Thread by @keikoinboston

1. Update on an old case. Last week, Sarah Braasch’s appeal before the Connecticut Superior Court trying to obtain Yale PD body cam footage of her interactions with officers in the early morning hours of May 8, 2018, was dismissed.

2. For legal background, see my previous thread on the case before the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission which was dismissed on 9/9/20. That decision was appealed to the CT Superior Court.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1191593531330220032

3. A large part of the previous thread was just updates about delays due to the pandemic. Jump to this tweet for info on the hearing officer’s report and the commission’s vote.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1303743186460971015

4. For background on the incidents, please see @CathyYoung63’s 8/14/19 piece in The Bulwark.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1161841306555039745

5. A note on why you can’t reply to this thread:

I don’t want it to become a vector for harassment.

Please DO NOT tag any of the subjects of this thread in quote tweets. If I see that anyone has done this, you will be blocked.

6. Please keep in mind while reading, that what I’ve highlighted here is only a fraction of the story and there are many things we may never know because many of the records related to these incidents are not publicly available.

7. Since most readers won’t make it to the end of this thread I’ll put the key takeaway here.

8. This case should be a cautionary tale of what happens when you get mired in grievances, assume the worst of others, and get caught in high conflict/interactive escalation/mutual radicalization with perceived enemies.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1381417552631435269

9. When people believe themselves to be the victims there has to be a perpetrator and trying to put oneself in the other’s shoes becomes impossible because how could you have anything in common with your enemy?

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1139361971076313094

10. All documents except the body cam footage in Sarah Braasch v. CT Freedom of Information Commission, Yale University Police Department, Assistant Chief, YUPD, Docket #: HHB-CV20-6062369-S, are available to the public at this page:

civilinquiry.jud.ct.gov/CaseDetail/Pub…

11. On 9/2/21, the attorneys representing the Yale University Police Department and Assistant Chief Ronnell Higgins who are defendants in the case, filed a motion to seal the body cam footage at issue. The CT FOIC submitted a memo supporting this motion.

12. Motion to seal:

civilinquiry.jud.ct.gov/DocumentInquir…

On 9/20/21, SB’s attorney’s filed a memo to oppose the motion to seal.

civilinquiry.jud.ct.gov/DocumentInquir…

13. Last Monday’s hearing was to allow both sides to present arguments about the motion to seal and the merits of the case.

14. On Tuesday, Judge John Cordani granted Yale’s motion to seal the body cam footage and dismissed the appeal, upholding the CT Freedom of Information Commission’s 2020 decision that said that YPD had acted within the law by denying SB’s request for the body cam footage.

15.

Braasch v. CT FOIC et al Memorandum of Decision:
civilinquiry.jud.ct.gov/DocumentInquir…

Order granting motion to seal:
civilinquiry.jud.ct.gov/DocumentInquir…

16. It’s unclear what will happennext. If her attorneys want to stay on and if she can continue to raise money to fund these lawsuits then I think the next stop would be the Connecticut Appellate Division but…

jud.ct.gov/Publications/H…

17.

… she apparently owes her attorneys something north of $12,000 for the work they’ve already done.

archive.is/bR6jj

18. I’m not going to go in depth on what happened in this case—much of it rehashing things that had already come to light in the case before the CT Freedom of Information Commission—but I will highlight some things.

19. Audio of the 11/4/19 CT Freedom of Information Commission hearing available at the link in this tweet. A transcript is also available. If you’re a journalist who needs it please DM for link.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1304261261753020418

20. Audio of the 9/9/20 CT Freedom of Information Commission where they voted to accept the hearing officer’s report and dismiss the case is available here:

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1304126507460091904

21. YPD’s position has been that their 2018 investigation found that the situation that happened on 5/8/18 was the result of SB’s call to the YPD main dispatch number reporting a resident in her dorm who was not doing anything wrong as a stranger, then as a student harassing her.

22. As such, the videos contain uncorroborated allegations which make them subject to an exemption under CT law which means that YPD doesn’t have to release the footage.

23. YPD’s attorney, Aaron Bayer, talked about the “unwritten theme” of “unfairness” that underlies SB’s legal case and wanted to remind the court of the unfairness that would result to the black female student should these videos be released.

24. Bayer stressed that the other student didn’t do anything wrong, she did not start anything, and that whatever unfairness there is is the result of SB’s actions.

25. Bayer went on to say that the black female student is “long gone” (she graduated from Yale with her Master’s degree in 2019).

wtnh.com/news/connectic…

26. SB had stated in her testimony before the CT FOIC that her goal in obtaining the body cam footage was to release it to the public because she believes it will help her rehabilitate her public image.

27. Bayer said that if these videos end up on social media “hate groups trolling social media” will use “snippets” and share the videos.

28. Jay Wolman, SB’s attorney, said that other student was responsible for making the matter public because she streamed the incident on Facebook Live and then spoke with the media.

29. While those facts are true, the context that’s missing is that SB was contacted at the time (and later) by numerous media outlets seeking comment and didn’t speak with any of them.

30. This can be found in articles. I confirmed with one journalist that his outlet reached out for comment on stories in May 2018 and later but never received any response.

31. The last interview that the black student gave on this incident that I’m aware of was on George Takei’s podcast. It was recorded earlier that year and released in August 2019.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1164049656902553601

32. SB’s most recent podcast appearances have been this summer to say nothing of the thousands of tweets, videos, and blog posts she has written disparaging the two black students she reported to the police.

33. While SB’s attorney tried to make the case that it wasn’t her intent to report the other student for committing crimes therefore there are no uncorroborated allegations, YPD, CT FOIC, and CT Superior Court don't view it that way.

34. The question of whether YPD is following the law is a separate one from whether CT’s laws on police records are legal and fair.

35. But the CT FOIC is limited in what they can do. They can only say if YPD was following the law in denying the requested footage. The Commission determined that YPD was following the law and the CT Superior Court concurred.

36. We will probably never know everything that happened that night and it’s a guessing game as to what both students’ motives and intentions were.

37. After that night, SB, a licensed attorney, tweeted about efforts to have the black female student prosecuted for what she has maintained was illegal filming of their interaction before YPD officers arrived.

38. SB reported that she spoke to or considered speaking to:

- YPD
- New Haven PD Internal Affairs division
- “New Haven Judicial District Attorney”
- FBI
- “state police”

1: archive.is/26RTV
2: archive.is/TqbJk
3/4: archive.is/OD5xQ

39. It’s unclear how many of these agencies SB reached out to, but the other student has not been charged with any crimes so we’ll never know what a court would have decided.

40. Connecticut is a one-party consent state for in-person conversations, although…

41.

"It is illegal to maliciously photograph, film or record images of another person without the consent or knowledge of the person being recorded: …

While the person is inside a dwelling.”

recordinglaw.com/party-two-part…

42. SB was standing in the doorway of her dorm room at the time she was being filmed. She says she was unaware that she was being filmed although the other student was holding her phone in front of her in plain view.

43. What I’ve learned from talking to people about this case is that no matter what people say, ultimately the facts don’t matter.

44. People who believe strongly that the white student is racist or that her actions showed racial bias are unlikely to be convinced at this point by any of the actual facts that indicate she is not.

45. Supporters of the white student who have bought into her narrative that this was a “Hate Crime Hoax” are unlikely to be swayed by facts that to others clearly read as racial bias.

archive.is/99BKU

46. Even those of us who know more than most about the case are split on what aspects of the case we find most salient.

47. The three students involved all played on emotion and have used traditional and new media as well as social media creators and influencers to amplify their narratives.

48. Both female students are themselves bloggers and have used their own social media accounts to tell their stories and garner support.

49. The white student has used GoFundMe, PayPal, Venmo, and direct payments to her lawyers to fund her 3 year legal slog to obtain the body cam footage.

That funding has been obtained with the help of false and misleading claims about what happened at Yale in 2018.

50. The white student has fictionalized the backgrounds of the two black students she called the police to report as privileged international students who have co-opted the pain of Black Americans descended of slaves (sources below).

51. Archives of sources for screenshots above.

1: archive.is/pWAZT
2: archive.is/Doe5h
3: archive.is/7Un0E
4: archive.is/BImsM

52. Both black students immigrated to the US from other countries when they were children. Both are American (sources below). Neither appears to come from families with the type of wealth that actual privileged international students come from.

53. Sources for above:

divinity.yale.edu/admissions-aid…

brooklyneagle.com/articles/2013/…
jetmag.com/uncategorized/…

54. Anyone who has attended or worked at a university with a large international student population knows that they are non-Americans who come here from abroad to attend school.

55. International students are often—though not always—children of the political, business, and cultural elites in their home countries and may come from very wealthy families—the 1%.

56. The black male student grew up in a “poverty-stricken neighborhood” in Miami, 1 of 13 children.

archive.is/sBmXN
miamidade.gov/economicadvoca…

The black female student has spoken about her parents struggling as new immigrants in the US.

parlemag.com/2013/03/ololad…

57. I’ve never observed any attempt by the white student to understand the other students’ backgrounds or the situations she created from their perspectives. (This is also true of the black students who appeared equally incurious of her.)

58. More than 3 years later and the white student still can’t get the name of the male student right, posting about him with his first & last names reversed.

59. This is just one of many claims the white student has made that can be disproved by what’s publicly available or aren’t substantiated by what’s publicly available.

60. I didn’t cover the appeal because SB’s false accusations against me have escalated and I have other things to do than have to deal with the wave of tweets from her and her followers that tweeting about her case brings.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1414025959267766278

61. But the media has lost interest and there's been no coverage of the second dismissal, not even from @yaledailynews, Yale’s student newspaper, which has written the most stories about this case. I thought it was important that people know the latest.