New Haven, CT: Police Headquarters Vandalized in Wake of Recent Brutal Shooting

Abolitionist Media Worldwide reports on the context of recent anti-police vandalism in New Haven, CT, which takes place in the wake of growing anger at a recent police shooting.

In response to the police department’s barbarism, Stephanie Washington’s name was written on the front sign of the Yale Police Department’s headquarters on April 23rd following a week of popular uprising.

At 4:20 am April 16th, in the Newhallville (2x) community in New Haven, CT, a black woman, Stephanie Washington and her boyfriend, Paul Witherspoon were viciously attacked by two occupying military forces of gentrication, tyrannical repression and genocidal violence: Hamden PD and Yale PD. While the couple sang of their love and appreciation of one another to each other, Hamden pigs (a town bordering north of New Haven) and Yale pigs (the official police dept privately funded by the University of Yale) went outside their jurisdiction or “job description” and entered New Haven for a suspected robbery.

This “robbery” did not in fact actually take place. Yale and Hamden pigs took the call as an opportunity to attack The Ville. Hamden and Yale have created their own all too familiar scapegoat for the failings of capitalism: the demonization of poor, black and brown communities.

The outrageous circumstances surrounding this attempted murder are a symptom of the incredibly beligerent behavior of the occupying forces in Greater New Haven. Because of the participating Yale student body and the general populace at large, the hard work of several new haven/Hamden communities of color, and the immeasurable discipline, strength, passion and pain of black women in CT, the state apparatus has made several almost completely unheard of “concessions” regarding the case and policing in the area entirely. That is not enough.