Yale students get ominous Grim Reaper crime survival flyers

Ominous “survival guide” flyers branded with the Grim Reaper have been handed out to hundreds of incoming Yale University students by its police union — warning them about “shockingly high” crime around the Ivy League campus.

The bold flyers were doled out to first-year students this week as they moved into their new New Haven, Connecticut dorms.

“Good luck,” the flyer warned, alongside an image of a skulled Grim Reaper.

“The incidence of crime and violence in New Haven is shockingly high, and it is getting worse,” the Yale police union handout warned.

“During the seven-month period ending in July 23, 2023, murders have doubled, burglaries are up 33% and motor vehicle thefts are up 56%.”

“Nevertheless, some Yalies do manage to survive New Haven and even retain their person property,” it said ominously.

It then listed guidelines “prepared by the Yale Police Benevolent Association to help you enjoy your stay at Yale in comfort and safety.”

Among the list of public safety tips were to remain off the streets after 8 p.m., to not walk alone, to avoid public transport and to stay on campus.

Despite the crime stats being accurate, New Haven and Yale officials were quick to slam the union’s flyer — arguing the pamphlets were “misleading” and only distributed to deliberately stoke fear and public safety concerns among new students and their parents.

“This weekend, the Yale Police Union, which is currently in contract negotiations with the university, handed out misleading pamphlets to Yale students as they moved into their residential colleges,” the school said in a Monday statement.

“These pamphlets included disturbing and inflammatory rhetoric about the safety of Yale’s campus and its home city of New Haven, aimed at creating fear among new students and their families.”

New Haven Board of Police Commissioner Mike Lawlor said the flyers were a copycat of those dished out to New York City tourists back in 1975 that warned them to stay off the streets after dark.

He noted those flyers were widely condemned at the time, too.

“This is one of the most important days in a person’s life, in a child or parent. And to be confronted with this, inflammatory and false flyer is in fact an outrage,” Lawlor said.

The union only doled out the flyers as part of contract negotiation tactic, Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell claimed.

“We do not support this and, to be quite frank, I’m really disgusted that they have chosen to take this path,” he said.

The police union’s spokesperson, Andrew Matthews, hit back — telling Fox61 that there was “no dispute on the facts.”

“So, I think they feel an obligation to make sure that students don’t fall victim to crimes while they’re attending Yale University,” Matthews said.

“They have motor vehicles chasing each other down the streets of New Haven shooting at one another. If you or your children were to go to Yale, wouldn’t you want to know that?”