In Newhallville Test, Cops Go To Bat For Teens

You see how he ran when he stole second? Lt. Thaddeus Reddish asked a pair of Newhallville teenagers. That’s how you guys run when I pull up on the corner.

Newhallville’s top cop shared that observation Tuesday evening with Charles Henderson and Travis Ingram, two of eight teenage guests at a New Britain Rock Cats baseball game.

The ball game was the culminating event of a U.S. Department of Justice-funded program called Youth and Police Initiative (YPI) that the NHPD has been piloting in crime-beleaguered Newhallville.

District Manager Reddish and his Newhallville patrol officers have been meeting in twice-a-week sessions for nearly two months at the Lincoln-Bassett School with area teens, who were selected because truancy and other issues put them on the tipping point of success or delinquency.

As Reddish put it, ​“They could go either way.”

The idea is for officers and kids to get to know each other without the badge interfering.

At the program, which follows a model created by the New England-based North American Family Institute, cops and teens role-play situations, such as a cruiser pulling up to a corner store and the kids fleeing.

The kids share their approach to such an interaction, and the cops offer their perspective. Police might explain to the teens, for example, that if they stay at the corner and don’t run, then they can tell cops their side of the story.

The kids ​“graduate” with a big pizza party next Monday. Tuesday was for a baseball game between the Eastern League’s Rock Cats and the visiting Akron Aeros.

Even before they got their first view of the sparkling green field (“Wow,” whispered Brandon Shealy), the sticker shock of the food prices caught their attention. When he saw Gatorade for sale for $3.50, James Harris pronounced that ​“a crime.” He said he can get it for $1.50 at the Quick Check on Read and Shelton.

Shortly afterwards, group member Aaron Lopez was selected as one of the special visitors to toss out an opening pitch.

He said he wasn’t nervous but he gladly received some pre-mound coaching from Officer Jeremie Elliott.

And when the moment came, his form was near perfect.

As the kids ate police-provided hot dogs and chips under a warm sun behind the third-base line, it was also time for bonding.

Or, rather, to cement some of the bonding that has already taken place in the previous sessions at Lincoln-Bassett.

“We’re trying to break down the us-versus-them that they get from older siblings. If we build the rapport now, it’ll go a long way if we have to interact with them when they’re older,” said 12-year veteran Officer Brian Pazsak, who sported his Nick Swisher New York Yankees jersey.

Eight kids in the 14- to 15-year-old range comprise the group, mainly from Lincoln-Bassett or Wexler-Grant schools. None of them had ever been to a professional baseball game. Apart from hanging with the officers, Travis said he wanted to see girls. James was hoping one of the Rock Cats’ foul balls would land in his glove. And Charles said he was looking forward to hearing the guy yell ​“Pea-Nu-uts!”

The other Newhallville beat officers — some on duty and some volunteering their time — included 17-year vet Charles Gargano, along with Pedro Colon, Charles Kim, Ryan McFarland and Elliott.

The program is more than needed, said Gargano. Nearly 20 years ago, during rise of Nintendo, a kid gave him the moniker ​“Mario,” because as a young officer he allegedly looked like the video-game character. The name has stuck with him, but the kids have changed, said Gargano.

They’re more involved with guns, and the family networks they return to are more frayed than ever, Gargano said. For example, when he returns a kid to his family after a brush with the law, ​“we’re not seeing so much of mom and dad, or [even] grandma. More involvement of more distant relatives, an uncle or an aunt. We’re getting these guardians that can’t do nearly so much,” he said.

And yet, these are still kids at a baseball game.

The kids all got gloves, hard balls, plastic bats, and Rock Cats paraphernalia galore, including T‑shirts.

As a special pre-game treat, they were allowed near the Rock Cats dugout, where shortstop Chris Cates was to offer sage words of baseball wisdom. But there was no time for speeches after James asked Cates to autograph his ball, and then everyone else did too.

In the second inning, after the Rock Cats produced an early one-run lead on a double and single, Elliott (who has served two tours in Iraq) supplemented the kids’ hot dogs and chips with cotton candy. He said the kids, many of whom don’t have much or consistent adult mentoring in their home lives, ​“needed something sweet.”

But Elliot has also played hardball, as it were, with the kids in the previous sessions of the program. He recalled one gathering where he was trying to understand the no-snitching code from the kids’ point of view. ​“I asked if someone was shot in the street,” would you help us — the police — to find out who did it?

Elliott said the kids’ response was that they would not snitch or help if it was a stranger who had been shot, due to fear of retaliation. However, if one of their relatives was the victim, then, yes, they would talk if they had information.

Elliott replied that police are sworn to treat everybody’s life as equal. ​“The room went quiet when we asked is someone’s life more important than another?” he said.

In a game of singles and small ball, by the top of the sixth, the Rock Cats’ Yangervis Solarte got a double and put the Cats comfortably ahead 5 to 3. (The Rock Cats went on to win by that same score.) James was singing quietly under his breath, ​“Take me out to the ball game,” when one of many foul balls sailed overhead. He turned to Reddish and asked a legal question: ​“If the ball hits me in the face, can I sue?”

“No, you sit at your own risk,” the lieutenant replied.

Reddish pronounced the program a qualified success. ​“They used to be afraid of me before. Now they come up to me and talk to me [on the street].”

Over pizza during previous sessions, the teens and the officers have exchanged biographies, and gotten beyond nicknames like Mario.

Elliott is known as ​“Wave” because of the style of his haircut at the back. Reddish is known on the Newhallville street as ​“white shirt,” because that’s the fashion that comes with the rank. However, as a result of the sessions, the kids now refer to him as ​“lieutenant.” One called him ​“LT.” They picked it up hearing the officers call Reddish in that manner, and the lieutenant sees that as a small sign of more respect, a positive.

Reddish said the program can’t stop where it is. ​“We can do more harm than good if we don’t continue the program [with these kids]. We’re their friends, and then we walk away?”

“You have to keep this thing going, keep the rapport up, and they’re going to talk one person to the next,” said Gargano.

He added that a lot of the kids he deals with now as adults ​“I knew when they were driving big wheels.” Had there been such programs then, it might have made a difference. ​“It’s [about] breaking down walls.” The younger they are, the better it is, he said. Sustaining the effort is important, too.

On the bus back, Reddish checked his phone and informed his officers that there had been a homicide at Kimberly and the Boulevard. ​“A John Doe,” he announced. The 15th of the year. The bus went briefly quiet, and then the chatter among the cops and kids continued.

Although another pilot of YPI program is scheduled to start later this summer in the Dwight/Kensington neighborhood, Newhallville’s program is over with the baseball game and a graduation and pizza party on June 13. The funds will have run out.

Nevertheless, McFarland is organizing another trip to a World Wrestling Association event, and Reddish is determined to get the kids up to Springfield to visit the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Even without the grant money, Reddish said he will press on. The teens have started calling out to the cops when they see them on the street; that relationship needs to be maintained and strengthened, he said.

“These are kids kicked out of the usual program, who get suspended. We’re going to do it on our own,” Reddish said.

He seemed eager to go to Springfield himself. ​“Have you seen the size 21 shoes they have up there?” he said.

The Newhallville crew left the game early, with the Rock Cats still ahead 5 to 3 in the seventh. After all, it was a school night.