Paul Bass photo
Tyisha Walker-Myers at WNHH FM.
The relationship between police and the community improved in 2022 — and the Board of Alders helped make that happen by doing their job.
So argued Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers.
She also reflected on how the year’s events reflected the way that elected officials need to keep after big goals over the long term rather than believing they can finish the job with a “finger snap.”
Walker-Myers offered those reflections Thursday in an interview on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program about the board’s work in 2022 and goals for 2023.
She cited the board’s work on a once-in-a-decade ward redistricting and passing an “inclusionary zoning” ordinance amendment as among the highlights. She highlighted the board’s work in holding hearings and pushing for action on low reading scores and other challenges facing the public schools. Within her West River ward, Walker-Myers succeeded in ensuring that residents of the under-demolition Antillean Manor received new homes and promises of future apartments in the rebuilt complex; and supported the $838 million neuroscience center Yale New Haven Hospital has begun constructing.
One of the board’s boldest moves was sticking with a late-2021 rejection of the mayor’s nomination for a new police chief amid widespread grassroots concern about a return to unaccountable military-style “beat-down posse” style policing, despite mayoral efforts to ignore or reverse the vote. The board subsequently approved the selection of a different nominee; gunshots and fatal violence have since dropped.
Alders were able to cast that vote because of a charter change Walker-Myers and allies succeeded in passing a decade ago giving the board veto power over police chief nominations. Walker-Myers called that an important role for the legislative branch of government to play in the system of checks and balances.
“I believe we did an important job,” she said of the police chief votes. “We actually did what was best for the city. That is one of our priorities on our legislative agenda. We had an opportunity to really make sure that we were pushing what the neighborhoods actually needed. That’s not to say the person that was in place is not a good person. It’s not personal at all. It’s what we see and what we need in the city and how we could move it forward. It wasn’t just one person. It was the board taking a stance.”
Since then, she observed, “I believe there has been an improvement in how the police are communicating and dealing with the community. .. People feel that the relationship with the police is getting better. They’re seeing them more in different places not only when something terrible happens, but on other occasions.”
Walker-Myers was reminded that when she and a slate of fellow labor-affiliated alders won their first election in 2011, their first joint action was to call for a new police chief and a return to community policing. They succeeded then, too, in having walking beats restored and a new chief brought in with a renewed focus on community policing and success in violence reduction.
Walker-Myers drew two lessons from the repetition of history (with a twist) after 11 years: The long-term nature of the work of seeking change, and how approaches to the same issue evolve over time.
“When I first came into office, I believed you could just snap your fingers and fix everything. After being in office, I understand it’s a process. Things that are really important, you should always keep in the forefront. That’s how you make it better,” she said.
She also noted that “ten years ago what we envisioned community policing to be is different today.” Back then the focus was almost exclusively on walking beats, she said, while today people have come to see the challenge as encompassing a broader understanding of the roots of and responses to criminal behavior.
In 2023, Walker-Myers said she’s looking to continue focusing on ways alders can contribute to boosting reading and math and improve overall education in the city and promote affordable housing and community policing, among other priorities. She spoke of a need to help more New Haveners buy homes that would otherwise fall in the hands of megalandlord companies.
Unlike many other powerful political figures, Walker-Myers doesn’t conduct many media interviews. She doesn’t call many press conferences or call attention to herself. She has approached her role as alder president as guiding a team of people committed to improving their neighborhoods and the city as a whole.
She said she sees herself continuing to seek playing that role for years to come. Though she wasn’t committing to any particular plan.
“It’s a lot of hours. It’s a lot of time spent away from my family,” she said of the alder president job. “But it’s worth it when my constituents come and I can see where we used to be in the neighborhood and where we are now.
“I’m not one of those people that say, ‘Oh, in the next five years I have to do this,’ ‘Oh, in the next ten years I’m going to do this.’ I really don’t work like that.
“I just continue to do the work. If my community continues to elect me and I have the strength to continue representing them, that’s what I’m going to do.”
Click on the video above to watch the full conversation with Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”
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Really? The post 2011 decline in violent crime is being attributed to Esserman and walking beats? Really? I think I'm going to barf. The work that was done by those investigators in ISU at the time resulted in years of violent crime plummeting. Remember, the two largest gang wiretap investigations in the history of the state? Yeah, that wasn't done by cops on walking beats Madame President that was done by detectives working long hours away from their families on dangerous assignments. Maybe you should talk to some of my undercover cops who put their life on the line buying drugs and guns from gang members while the walking beat cops were greasing palms and drinking coffee. Maybe your opinion would change if you ever listened to a detective being robbed at gunpoint by a bad guy during an undercover operation. You know, those operations where we would buy guns to remove them from our community that was seeing death every day. To credit walking beat officers with the post 2011 decline in violent crime is an insult to every officer and detective who worked on those investigations. Walking beats, when deployed correctly, can definitely improve police/community relations, but they do not quell violent crime. They are a vital part of community policing, but they are not the panacea for public safety. It's strange how quickly the residual effects of the violence of 2011 have been forgotten. Because when the city was in the midst of that violence EVERY politician that called my office wanted arrests and firearms seizures, not more walking beats. Some of the most violent years in the city of New Haven were years when we had the most officers on walking beats. Stick to the budget and elections and stuff, leave public safety alone because you have no idea what you're talking about.