Thomas MacMillan Photo
Wynne and Benedetto inaugurate New Haven’s new foot patrols.
When two veteran cops peered into the “Listerine Lounge” — the downtown bus stop known as a hang-out for people swigging mouthwash — Friday, it wasn’t from the front seat of a cruiser.
Matt Wynne and Thomas Benedetto were on foot during their Friday visit to the infamous Church Street bus stop. As two of the first cops to be reassigned to walking beats since new police Chief Dean Esserman took over, the pair will be on foot for all their shifts.
When Esserman was sworn into office three weeks ago, he promised to bring back walking beats as part of a return to community policing. The idea is that a dedicated neighborhood cop — out of his cruiser and on foot — will connect with the community, build trust with neighbors, and stop crime before it starts rather than chase after it later. The whole city had them in the 1990s, and crime plummeted. Then they disappeared.
The chief has promised to assign patrol cops to regular walking beats in every neighborhood. Downtown is the first area to see them so far. Esserman said he is actively discussing with all the other district managers whom to assign to foot patrols in their neighborhoods. He said all neighborhoods will have regular assigned walking cops soon.
“It’s just old school, that’s all it is,” said Wynne, during a lunch break inside Starbucks at the corner of Chapel and Church on Friday. He called walking beats are a return to the classic image of an cop strolling the neighborhood — the kind of cop who would spot a kid stealing an apple and bring him to his parents’ house because he knew all the families on the block.
Friday was the third day of walking-beat duty for Wynne and Benedetto, two veteran New Haven cops with 38 years of experience between the two of them.
The pair said they both asked to be put on walking beats. “We’ve been pushing for a while,” Wynne said.
Wynne and Benedetto.
Wynne, who’s 46, and Benedetto, who’s 50, had been assigned downtown previously, but they’d been in their cruisers.
When you’re in car, you have to respond to every call that comes in, Benedetto said. Each call, between investigating and reporting, takes at least an hour and ties up a couple of cops, he said.
Policing like that is reactive, Benedetto said.
“This is proactive,” Wynne said, referring to the new walking beat.
“It’s the only way to take care of the problem,” Benedetto said.
That problem, in the couple of blocks near Chapel and Church they’ve been assigned to, centers around “congregating” on the Green, he said. He laid out the sequence: Starting early in the morning, homeless people and people on methadone treatment begin to gather there. Where there are junkies, there are dealers. Where there are dealers, there can be turf wars and violence. Buyers need money, so there’s theft and robberies.
Cops walking the block can end that sequence before it starts, said Benedetto.
By being out of their cars, the cops can follow up on things they notice over time. On Thursday morning, that kind of follow-up led to an arrest.
At 9 a.m., Benedetto and Wynne stopped a man on the green who was acting drunk. They told him to move along. A short while later, they spotted him sitting at a table in Starbucks. It became clear he wasn’t just drunk, but high on something, maybe dangerously so.
“We’ve got to stop this guy,” Benedetto recalled saying. “I’m thinking he might need an ambulance.”
The cops called the guy over. As he approached, Benedetto noticed a bulge in the guy’s pants.
“What you got?” he asked. As the man reached for his waistband, Benedetto grabbed his arm. Together the two of them pulled an 18-inch souvenir Rock Cats baseball bat out of the guy’s pants. The cops arrested him for carrying a concealed dangerous weapon.
Out of the car, cops can contact more people, Wynne said. That leads to more warrant checks. “You’d be amazed by how many people have warrants,” Wynne said. “Just contacting these people is doing the job.”
After lunch at Starbucks, Wynne and Benedetto took a walk around the block with Dowtown District Manager Lt. Rebecca Sweeney.
They moved a guy off a park bench, someone they’d seen loitering for a while. Then they walked down Church Street. All was quiet at the “Listerine Lounge.” That’s the heated bus stop in front of 55 Church. People pick up cheap mouthwash at the drugstore across the street and then drink it inside the bus stop, Wynne said.
The cops turned right on Crown, then right again on Temple, where they found a man unloading stacks of Pabst Blue Ribbon out of the back of a sedan. Wynne asked him what he was doing and learned he was a delivery guy, and that PBR is one of the most popular beers in New Haven.
“I didn’t know anybody still drank Pabst,” he said.
At the corner of Temple and Chapel, Lt. Sweeney asked a street vendor for his permit. He said he was just filling in for his friend and didn’t have the license. The cops told him to close up shop.
They then checked out the Dunkin Donuts nearby, where they found a guy loitering and asked him to move on. Wynne said he had spotted the guy earlier in Starbucks.
Back on Chapel Street, a woman stopped Wynne to ask him why there were so many cars over on Elm Street. He said it was for State Sen. Toni Harp’s husband’s funeral.
Answering questions for passersby is all part of the new beat, Wynne said.
Thank you, from the Town Green District. We greatly appreciate the new walking beat.