nothin Cop Of The Week | New Haven Independent

Cop Of The Week

Politicians and policy-makers and activists have been trying to figure out how to get guns off the streets of New Haven. Elvin Rivera went ahead and did it, and he has some thoughts about how to do more of it.

Rivera, a 41 year-old city native who has served as a New Haven cop for eight years, recovered a Smith & Wesson loaded with bullets whose unauthorized owner planned to pump into a rival over a stolen DVD player. He arrested the would-be shooter, too. The Aug. 8 incident was one of several this month in which Officer Rivera and other members of New Haven’s ID-Net“ team has helped confiscate five or six guns in the course of catching crooks.

Street Fight
Rivera’s team got the call at 7:40 p.m. Four young men were yelling and engaged in a fight near the intersection of Third Street and Howard Avenue in the Kimberly Square section of the Hill neighborhood.

Rivera would later piece together from witnesses the following account of how the fight started:

A 22 year-old man known on the street as Cho-Chi” had let his friend, who’s 24, stay at the apartment he shares with his girlfriend at the Church Street South complex. During the friend’s stay, a TV set and DVD player went missing. Cho-Chi believed his friend was the culprit.

Now, on Aug. 8, he saw the friend on the street in a white Honda Civic hatchback. Cho-Chi approached him and asked about the TV and DVD player. If you stole it, he said, just give it back.

I don’t give a fuck,” the friend allegedly responded. Do not come to me questioning me about a DVD and TV. I will shoot you.”

The friend then emerged from the car. The two wrestled to the ground. Cho-Chi was getting the better of the fight. The friend then got up to leave, with this alleged warning: Fuck that. I am going to get my gun.”

Alerted by a caller, Rivera arrived on the scene to find the friend and two companions. Cho-Chi was nowhere to be seen. As soon as the three men saw Rivera, they ran down Third Street. Rivera ran after them into the back yard, then up the back steps, of a three-family home on Howard.

He heard noise on the third floor. The men kicked in the apartment door. The terrified tenant in the apartment, thinking he was being robbed, locked himself in the bathroom. The back door to the apartment remained open as Rivera made it to the third-floor landing.

Slicing The Pie”

Rivera knew better than to race right into the apartment. Instead, he took cover out of visual range of the apartment while he took a look. Our training kicks in” at that point, Rivera said. Your heart’s pumping. But you’ve got to remember to cut the angles so you have the advantage. You want to see your adversary before he sees you. I sliced the pie — you’re on an angle. You peek. Then you go in. You don’t just enter and put yourself in jeopardy.”

One of the two fleeing men stood in the kitchen. His two companions were elsewhere in the apartment, out of view. When he saw Rivera, he called out, Hurry! The police are here!” Rivera drew his gun. The man lay on the floor and put up no fight as Rivera handcuffed him. On the kitchen table lay the loaded black 9‑millimeter Smith & Wesson handgun.

In handcuffs, the man volunteered, There is another gun. My boy has it,” according to Rivera. And he named the boy.”

Rivera called for backup. He assumed the other two men had left the building through the front. Another officer, though, found the other alleged gunman in a closet. The third man had indeed fled. Yet soon after he returned to the scene, for some reason, and was arrested. The three were charged with a variety of theft, reckless endangerment, burglary, and illegal gun-possession offenses.

Cho-Chi came to the scene, too. He said he heard the police were looking for him. He, too, was arrested, and charged with second-degree breach of the peace.

For Sneakers”

Would someone really shoot someone else over a stolen DVD?

Rivera has no doubt. He’s seen worse. They shoot for sneakers. They shoot for stepping on sneakers,” he said over a cup of coffee at Cosi on Elm Street.

The out-of-control youth-driven gun violence in New Haven led to the creation of ID-Net six months ago. It’s an elite force of cops who swarm into a neighborhood at a time to crack down on all offenses, track down wanted men and illegal guns, rack up high arrest totals, and generally provide short-term relief to plagued areas of town. Rivera was one of 27 officers picked from some 100 applicants for the squad.

Police work seems to flow in the Rivera family blood, even if his father was a butcher, not a cop. His brother Lou also serves on ID-Net. His brother Dave is a narcotics officer on the New Haven force. His wife, Elsa Beirios, is a city cop, too. (Even when discussion turns to non-police matters at family functions, Elvin said, it always returns to shop talk.”)

Some observers have questioned whether ID-NET should be the department’s central response to the spike in youth crime. The community policing that turned around an earlier crime spike in town, in the 1990s, de-emphasized arrests, dismantled saturation crackdowns, and emphasized intelligence-gathering, trust building, walking patrols, and partnerships with teachers, social workers, neighborhood groups, probation officers, even child shrinks. City officials argue that they’re still pursuing all those partnerships and still believe in walking and bike-riding neighborhood cops; but they need to offer some short-term relief on the streets, too.

Rivera believes in ID-Net’s mission: You really do see it when you’re effectuating numerous arrests. The numbers show the impact,” he said. He noted that most of the squad’s members have between six and 17 years on the job. Most of us have walked the beats. Most of us know most of the people already. They know who we are,” he said.

What about the guns? How, in addition to responding to incidents like the one he solved on Aug. 8, can the city get guns off the street?

That’s a tough question,” Rivera responded. He said he agrees with aldermen who have proposed a buy-back program. Some have criticized the program, saying the people who cause the problems won’t be the ones turning in the guns. Any one gun you get off the street won’t be shooting someone. Every gun counts,” Rivera said. About half the guns he has recovered lately had been stolen and then used in crimes.

Rivera would also like to see the government target straw buyers,” who legally purchase guns and then resell them to crooks.

A lot of guns come from straw buyers,” he said. A red flag has to go up. Anyone can go in and buy 100 of the same guns. Why do you need 100 of the same guns? They sell them at double or triple the price on the street. Find out where these guns are going.”

And what can New Haven itself do? All the city can do,” he said, is have the police presence.”

(To read other installments in the Independent’s Cop of the Week” series, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

(To suggest an officer to be featured, click here.)

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