New Haven Independent

Angered by an incident at a local homeless shelter, Jose went down to City Hall Thursday to try to get his problem solved.

“I’m not supposed to get a top bunk. I’m supposed to get a bottom bunk,” Jose later said, explaining what drove him to march to 165 Church St. Thursday morning. (Click on the play arrow at the top of this story to hear his explanation).

Thursday wasn’t Jose’s first visit to City Hall with a complaint. Not by any stretch.

In past visits to City Hall, Jose was greeted by Leonard Aronow, a staff public advocate whose City Hall job was to help citizens connect to government. But on Thursday, Jose’s buddy Len wasn’t in City Hall — his position had been cut in a recent round of layoffs. The other public advocate, Cindy Rodriguez, had been laid off, too. (The city found them jobs in other parts of government.)

So Jose climbed the stairs up to the second floor, home of the mayor, community service chief Kica Matos and other mayoral staff. He sat on a bench.

“Nobody helped me,” he said. He said he waited so long that “I started falling asleep.” So he took his concerns all the way to the top.

“I went to the mayor’s office, and I said ‘Look, I wonder if I could talk to the mayor.’” Staff told him the mayor was in a meeting, according to Jose. He wandered back and forth between the mayor’s office and Kica Matos’s office on the same floor.

Jose said he suffers from anxiety and has a history of mental health problems. At some point, around 10:45 a.m., he just lost it. He said he was mad about having to wait.

Kica Matos said she and staffers in a meeting heard yelling outside the office. Later a staffer came in and reported that the man had threatened that “if somebody doesn’t help me, I’m going to kill someone.”

Matos immediately called up to Richard Bayer, the unofficial City Hall conflict negotiator. She recognized Jose from past yelling visits. In one past visit, one of her staffers sat with him for an hour and discussed the process under which he can file complaints about the shelter.

“I got a call from the second floor saying he was threatening to kill people up there, and also himself,” said Bayer (pictured).

The sturdy, affable Bayer is the chief investigator in the corporation counsel’s office. A former school security officer, he’s often called in for protection when city staffers feel in physical harm.

Bayer rushed downstairs. He and Matos spotted Jose walking on the second floor towards the mayor’s office. He was yelling and screaming, according to witnesses.

Jose was yelling about a problem down at the Immanuel Baptist Shelter, where he stays from time to time. He was calling for help after getting kicked out.

“I’m being discriminated against,” he told Bayer, City Hall security guard Carmine Pesapane, and anyone else within earshot. City workers scurried away to safety in nearby offices.

Bayer and Pesapane defused the situation.

“I calmed him down,” Bayer said. They listened to the man’s complaints.

“He just needed to vent,” said Pesapane.

“Sometimes it’s just a matter of talking to them,” said Bayer. “They get frustrated.”

Though he once had arrest powers when he worked for nine years as a school security guard, Bayer said his philosophy is not to lock people away. “You need to get to the bottom of what the problems are — not slam them against the wall and put the cuffs on them.”

In this case, Jose refused an offer of help. Though the issue wasn’t anything under City Hall’s control, Bayer said he did offer to call the head of the shelter to see what was going on. Jose declined, saying the shelter’s director was on vacation. (He wasn’t.)

“If there’s anything I can do to help the man, I will,” said Bayer. “We just can’t have anyone coming in here and threatening to kill people.”

After about 10 minutes, Jose calmed down. He walked quietly out of City Hall, without an escort, and sat down on an outdoor bench.

“My problem is, I get out of control,” admitted Jose as he took a breather.

“I like to have a good day. I don’t like to have it bad, bad, bad, because I suffer from anxiety,” he said. He said he had been kicked out of the shelter until Sept. 5 because of an argument. He’s been sleeping in a garage ever since.

The argument was over who should get a top versus bottom bunk bed. Citing unspecified medical problems, he claimed he should get the bottom.

“The top bunk? I could fall off and die.”

Reached later Thursday, Wesley Thorpe, the director of Immanuel Baptist Shelter, confirmed Jose had been kicked out a couple weeks ago for “acting up.”

“He gets a little tipsy and he comes in and he raises Hell all the time,” said Thorpe. In the recent incident, he “cussed out the staff” and caused a big commotion. “We had to put him out.”

Patrons can reserve a bed for three dollars a night, said Thorpe. When they leave the shelter, the money gets returned back to them. For those who don’t pay, the beds are “first come, first served.” He said if a guest has medical concerns, he should bring a doctor’s note.

Thorpe was glad to hear the City Hall incident was safely defused.

As a city ombudsman, Aronow used to deal regularly with Jose and other homeless visitors.

“Len knew a lot of the people,” said Pesapane, the security guard. With Aronow gone, “we send them to the mayor’s office,” he said.

Aronow and Rodriguez, the two senior public advocates, were two people whose positions were slashed from the mayor’s budget in effort to fill a gaping budget hole. Both have found other jobs within the city.