Fresh off the plane from North Carolina, New Haven’s top police brass emerged eager to implement innovative community policing ideas they encountered down south — including using community pressure to “bring moral weight to bear” on small-time crooks.
Earlier this week, Police Chief Cisco Ortiz and Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts flew down to High Point, NC to learn about new policing techniques that are getting nationwide applause. The pair blogged about their journey for the Independent— click here, here and here for their three dispatches.
Backed by an enthusiastic Mayor John DeStefano, Ortiz and Smuts announced Thursday they intend to add High Point methods to New Haven’s repertoire.
The two towns aren’t at all interchangeable – High Point is more spread out and less populated, with two-thirds of New Haven’s population stretched out over three times as much space. As DeStefano put it at a Thursday press conference, the southern city is “not an urbanized environment” abounding with check-cash and liquor stores.
But the three agreed High Point had some innovative techniques to learn from: Specifically, a community-intervention “call-in” session to give small-time suspects a second chance before locking them away.
The method, described in detail here and here, involves sweeping up a range of low-level criminals involved in selling drugs in a particular geographic zone, inviting them to a “call in.” They sit before a crowd of community members, look at piles of evidence against them, including arrest warrants just waiting to be signed, and make a choice: They can go to jail, or catch a break, with the understanding that, with help from a range of social services, they’ll get on the right path or face maximum jail time if they’re caught again.
Ortiz described the difference between New Haven’s method — sweeping up suspects through the now-disbanded ID-NET, only to see them back on the streets again — and High Point’s method, where 50 percent leave the life of crime.
When New Haven cops recently blitzed the notorious drug zone of Kensington Street, arresting 25 people, officers soon saw the same faces “back on the street,” Ortiz said. In High Point, after an effective “call in” session earlier this week, undercover agents hit the streets, testing to see if they could buy drugs in the area they’d just targeted. They were turned away, Ortiz said.
The main new element in High Point’s method, according to Smuts? “Building the case and not pulling the trigger” — allowing suspects a second chance. The second key element: “They bring the moral weight of the community to bear” on the suspects sitting in the room. That “moral authority” – a crowd of neighbors, family, and friends steering the suspect on the right path — is a powerful deterrent.
How would High Point’s method translate into New Haven? “It wouldn’t work in every neighborhood,” Ortiz said. Cops couldn’t focus on a large swath of land with 1,500 people, as High Point cops do. They’d focus on a block, or half a block — somewhere where someone’s “trying to build a reputation” as a dealer. They’d solicit help from the State’s Attorney, build a case for months, then collect a group of low-level criminals involved in drug trafficking. New Haven’s abundance of social services would make it a good match, reckoned the chief.
The call-in method would “fit very well in our toolbox of initiatives,” Smuts concluded.
Would it tackle New Haven’s recent pattern of younger kids using guns, in armed robberies and to settle scores? DeStefano (pictured) noted the problems in New Haven are different. But he praised “inclusion of families” in steering kids away from crime. And Ortiz said the problems are related — “drug problems drive half of my crime.”
Ortiz is applying for a $150,000 grant to fund the problem, but he maintained: “We can do this with existing resources and we will.”
Meanwhile, DeStefano stressed the importance of bringing in new recruits: “you can’t do community policing if you don’t have enough bodies.” He praised the new initiative, but said New Haven still has “lots of things to do. We’re not going to lose sight of what this department is about — patrol officers being out there, on the street, getting to know people.”
Okay, I just saw an NHPD officer on an NHPD Segway riding on York street.
I usually am the first person to complain about the police, taxes and take a stand for personal secession if you will but this sight infused me with a rage I have had not yet experienced. How much did this cost? How much will this continue to cost? Will the ability to travel 20 or so miles on a battery charge for thousands of dollars prove more efficient than a fit cop on a bike that cost $600 riding as far and as fast as he pleases?
I thought I have seen evil in government before but this time I saw it joyfully zooming down the street and spinning in circles while I ate lettuce.
This taxation is not simply unjustified but has become unabashedly criminal.