Paul Bass Photo
Wingate, Douglass & Walker discuss next steps with DeStefano.
Shumway, Elliott, Pryzbylski.
Three officers started walking a regular beat in Newhallville, as a grassroots crime-fighting “conversation” that put them there continued.
Officers Scott Shumway, Jeremie Elliott, and Ryan Pryzbylski, all members of the police academy Class of 2008, began their new permanent assignments Thursday patrolling the neighborhood’s streets without their cars.
They were also Exhibit A Thursday morning at a press conference outside the Newhallville substation.
Exhibit B consisted of a phalanx of newly elected aldermen who attended the conference — and saw the message they conveyed from the streets during their anti-City Hall campaigns last year become official city policy. Concern over street violence helped the slate win 14 out of 15 races in the Democratic primary, then three more in the general election.
At the press conference, Mayor John DeStefano and Police Chief Dean Esserman announced that 21 officers have been transferred back to patrol duty from temporary assignments in the investigative services and major crimes units. The move will enable the department to assign permanent walking beats all over town. All 10 districts will have those beats within a month, officials said. (Click here for a story about the first assignments, downtown.) These will involve officers who walk the same turf every day and get to know neighbors (as opposed to a half-measure of temporary floating beats with out-of-district cops, that the mayor floated in the latter stages of the campaign.)
Mayor DeStefano also announced at Thursday’s press conference that he will ask the Board of Aldermen for approval to spend money to hire 40 – 45 new cops right away rather than wait for the next fiscal year. He promised to have the details — including cost, and where the money would come from — within a few weeks. New Haven has 484 approved police positions; only 425 are currently filled.
The news represented a dramatic policy turnaround for a mayor who presided over the gradual elimination of walking beats and dissolution of community policing during his tenure. Meanwhile the number of annual murders rose from eight to 34 in the last five years.
“This is what we were talking about on the doors” in the campaign, said new Beaver Hills Alderman Brian Wingate.
“This is a response to a conversation [that] was had in lots of wards in the campaign,” observed new East Rock Alderwoman Jessica Holmes, who attended with her 2‑year-old daughter Evie. “The mayor understands the people of New Haven want community policing back.” She noted DeStefano’s hiring of Esserman as a direct response to that call.
The anti-City Hall slate’s role in the policy shift was tacitly acknowledged in the choice of introductory speaker for the official event: one of the anti-City Hall candidates elected last fall, Newhallville’s Delphine Clyburn (pictured).
DeStefano made the acknowledgement explicit in his official remarks.
“It was clear the city wanted to move back to a kind of policing we used to have” in the 1990s, DeStefano said. “It’s clear to me that’s what people want.” He called adding citywide regular walking beats “only a first step” toward broader changes.
After the press conference, the democratic back-and-forth continued, as the mayor discussed his plans Clyburn, Wingate, Holmes, and labor-slate allies Tyisha Walker (at left in photo) of West River and Frank Douglass of Dwight.
Walker pressed the mayor on why, basically, this didn’t happen sooner.
“I’m going to man up and say, ‘That was a mistake,’” DeStefano responded. “When you get 100 people in front of you screaming about the mill rate, that gets your attention, too.”
Walker turned to the question of how to pay for new cops.
“People want walking beats. People also don’t want this big budget gap,” she said. DeStefano noted that the cops on the new walking beats already belong to the force; positions are being shifted around. In his upcoming request for new positions, he’ll transfer money from other city accounts, as yet unidentified.
Wingate pressed the mayor to hire more local people for the upcoming 45 or so new positions. DeStefano responded that it takes a year to recruit for a class. Even after all that time it’s still hard to end up with 50 people who meet the criteria after background checks and other screening, he said.
Clyburn ushered one of her constituents, Mark Barrows of Butler Street, into the conversation with the mayor. He wanted to know how the news will affect the police department’s ability to solve murders. The shift of officers back to patrol will leave the investigative unit with 21 fewer bodies.
Walking cops develop the relationships with neighborhoods that produce information crucial to solving cases, DeStefano said. He also said the department is developing a new strategy for the recently reconstituted cold case unit, drawing in part on currently retired cops.
So there were 40 cops in ISU. Question what did they do to solve the crime solvability rate? Seeing the crime rate so high. I would say nothing, maybe they will do a better job walking the beat learning how to talk with people. That shouldn't be to hard.