description—including items of clothing—of the suspect.”

At the same time, “Even though the officer's decision to stop and detain the student may have been reasonable, the fact that he drew his weapon during the stop requires a careful review,” they write.

“For this reason, the Yale Police Department’s Internal Affairs unit is conducting a thorough and expeditious investigation of the circumstances surrounding the incident, and will report the findings of that investigation to us. We, in turn, will share the findings with the community.” 

In the meantime, “we should seize this moment as an opportunity to reflect, learn, and grow,” the message says.

“There are real challenges here where the lines of race, inequality, and policing intersect, and we as teachers, students, and citizens must face them. These are not just someone else’s issues, located somewhere else; they are America’s issues, and they are our issues.”

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The Yale Alumni Magazine is published by Yale Alumni Publications Inc., an alumni-based nonprofit that is not run by Yale University. Its content does not necessarily reflect the views of the university administration.