Cop-Coffee Convo Raises Homelessness Concerns

Iced coffee in hand, Interim City Librarian Maureen Sullivan stopped by a group of caffeinated police officers on Grove Street to thank them for their public service — and to raise a concern she has about used needles, fecal matter, and people regularly sleeping outside of the Wilson branch library in the Hill.

Sullivan and a handful of New Haven Police Department (NHPD) beat officers and top cops engaged in that coffee-fueled conversation Wednesday morning outside of Willoughby’s Coffee at 258 Church St.

The cops — including Asst. Chief David Zannelli, Capt. Nicholas Marcucio, Downtown District Manager Lt. Brendan Borer, Fair Haven District Manager Lt. Michael Fumiatti, and a half-dozen downtown district-assigned police officers — had gathered outside of the downtown coffee shop not in response to a call for help, but rather as part of a new initiative to host regular monthly public meetups in each part of the city. 

Wednesday’s outing was the first such ​“coffee with a cop” informal event, Borer said, though it did harken back to similar community-policing-minded efforts led in years past by now retired former Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur.

The police department, under new Chief Karl Jacobson’s leadership, is prioritizing this type of public outreach ​“to give an opportunity for the community come out and get to know officers” who work in that district, Borer said, and to ​“ask any of us about any concerns” they may have — about downtown in particular, or about police operations more broadly. 

Sullivan, whom the mayor tapped as interim top city librarian in June after the death of former City Librarian John Jessen in May, had just come out of Willoughby’s with fellow city library colleague Maria Bernhey when she came across the dozen uniformed police officers sitting and standing outside the coffee shop.

She paused and, with a smile, thanked them for the work they do keeping the city safe.

She then turned to Asst. Chief Zannelli to talk about one of the biggest public safety issues she’s noticed during her roughly two and a half months on the job so far.

“The city has a serious problem with unhoused people,” Sullivan said. In particular, she and her colleagues at the Wilson branch library on Washington Avenue in the Hill find that people regularly use drugs outside of that building, particularly on the weekends. ​“You find fecal matter, used needles,” and people regularly sleeping outside of the branch library.

“Libraries are places that welcome everyone,” she said. That’s one of the beautiful things about libraries. But she said that these issues outside of the Wilson library in particular could prove dangerous to people visiting the library, particularly children. She said she spoke with the library’s board of directors on Tuesday night about these concerns, and encouraged the board members to talk with alders about the matter.

“It’s not an easy answer,” she said about what should be done about these issues.

Zannelli agreed. He encouraged Sullivan and the Wilson branch staff members to work closely with the Hill’s new district manager, Sgt. Jasmine Sanders, who is from the neighborhood and has good working relationships with community members, he said. 

He also said that the city’s pending rollout of a new social-worker-focused COMPASS crisis response team should help get at the ​“root causes” of some of the mental health and substance use problems that lead to the conditions Sullivan described Wednesday.

“We’re hoping that the COMPASS van initiative” addresses some of the quality of life concerns in a way that’s ​“much more deeper than an arrest,” he said.

Sullivan and Bernhey agreed. ​“Most of the times at the library, an arrest is the last thing” staff members want, Bernhey said.

Top Downtown Complaints: Loitering, Double Parking

Few other passersby stopped longer than to wave and briefly say ​“hello” during the first half hour of the coffee-cop event, which Borer said would last for an hour.

So this reporter caught up with Borer and downtown police Officer John Brangi about what they’ve seen in the district as of late — and about what concerns they hear most frequently from downtown and Wooster Square residents, visitors, and business owners.

Borer, who has served as District 1’s top neighborhood cop for roughly a year, said that some of the most frequent complaints he and his officers get come from business owners on Chapel Street who are concerned about people loitering and aggressively asking passersby for money outside of their shops.

In response, Borer said, he’s assigned two officers to walk on Chapel Street between State Street and High Street during the 4 p.m. to midnight ​“B squad” shift as often as he can.

Those officers ​“pop into businesses, just to be visible and available,” he said.

“We try to get off the bikes” and talk with people on the block face to face, Brangi said about some of his recent times walking the beat on Chapel. He said that business owners in the area are generally ​“really happy to see us.”

He said that, if he encounters a group of people loitering outside of a business, ​“we ask if they can just keep it moving. We don’t want their business to be affected.”

“It’s more of an outreach thing,” Brangi said.

Borer said that he also regularly hears complaints about traffic and parking: particularly about double parking on Temple Street between Chapel and Crown Streets.

He said that, especially on weekends, Ubers and food delivery drivers often pack the street as they’re waiting to pick someone up or load up on a restaurant order. In such cases, police ​“try to make contact with the operator” of the vehicle to let them know that they can’t double park. He said police also reach out to city parking enforcement officers. ​“It doesn’t always result in an infraction,” he said. 

What has he heard about speeding and red light running at the new Orange Street and MLK Boulevard? That’s the new nine-lane signalized intersection that opened earlier this year, and cuts across the old Rt. 34 connector. 

Borer and Brangi said that there was a crash at the intersection earlier on Wednesday involving a fire department vehicle and another car traveling west bound in the right hand lane that continued going straight as the fire department vehicle was turning. They said that everyone was OK, but that the crash backed up traffic for a while.

That most recent crash aside, Borer said, ​“it has calmed down” a bit at that intersection. He said that ​“the number of complaints brought to me” about red light running and speeding at that location has gone down over the months.

To find out about future NHPD community meetups, go to the NHPD’s Facebook page here or reach out to your neighborhood’s community management team or district manager.