nothin A Top Cop Circles Back To East Shore | New Haven Independent

A Top Cop Circles Back To East Shore

Markeshia Ricks Photo

Davis, the new East Shore district manager, at Dunkin.

The kids hang out in the road. They sit on mailboxes and throw rocks at condo windows.

Gail Roundtree has tried talking to them. But they cursed at her. About 15 of them even chased her up a hill.

Now she asked Sgt. Roy Davis what he’ll do about it.

Welcome back to District 9, sergeant.

Davis, who has become a familiar face to downtown and the Wooster Square neighborhood, was fielding Roundtree’s concerns and the tough questions of a few of her fellow dwellers of Harbour Crest Condominiums on Quinnipiac Avenue. They were meeting at a Dunkin Donuts on Foxon Boulevard Wednesday night. It was his first meeting with the neighbors there since he became the East Shore’s new top cop — in the district where he began his New Haven police career.

Davis, the son and grandson of cops, has been serving as the district manager in downtown and Wooster Square, District 1. He will wear dual hats as the district manager for East Shore and Downtown/Wooster Square until the latter district gets a new top cop.

Interim Police Chief Anthony Campbell said the department has posted the vacancy notice for the District 1 manager position. Officers with the rank of at least sergeant are allowed to voluntarily apply first. If no one steps up, Campbell will appoint someone.

We have found that when we take volunteers, we get much better results,” he said Thursday.

On the East Shore, Davis replaces Sgt. Will Cruz who has gone back to patrol. He’s in charge of a sprawling district, one the city plans at some point to divide in two. It runs from Morris Cove through the Annex into Fair Haven Heights and Quinnipiac Meadows/Bishop Woods, where Davis was meeting with the Harbour Crest condo owners Wednesday night.

The eight neighbors had stories not only about unruly kids, but blatant drug dealing that seems to carry on, unabated even when neighbors call the cops.

Davis, a veteran cop who is coming up on a decade on the force in February, is no stranger to the district or its problems. He walked the beat around Farren Avenue and then later was one half of a two-man crime suppression unit in the district. He went on to work in narcotics and internal affairs. He also was a shift supervisor and spent some time as an acting district manager in Westville/West Hills.

He had good news and bad news for the frustrated condo owners who said they’ve been putting up with the vandalism, crime and bad behavior for years. The bad news: the East Shore is the biggest police district with the most calls for service, and the police department is under resourced. The good news: He thinks a more proactive style of policing could help.

Right now from what I’ve seen, it’s very 911-driven policing,” he said. You call, we come.”

He said he’s proposing beefing up police presence in the district. That means officers will still go to high priority calls, but lower priority calls might stay on the stove a little longer to allow more time for patrol to be on the street addressing quality of life issues and motor vehicle concerns.

Davis said visibility of cops helps dissuade criminal activity. But he told neighbors they have to do their part too. They must deal with neighbors who allow kids to hangout and create mischief. He also predicted that some of the problems will taper off as the school year gets underway and the cold weather starts to arrive. He committed to helping the neighbors find long-term solutions.

Terry (she declined to give her last name) and Beatrice Codianni lay out their concerns.

Neighborhood activist Beatrice Codianni asked what will happen to the kids in the neighborhood once the police start cracking down on their behavior. She said the reality is that many of them are just bored, with little supervision and not much to do. The neighborhood has few playgrounds and little or no activities or open gyms for basketball during the summer, she said.

She said he hopes that Davis has ideas similar to a program he implemented downtown as the district manager there. The program, called Project Green Thumb, focused on vagrancy, drug dealing, public intoxication and littering on the Green. Violators are allowed to work off the fine by cleaning up the Green.

My thing is restorative justice,” she said. That they acknowledge they did something wrong and try to fix it.”

Davis said Project Green Thumb is done through criminal court system for adults, but he vowed to look at options available in the juvenile justice system.

Before the meeting ended, Davis offered to help coordinate a meeting with the city’s housing authority and to reach out to his connections in other units about the drug dealing. He also promised to research who owns a street in front of the condos where people dangerously park at the entryway, and check on Police Activities League after-school activities in the area.

Condo residents like Dawn Campbell and Lisa Pereira said they were pleased with the seriousness with which Davis handled their concerns and were happy to hear that what they considered a forgotten part of the city” will get more police presence.

While it might seem that fighting crime downtown and in Wooster Square is very different from the East Shore, Davis said he doesn’t see it that way.

You have downtown and you have Wooster Square, two dynamic, distinct different areas,” Davis said. Both with different problems, both with different concerns. East Shore is kind of the same. You have the Cove and basically north of East Grand, both completely different areas, different dynamics, different concerns.”

Davis cited one difference: In the East Shore most of the concerns are coming from residential areas. So you tend to see more quality of life problems like the kinds that the condo owners expressed to him. He’s asking the East Shore Management Team to identify three specific areas that they want him to concentrate his efforts. If he can move the needle in those areas, he’ll ask them for three more priorities.

Condo association prez Lisa Pereira and Alder Gerald Antunes.

We’re going to ask the management team to come up with three concerns, and we’re going to address those three concerns and when those concerns are addressed we’ll go on to the next three,” he said. It’s almost like a triage. We can’t take the few resources we have and spread them out throughout the district, you can take them and utilize them to triage from the most needed down to the least needed and accomplish those goals as we go.”

I’m really proud of Project Green Thumb,” he said. I think restorative justice and accountability from that program has changed the idea of what we can do with quality of life crimes. It’s no longer just, We can’t do anything about it.’ I’m really proud of the morale and camaraderie that we built as a team of officers [in District 1]. I think the guys out there have pride in their work — not that they didn’t before. I just think they found that enthusiasm again, and I’m really proud that I was able and allowed to be part of that — the community, I think, respected me enough to believe in what I said and kind of followed what I did.”

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