New Haven Independent

So reported Alex Rhodeen at a management team meeting Tuesday night. Even though a holiday party was the centerpiece of the gathering, community policing and how it needs to work better, was very much on people’s minds.

Rhodeen, a Fair Haven Heights alderman, heads the Board of Aldermen’s Public Safety Committee, and thus has been in the thick of discussions about rebuilding community policing and a shattered police department. He told some 50 residents at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Quinnipiac East Management Team (QEMT) at the Ross/Woodward School that the city’s current ten policing districts will likely be reconfigured to 12.

The group’s district, the city’s largest policing district, the ninth, stretches from the North Haven line all the way down to Lighthouse Point. It will likely be split into two more manageable districts, with the dividing line drawn at Forbes Avenue. (Twelfth Ward Alderman Gerald Antunes suggested that a better dividing line between the two new districts might be East Grand. Rhodeen countered that with the Annex and Morris Cove to the south, Forbes
is the more natural divider.)

And Cedar Hill and East Rock will be split into another separate policing district, making a total of 12 compared to the current ten. That district is currently combined with Newhallville.

Rhodeen said he has had several meetings with police brass and with the mayor on the subject of the division of the ninth. “The opportunity created by a new chief coming in, along with the additional manpower coming our way, particularly the new sergeants and lieutenants, is helping to make this possible.”

“I’ve also been doing a lot of screaming,” he added.

Rhodeen’s remarks emerged as part of a larger discussion with QEMT District Manager Sgt. Pat Marino. He said he has been asking his officers in patrol cars to do their paperwork if possible while sitting in their cruisers parked in area hotspots like the Sunoco gas station at Quinnipiac Avenue and Route 80.

“That’s been effective,” he said, “in deterring incidents, and all kinds of nonsense.”

Longtime area residents and block watch participants such as (right to left) Sandy DePoto, Marieah Viviel, and Christina Jendrzewski complained that even the increased police cruiser presence has done little to reduce blatant often open-air drug dealing. “They don’t do their business,” said DePoto, “when you’re around.”

As if anticipating this, Marino said he checked the log of complaints. “In the last month there have been only four complaints to the police about narcotics. It makes a difference. You have to call us.”

QEMT chair Rose Santana and Alderman Antunes implored people to call in license plates. They said to make the calls not to Sgt. Marino but downtown, to the non-emergency number (946-6316). “There, they get logged in and recorded,” Santana said, “and they deploy resources accordingly.”

Will the creation of a new and smaller policing district make a difference? The general consensus was that it would. The new district would have its own dedicated manager. Sgt. Marino is replacing Sgt. J.P. Kelly, who has taken medical leave. Kelly’s responsibilities — and now Marino’s — mean that he works with two management teams, the QEMT and the one way down in the East Shore and Morris Cove. Under potential new arrangements, he could dedicate his time in the Fair Haven Heights area.

Rhodeen added that with higher ranks now available, the district managers well might all be lieutenants. Whether that means in every case and whether Sgt. Marino would therefore be replaced was unclear.

What was fairly clear was that officers come and go but crime seems to persist. “These guys who are doing this cell phone to pay phone drug business at the Sunoco,” Marino said, “I chased these same people down on Chapel and Poplar ten years ago.”

“But the problem is not the cops,” said activist Cecilia Proto (pictured above with Rhodeen). “The problem is the breakdown in parents of the kids that do these crimes, and the cops can’t solve that alone.” Still she said to Alderman Rhodeen that she remembered a time when she was little and “you had a problem, you called the cops. Now people don’t trust the cops. That’s tragic.”

That also explained, she said, that while the turnout was good for this holiday meeting, still 40 or 50 people was comparatively small. Ward 12 alone has 1;600 registered voters. The management team also includes Rhodeen’s Ward 13 and Ward 11 of Alderman Robert Lee, which centers on Bella Vista.

“So where are the people?” Proto said. “You’ve also got to have a new police chief come in from the outside. That will help to restore the confidence in community policing.”

Alderman Rhodeen then made yet another prediction: “The search process is on, and I’m fairly certain the new commissioner will be from the outside.”

In other news, Rhodeen said that the repair of the Ferry Street Bridge is on target and on schedule, 72 percent finished, with an opening date of Feb. 5, 2009. Then, in a mood made perhaps giddily optimistic due to his being accompanied to the meeting by his fiancé Sarah Keiser, he made yet another almost unheard of prediction: “Regarding that opening date, within these walls, let me say I wouldn’t be surprised if it were even sooner.”