Alex Rhodeen, the chair of the Board of Aldermen’s Public Safety Committee, turned to Casablanca to describe the budding relationship between his colleagues and Stephanie Redding (pictured).
“Speaking frankly, in light of recent events,” he said to Redding at the start of a public hearing Thursday night on summer crime prevention, “it may very well be that we have the start of a beautiful relationship.”
Added Quinnipiac Meadows Alderman Gerald Antunes later, “maybe we can just make you chief and forget the ‘acting’ part.”
Redding became the police department’s “acting” chief last month while a sluggish process continues to find a permanent chief. She hasn’t applied for the permanent job. But because the process has bogged down, a sense is growing that she may serve as long as a year and a half at the helm of the department. (Click here for an article detailing why.)
Some some aldermen are beginning to conceive of her in a new light: as the boss — no ifs, ands or buts about it.
Redding said at the meeting Thursday night of the Public Safety Committee that she is not thinking about her temporary status as she charges full-speed ahead with reform, whether in redeployment and records or communications and community policing, and exchanging cell phone numbers with them afterwards.
“We have to just keep moving forward,” Redding said.
The reception was warm, with nearly every committee member congratulating her. “Based on what I see now,” Antunes (pictured) said after the meeting, “she’d certainly have my vote” for chief.
Her greatest challenge may still be coming.
When budget cuts — and the too-idle-for-comfort Dog Days of summer — hit New Haven in the coming weeks, Redding said, she will be under enormous pressure and constraint.
“Resources are an issue this summer — I think you all know that,” she said. “They’re an issue.”
Managing overtime is her top priority, she said. “I very much feels the responsibility” not to waste money, she said. So she is ordering all her district managers and supervisors to answer the question “Were they needed and why?” in the case of every cop on the overtime beat.
“I don’t have enough personnel until the [next] class graduates to handle all the hotspots that I think should be filled. I’ve gotta do it in a very smart way.” (And much, surely, to the chagrin of Dean Kaman, that may mean not purchasing Segways, she said.)
Redding and the aldermen seemed to agree on nearly every point, even if on some occasions the legislators were giving the acting chief the benefit of the doubt — specifically whether the NHPD’s communications apparatus has undergone proper reform and its employees sufficient retraining.
Antunes and Rhodeen both recounted moments over the past week in which they had frustrating experiences calling the department, either receiving no answer at all or waiting many rings before finding a bitter voice on the other end of the line. “They treat you like you’re nobody,” Antunes said.
Rhodeen also pressed Redding on “internal values and ethics,” the official term for internal affairs. He said “public perception is that it is very difficult to make a complaint against an officer.” Public perception, Redding responded, “is difficult, because I don’t think they see the end result.”
Although crime tends to be a heated topic for the public, with hundreds coming out to speak on the proposed youth curfew last year, Thursday’s meeting was sparsely — make that not — attended by members of the public (except, for some time, the son of Dixwell Alderman Greg Morehead). “I don’t think anyone’s all that interested in me,” Redding joked as she walked in and surveyed the virtually empty Board of Aldermen chambers.
Hit & Aftermath
Afterwards in an interview, Redding discussed Wednesday’s fatal hit-and-run on Whalley Avenue whose victim was an 11-year-old, Gabrielle Lee.
The chief said she will visit Lee’s grieving family today after attempting Thursday and finding no one home. She said although she has no immediate plans for traffic reform — besides a drag-racing-prevention initiative near Long Wharf thanks to a Department of Transportation grant — “traffic guru” Lt. Joe Witowski, the deputy patrol coordinator, is “really looking” into a possible rethinking of deployment and enforcement procedures based on dangerous intersections and common infractions. But he is still “in that process,” she said.