New Haven Independent

“I went crazy about somebody locking down people who already feel locked down,” said social worker Patrina Reddick (pictured), who just started a neighborhood youth program. “We should lock down commitments from the police department, commitments from the housing authority.”

The confrontation took place Tuesday night at the too-often unused, one-story brick West Rock Family Center on Wilmot Road, in the heart of several rundown public housing projects that remain removed from the rest of town, hidden in the shadow of West Rock, continually waiting on unmet promises to fix up or rebuild their area.

How did people get the notion that New Haven police planned to “impose a lock down” at the Westville Manor project — with people required to carry i.d. to show cops or face imprisonment, and tenants evicted if a truant hangs out in their apartments?

Because this man sent out flyers and an e-mail notice claiming so.

His name is Curtis Jennings. A longtime neighborhood activist, he heads the West Rock Development Corporation. His flyer urged neighbors to show up at Tuesday’s meeting to discuss the impending police-imposed lockdown.

Click here to read the notice Jennings sent out.

This man is the police in West Rock. He’s Sgt. Bernie Somers, head of the Westville/West Rock district. He showed up at the meeting to let people know the police had no such plans, and to hear the neighborhood’s complaints about police coverage.

Somers said he heard from angry neighbors before the meeting — angry about the notion of a lockdown, something he would have never suggested.

“We’re not going to do a lockdown,” he said. “I don’t think that’s what the community really wants. They don’t want to show paperwork to go from house to house. This isn’t Nazi Germany.”

The flyer drew neighborhood Alderwoman Michelle Edmonds-Sepulveda to the meeting, too. She didn’t like the idea of a lockdown, either.

The flyer drew other officials to the meeting. Like Jimmy Miller, head of the housing authority. And John Prokop, the housing authority’s head of security. None of them seemed to have requested a lockdown, either.

In fact, when Curtis Jennings started speaking at the meeting, it didn’t sound like he was crazy about a lockdown, either. He described the idea in terrifying terms, then told the crowd it needed to decided if it approved of a lockdown or wanted to pursue other strategies.

Instead, Jennings urged people to talk about the rise of break-ins in the neighborhood. He urged neighbors to discuss what they will do about the problem. He urged them to pose tough questions to the cops and the housing authority, and receive some answers.

Not Their Job

If that was indeed his true goal, he succeeded.

West Rock was spared the rash of shootings that plagued other neighborhoods this summer. But as decrepit apartments have been boarded up, vacant spaces have become havens for vandals and druggies. Dealing has increased, according to neighbors. Young kids are hanging out and causing trouble late into the night. And break-ins have been on the rise.

When they call the housing authority or the cops about incidents, neighbors charged, they get no help. Just the runaround.

Jennings told the story of a neighbor who heard someone breaking in to the vacant apartment next door. She heard the intruder cutting the wall into her apartment. She called the cops. The cops came but told her this was a matter for the housing authority to handle. But the housing authority refers people with police complaints to the cops.

The next day the woman came home from work to find a hole in the wall, and her apartment burglarized. What should she have done?

Housing authority security chief Prokop (pictured) said he informed city Police Chief Francisco Ortiz about similar tales of tenants being told by cops to call the authority instead.

“Chief Ortiz has said to me [to tell tenants in that situation to] get the date, the time and the badge number of that person, and he will follow up… Public housing tenants are entitled to police protection.”

Martha Moore told the story of how, one day when she was at work, her mother was watching her children. Someone shot out a screen window to the apartment. Her mom called the cops.

The cops’ response, according to Moore (pictured): “It’s not an emergency.”

Several neighbors spoke of rude 911 operators. Others spoke of a specific cop they claim is harassing and beating on residents. (More reason they didn’t want a “lockdown.”) One woman spoke of not knowing or trusting the cops who come through the projects.

All of which led Somers push the mayor’s plan to revive community policing by hiring lots more cops and reinstituting walking and bicycle beats rather than relying on roving short-term street sweeps at hot spots.

“I could arrest everyone in the room. You’d all be out in an hour. How does that solve the problem?” Somers asked.

“We’re trying to get more people out here who are used to the neighborhood and know people. They get to know people. They get to know the hot spots better. They’re more like a friend.”

Right now, the cops often don’t have officers people on duty to respond to all calls, Somers said. So they prioritize. That means all available cops might be answering calls related to shootings or muggings and therefore can’t respond right away to the kinds of complaints the neighbors were raising, like kids out in backyards late at night causing a ruckus.

“If they stop talking side by side in the parking lot,” more cops might be available, quipped one woman in response.

Hard Data, Training & Rec

Amid all the frustrations and complaints, all sides had important information or solutions to offer.

Many neighbors hadn’t understood until this meeting that they should direct crime calls to the cops, not the housing authority’s security force. The cops presumably heard the message that they’re sometimes sending a different message and confusing people.

Somers stressed the importance of people calling in with details of burglaries and other crimes so the cops have hard data to work with.

Jennings and other speakers described programs available for teens and young adults who have been expelled from school or are otherwise causing trouble in the neighborhood. West Rock Development Corporation has GED and training programs. The Job Corps, situated right in the neighborhood, has training programs for heat and ventilation and other fields that are landing people well-paying jobs.

Neighbors suggested that the housing authority stop dawdling when it comes to securing newly vacant apartments, in order to thwart vandals and burglars. They reported that new metal doors have succeeded in securing the entrances to the vacant apartments once the authority does get around to putting them in. But now intruders are breaking in through plywood placed in the windows. Neighbors suggested finding stronger material for the windows.

And, in the spirit of Jennings’ call for neighbors to take control of the problem if they don’t like the idea of a lockdown, Patrina Reddick spoke of neighbors running programs for kids in the area’s underused public spaces, like the Clarence Rogers School. Another neighbor spoke of using some of the vacant apartments for communal purposes. Reddick called on city officials to do send money for such programs.

She hasn’t waited on them to get started. This month she launched PIMOSH — “People Involved in Motivating Student Higher” — in the very Family Center where Tuesday night’s meeting occurred. She and others in the neighborhood are running a 10-week tutoring and mentoring program there on Monday afternoons; an after-school arts program on Tuesdays and Thursday; a “Sweating with the Crunch Bunch” family exercise series Mondays through Thursday; and a paid apprenticeship program for teens in photography, video technology, graphic design, and facilities management. (For more information, or to help out, call 389-6094 or e-mail here.)

Reddick said she has received money for some of the programming. Some she doesn’t have money for yet. Either way, in her view, West Rock has little alternative but to get moving.