New Haven Independent

The shootings have left New Haveners mourning and debating how to deal with out-of-control violence involving teens.

Surrounded by cops, community leaders and city and state elected officials, DeStefano and Police Chief Francisco Ortiz announced the new initiative at the 11 a.m. event in City Hall’s second-floor atrium. Besides the hotline, they announced new efforts to share information among law-enforcement agencies and groups like the NAACP to keep track of kids causing trouble; and a new “public awareness campaign” to involve churches, neighbors and activists in creating a “culture” of “intolerance for gun violence.” DeStefano wants citizens to help the police track down guns that are in the wrong hands, even if that means anonymously reporting on friends or relatives.

“This is in your face. We want these guns,” he said.

He emphasized that the city is working hard to give kids stuff to do this summer and support for parents and grandparents with difficult teens they have trouble controlling. The city also has to send a firm message to hard-core troublemakers, DeStefano said: “If you mess around with guns, it’s quick, fast. You’re put away. There are consequences.”

Both he and Chief Ortiz emphasized the importance of citizens working alongside police. “We’re not going to arrest our way out of this,” Ortiz (pictured) said, “any more than we did in 1990,” when community policing came to New Haven and dramatically reduced the crime rate.

DeStefano began the press conference by noting that crime has dropped 40 percent over the past 12 years, homicides, 53 percent. That gives him optimism, he said. So does the fact that the community worked with the cops to help them arrest within four days the four teens allegedly responsible for the murder.

“Jajuana,” the mayor said, “was both an exception to what we’ve seen and a coming together of trends that we’re seeing in the city”: the proliferation of guns in the community; a “casual” attitude toward guns; and ever-younger people serving as the “perpetrators and the victims” of shootings.

Activist Barbara Fair (pictured) criticized DeStefano at the event for not focusing on “the real issues” with his new plan.

“Our kids are dying on the streets while we’re talking about initiatives” about guns, she said. Instead, any plan should focus on the millions of parents in jail across the country for non-violent drug crimes and on the low wages many of those parents earn, requiring them to work two jobs to pay the bills. Those two problems keep parents away from home and from their job raising kids, she said.

DeStefano said he agreed with her analysis about wages and problems with the criminal-justice system. (In fact, he has proposed plans as a gubernatorial candidate to tackle those issues.) But he disagreed with Fair about what the city itself should focus on doing right now, which is take more guns off the street, steer kids to summer youth program, and help parents find help in raising troubled teens. “I want to talk about what we can do in New Haven the day after we buried a girl,” he said. “The absence of a program did not kill a young girl last week,” he said. “Behavior” that needs to change did.