“Night Out” Comes To Forgotten Square

“National Night Out” drew local dignitaries, cops and neighborhood crime-fighting heroes to Jocelyn Square. It didn’t draw any crime-fighters from Jocelyn Square itself — which was part of the point.

The Jocelyn Square gathering was the biggest of a series of events held around New Haven Tuesday night. Similar events took place around the country to highlight and encourage citizens to take back their streets.

By holding New Haven’s main event in Jocelyn Square, officials sought to showcase and perhaps spark new activity in an often overlooked, isolated neighborhood centered around a park and among I‑91 overpasses and industrial zones. (It’s named after 19th century abolitionist and neighborhood planner Simeon Jocelyn.)

Scattered groups of neighbors enjoyed the last rays of a warm summer day in the square Tuesday evening. Yet they stuck to the south side along Walnut Street as the festivities began at 6 p.m. on the north side. Only the children headed toward the white tents, folding chairs and microphones to pat the K‑9 squad and throw water balloons.

That left the mayor, the police chief, police brass, honored guests, and vote-hunting politicians to wander around after the ceremonies, talking amongst themselves rather than interacting with the community.
 

“The park should be full,” Lenora Moore-Turner muttered to no one in particular. ​“There should be more people here.”

Moore-Turner was being honored for her service to National Night Out and the block watch program in her own Orchard Street neighborhood, The Orchard Street National Night Out Celebration, which Moore-Turner has organized for the last 15 years, draws a huge crowd with a fish fry and children’s activities, she said. Moore-Turner, a retired Head Start worker, had to pass on organizing Orchard Street’s celebration this year because she and her husband were leaving early Wednesday morning for a family reunion in Mississippi.

Police Capt. Joann Peterson, who organized the event, acknowledged that ​“we expected a little bit more of a crowd” as she packed leftover sandwich wraps to send to the National Night Out celebrations at Bassett Street and Wooster Square.

“It’s a little sad that’s it not better attended,” echoed Stephanie Campbell, who lives in Fair Haven and was at the Jocelyn Square night out with her police officer husband. ​“Because of the violence people don’t want to get anywhere near the cops for fear of being taken for a snitch.”

Police spokesman Officer Joe Avery noted that it was ​“six o’clock on a Tuesday night,” and that this is the first year the police chose Jocelyn Square as the event’s main venue.

The topography of Jocelyn Square itself has added to the area’s isolation, not just on National Night Out. The neighborhood embodies what famed urbanist Jane Jacobs described as ​“the curse of border vacuums.” Jacobs wrote in her classic, ​“The Death and Life of Great American Cities”: ​“Frequent borders, whether formed by arterial highways, institutions, projects, campuses, industrial parks, or any other massive uses of special land, can … tear a city to tatters.” I‑91 tore into Jocelyn Square when the highway was built in the 1950s and the neighborhood has never quite recovered. An industrial zone rose along the southern border once connecting the neighborhood to Wooster Square.

Neighbors to the west don’t tend to cross the Humphrey Street highway underpass off State Street to get to the square, despite recent efforts to spruce up the pass with newly-planted cherry trees.

“This neighborhood is defined by the bridge, and we’re on the other side of the bridge,” said Sheilagh Mallory, who lives just west of I‑91 on Clark Street. She came to National Night Out to see the organizer of her SoHu (South of Humphrey) block watch, Lisa Siedlarz, honored by the police.

Fair Haveners to the east aren’t inclined to leave their neighborhood even for the Jocelyn Square’s playground and water fountain in which children cavort. Stephanie Campbell has lived in New Haven for 20 years; Tuesday was first time she or her husband set foot in the square. In trying to explain to her children who are 10, 7 and 2, where they were going Tuesday, she said told them ​“somewhere between Fair Haven and downtown.”

The neighborhood’s state representative, Roland Lemar, attended Tuesday night’s festivities. ​“A highway overpass does not divide our community,” he claimed At the same time, Lemar acknowledged big differences between the neighborhoods, with ​“this side” having ​“more blight and crime.” Another difference is that on all sides of Jocelyn Square ​“there are active and aggressive and effective block watches.” Jocelyn Square itself doesn’t have a block watch program and hasn’t for years.

​“It’s an example of a neighborhood that had a block watch back five or six years ago but it disbanded at least in part because its voices weren’t appreciated enough, ” said Lemar, who lives on Eld Street on the other side of I‑91.

He said it would be a challenge to get people active again. It means ​“starting out with the small” projects such as the nearby tree plantings and more facilities in the park.

To Lemar, it also means ​“starting with something like you see tonight.”

A mother and a daughter, who said they had lived near the square for 25 years, expressed contempt for the ceremony as they sat on a bench at a distance from the program. ​“Our kids are dying. What are they going to do for our kids?” the daughter said, muttering that all they were doing was giving out plaques at the event. She and her mother declined to provide their names.

And for some emotions from last year’s murder of 25-year-old Edmund Jackson outside the Humphrey’s East bar remained raw. Donna Santiago said Jackson, who was murdered on May 22, 2010, was her nephew.

“He died right here in the gutter,” she said nodding toward the corner of Humphrey and East, where a makeshift memorial edges the curb. ​“Every time we start to heal there’s another murder and the healing process has to start all over again.”

On the other side of the square, far from the ceremony, several people said they like the neighborhood.

Aida Diaz previously lived in the projects in Dixwell. She said she moved here six years ago to ​‘keep her kids away from all that.” She said she happily takes her toddlers to the square, often with an assist from her ​“awesome” neighbor, April Martin, who was with her on Tuesday.

“It feels like a neighborhood,” said Roni Phelmetta, sitting at one of the square’s tables with neighbors Harold Yancey and Lanequia Coleman, who held her infant daughter. ​“Everybody gets along,” Yancey said. ​“And looks out for each others’ kids,” Coleman piped in.

Many of those hanging out in the square said the addition of a water fountain for children to play in two years ago and playground equipment three years ago contributes to the square’s appeal.

Carlos Gonzalez, 14, said he and his friends play in the square every day. Gonzalez said as soon as he got home from his job as a camp counselor Tuesday he came to the square.

“I play with my friends and do a lot of stuff,” Madison Ennens, 6, said as she scooted around on her red bicycle. She had one complaint: the square’s swings had been taken away. (Asked about the missing swings, state Rep. Lemar said they would soon be replaced.)

National Night Out many not have touched many in Jocelyn Square Tuesday night, but it had one big fan. ​“Put in I’m the best friend of the police,” Madison said. ​“They save our lives. I love, love, love police.”