nothin New Chief Assigns Top Cops Homework | New Haven Independent

New Chief Assigns Top Cops Homework

(Updated) On his first day in town, New Haven’s new drug gang-fighting police chief asked his command staff to hand in two ideas apiece for improving the department.

Frank Limon issued the homework assignment at a private meeting in the mayor’s conference room. Then he stepped into the City Hall atrium for a press conference, where Mayor John DeStefano announced that he’d named the 55-year-old career cop the city’s next police chief.

Limon begins work April 5. His term will run through Feb. 1, 2014.

Limon succeeds James Lewis, who left New Haven a week and a half ago following a 20-month stint reorganizing the police department.

Limon was chosen from 50 applicants, all males, according to someone familiar with today’s scheduled announcement. He is Latino, as is his wife, who hails from Ecuador. (The New Haven-based Ecuadorian consul attended the announcement Tuesday). In the end Limon prevailed over two other finalists, one a former New York City precinct captain.

He comes to New Haven from Illinois. He spent 30 years on the Chicago police force, where he supervised 600 people in the Organized Crime Department (OCD) before retiring in 2008. For the past year he has served as police chief in River Forest, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. He shook up that department, cutting staff and crime at the same time.

Limon spent five hours cruising all around New Haven Monday — in part because he was staying at the Omni, which had been evacuated because of a bomb scare. He described the city as warm and welcoming. He described meeting a friendly couple who invited him and his wife for dinner; because his appointment hadn’t yet been announced, Limon couldn’t tell his new friends why exactly he was in town.

Mayor John DeStefano said Tuesday that he chose Limon in part because of his skills in working with the community and his background fighting drug gangs. The department needs to be more aggressive on narcotics,” DeStefano said. Virtually all gun violence is related to narcotics.”

District managers and unit heads met with Limon in the private session before the press conference. He asked them to submit, in sealed envelopes, their two best ideas for changing the department, along with their resumes. He plans to meet one-on-one with each of them.

I want ideas from the rank and file and department leaders that are there now,” he said. I’m not going to come in with a wand and fix everything.”

Limon visited New Haven and considered the chief’s job two years ago, the last time it was open. He decided against pursuing the job further, he said, because his wife Gisella was still working. She has now retired; she was an arson detective with the Chicago police force.

In his remarks to the press Tuesday, he spoke of his support for community policing. He also spoke of combating drugs through a strategy that combines law enforcement and social services. Click on the play arrow at the top of the story to watch some of those remarks.

A Hit In River Forest

Paul Bass Photo

Limon speaks in Spanish with Hernando Diosa of La Voz Hispana at City Hall Monday.

As OCD head, Limon worked closely with state and federal cops, an important part of a New Haven chief’s role. He’s a graduate of Xavier University and the Illinois Institute of Technology.

For the past year, he has produced amazing” results in turning around the once-troubled department in the 12,000-population town of River Forest, according to Stephen Hoke, who chairs the Police Committee of the Board of Trustees there.

Crime went down 28 percent while the chief cut staff 17 percent over the past 11 months, Hoke said.

He’s a living example that more for less is possible,” Hoke said.

Limon’s emphasis was on placing more cops on the street; cuts were focused elsewhere. For instance, he cut the number of deputy chiefs from two to one. In New Haven, one open question is whether the new chief will continue to have four assistant chiefs. (Read about that here.)

You can read about the River Forest department’s problems and how Limon produced a dramatic turnaround” beginning on page 5 of this report. And read about the problems he inherited when he took the job in this report.

Hoke also credited Limon with building bridges to chiefs in River Forest’s neighboring communities.

His theory is crime doesn’t respect borders,” Hoke said. Limon created a working group of regional chiefs that produced some major busts in the past three to four months, according to Hoke, including breaking up a 54-member burglary ring.

The local Wednesday Journal newspaper shared Hoke’s assessment. It named Limon Villager of the Year” for transforming” the department. Read about that here.

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