New Haven Independent

James Lewis, who was sworn in as chief ten days ago, met Wednesday with community leaders of Monterey Place, the public-housing community that replaced the old Elm Haven projects.

In addition to hearing residents’ concerns, Lewis outlined some youth programs he has in mind for New Haven. He also described why a heralded new program aimed at the drug trade, modeled after a successful North Carolina effort, will take longer to implement than previously known.

BCJ, the Boston-based management company that manages Monterey Place, has teamed up with the Connecticut Children and Family Center (CCFC) to run community programs at Monterey. CCFC’s CEO, Larry Conaway, put together Wednesday’s event, which touched on a new police department program, Project Restart, that would offer violent offenders the chance for a fresh start.

The Monterey Place development, centered on Ashmun Street, is the product of a federal Hope VI grant. The grant allowed the city to tear down the old Elm Haven housing projects and replace them with freestanding houses, much like the recent Hope VI redevelopment of Quinnipiac Terrace.

Whitaker (pictured above), president of the residents council, told the chief that when Monterey Place was first built, the contrast with the old Elm Haven couldn’t have been more dramatic. “It was close to a utopia,” she said. But several years later, things are starting to slip back into old patterns as drug dealing and shootings have again marred the neighborhood.

“I don’t know if it can truly be eradicated,” she said of the drug culture that her son succumbed to, “but I know it can be brought down to a scale where we don’t have to get down on the floor like we did in Elm Haven to protect our children.”

Whitaker said she has had countless conversations with young people at Monterey who want to get off the street, but cannot get jobs because of criminal records.

Bethea (at left in photo, with Conaway), whose oldest son was shot in the back while walking across the street to visit his aunt, loves his community and fights for it every day. As a street outreach worker, he forges bonds with kids in a way the police cannot, and works to find them ways out of a life of drugs and violence.

He called on Lewis to make sure detectives are coming into the community to work cases and talk to residents. But he also said it’s time for the community to step up and take charge of the situation.

“People know who the major players doing the shootings are,” he said. “Why are we acting like we’re blind to what’s going on?”

One clear factor stopping residents from speaking up is fear of retaliation, whether from the police or from those they would inform on. Bethea said the community needs to put more pressure on the State Attorney’s Office to insure witnesses are protected.

Lewis said the department is working on a new program that will allow residents to report information without themselves being identified. He said more details about the program will be announced soon.

Restarting Lives

Lewis (pictured) addressed questions about Project Restart, a grant-funded program modeled on North Carolina’s High Point Initiative, that would offer criminals facing arrest the chance to get their lives on track instead of going to prison.

Under the High Point program in North Carolina, police officers show violent offenders conclusive evidence against them, and let them choose between arrest and access to community services that will help them get and keep a job. The offenders are told that any future crimes will be fully prosecuted, and they are monitored to ensure compliance. The program in N.C. also relies on having undercover cops, rather than round up quick arrests of street-level dealers, develop trust from community informants and spend months observing the drug trade in order to discover who’s in charge.

Chief Lewis said the NHPD has start-up money from a grant, but is sitting on it because the the program faces obstacles to implementation in New Haven. The program requires both carrots and sticks, and neither is sufficiently in place to make this program work overnight.

Project Restart is designed to target serious offenders, Lewis said — not kids who have taken a wrong step and are asking for help, but criminals who love the street life. For a program like that to work, the department needs to run serious investigations to make cases that will stick in court. Without the threat of a conviction, the system of incentives falls apart.

With the city’s narcotics division disbanded due to a corruption scandal this past year, the department is not in a position to do that kind of investigative work. Lewis plans to reconstitute the unit.

The other major concern is that the offer to find jobs for offenders has to be backed up with willing employers. Given the state of the economy, the jobs just might not be there, especially for felons. “If there’s nothing at the end of this thing, we’re making a promise that’s empty,” Lewis said.

Lewis said the program has potential, and that he’ll need to read the grant in detail to find out how it can be adjusted to work in New Haven. It might make sense, he said, to target kids who are eager for a second chance, if the department doesn’t have the resources to force a jail-or-job ultimatum on hardened criminals.

“There are some who don’t want to be saved,” said Lewis. “They like the lifestyle. Those people we might not be able to save.”

“I’ve been in this business too long to think that if I hug everybody they’re going to change,” he said. “Some will be picking my pocket while I’m hugging them.”

Wheels in Motion for Explorers Program

Lewis said he has already initiated plans for an “explorers program” that would involve middle and high school kids in law enforcement. Participants would come in once a month for classes in subjects like police training, traffic laws, and constitutional law, and in return they would give back to their communities through programs like trash pick-up with the police department or volunteering with younger children.

In Pomona, California, where Lewis previously served as chief, he said that almost a quarter of his officers were products of the explorers program — kids who otherwise would have left the crime-ridden community as soon as they got a chance.

He said he was surprised to find that New Haven had no such program. The department is getting in touch with representatives of the Boy Scouts, which sponsors explorers programs nationwide.

Getting the explorers program off the ground should be fairly straightforward and inexpensive, Lewis said. He is also looking into starting a cadet program which would be a more formal law enforcement recruitment program for high school kids.

Lewis also hopes to initiate after-school programs at the police substations. Costs would be low — the classroom space is already there, and with the substations right in neighborhoods, there would be no transportation costs. Programs could be staffed by local college student volunteers, and computers purchased with seized drug money.

He said he doesn’t want to duplicate existing programs, but sees a real opportunity for the department to get involved in community outreach. “My take on the police department, the feedback I’m getting, is that they’re willing to do this — they feel they haven’t had this opportunity.”