D’Shellis Gets A Jump Start

Police officers came to Shepard Street to serve a warrant to an adult. They later returned to deliver a bike to a 9‑year-old boy who dreams of becoming a cop.

The team of officers, from the department’s squad, originally swept through Shepard Street right off Bassett Street in Newhallville on Oct. 3. They were looking for a 30-year-old man accused of violating a protective order and committing a variety of felony offenses. They found him on the block and arrested him.

Along the way they noticed 9‑year-old D’Shellis Leak-Moore (pictured at the top of the story) futzing with an upturned mountain bike, trying to get the chain back on.

The officers kept the arrestee out of sight of the child. They generally try to do that when possible on neighborhood raids, said one of the officers, Mike Lozada.

As other officers dealt with the arrestee, Lozada, Kyle Malloy, and their supervisor, Sgt. Karl Jacobson, wandered over to D’Shellis.

“I tried my best” to get the chain back on, said Lozada (pictured), who’s been a city cop for six and a half years. ​“I didn’t really know what I was doing.”

After ten minutes, the trio gave up. When they returned to headquarters, they kept thinking about the kid and his bike.

One of them suggested they pool money together to buy him a new one. Jacobson instead contacted Sgt. Joe Dease, who runs the property room. He asked Dease if he had any bikes.

The department brings in about 75 abandoned ​“lost-and-found” bikes a year, according to Dease. If no one claims a bike after six months, the department will usually auction it off. Sometimes it finds a ​“kid in need” to give it to, Dease said.

A couple of weeks after Jacobson’s inquiry, Dease came up with a Trek 800 Sport ready for redistribution. This week Officers Lozada and Malloy (left in photo) returned to the block of Shepard Street to present D’Shellis with his new wheels.

D’Shellis’s mom, Lonna Leak, was moved.

“It was awesome,” she said Thursday as D’Shellis brought the bike out to the front porch of their home. ​“I have different feelings about the police. The gesture was a nice thing for them to do.”

D’Shellis, who attends Lincoln-Bassett School, ​“already wanted to be a cop,” Leak said. ​“This motivates him to work on that dream.”

D’Shellis was asked Thursday afternoon why he wants to become an officer. His answer: ​“You help keep the bad guys off the street.”

The encounter was also a boost for the spirits of cops who on other occasions leave raid scenes dispirited by what young children have witnessed.

“It was great,” Sgt. Jacobson, the father of an 11-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy, said of the bike delivery. ​“You can tell it had a huge effect on him. The mother was in tears; she couldn’t believe the police would do something like this. I wish we could do [something like this] in every situation. And it was good to have people work with me who cared about it.”

The officers’ gesture earned kudos from Chief Dean Esserman, who called it an example of community policing at work.

“More than brawn,” Esserman said. ​“New Haven police officers have heart.”