Paul Bass photo
At scene of 2021’s first two homicides, on Winthrop Avenue.
With shootings up in New Haven, New Haven police plan to up their depleted shooting task force in response.
That problem — and that planned response — took center stage at a workshop Thursday night on New Haven’s rising violent crime rate over the past year. In the first seven weeks of 2021 alone, the city has had seven homicides and 13 non-fatal shootings.
Zoom
Thursday night’s crime workshop.
Thursday night’s workshop was hosted by the Board of Alders Public Safety Committee. Assistant Police Chief Karl Jacobson and New Haven State’s Attorney Patrick Griffin both identified a reinvigorated shooting task force as a top priority for making sure that the recent rise in local gun violence doesn’t translate into ever-escalating numbers of shots fired and people killed.
The task force — which exclusively concentrates on investigating gun-violence cases, including lingering unsolved ones — has dwindled to three members. The department, while short-staffed, is counting on Yale, the state, and a new class of recruits to enable it to beef up the task force.
“In 2020, we had 121 non-fatal, gun-related assaults,” Griffin said. “That number is in my opinion the number that we must focus on, because those numbers tend to create additional acts of violence and acts of retribution.”
Thomas Breen photo
Jacobson (pictured) said that the city was able to bring the average number of annual non-fatal shootings in New Haven down from 134 between 2003 to 2011, to 63 between 2012 and 2018.
That sharp reduction came thanks to a host of partnerships among local, state, federal, Yale, and regional law enforcement — including in the form of a task force focused on investigating gun-related cold cases and tracking down local shooters.
“This worked before, and I think it will work again, as long as we get our partners involved.”
Committee alders hosted the two hour-plus online workshop as New Haven continues to experience some of the worst street violence seen in nearly a decade.
Thursday night’s meeting was attended by top officials from the New Haven Police Department, the state’s attorney’s office, the local branch of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the state court’s probation division, the Yale Police Department, and Project Longevity.
Asst. Chief (soon-to-be Acting Chief) Renee Dominguez, Jacobson, and Griffin detailed for the alders just how high those violent crime statistics have risen: 20 homicides, 141 non-fatal shootings, 142 gun arrests, and 144 guns seized in New Haven last year.
In the first seven weeks of this year so far, there have already been seven murders, 13 non-fatal shootings, 21 gun arrests and 20 guns seized.
Alders quizzed law enforcement officials on what has led to such a spike. The response was the panoply of causes that top police brass have been talking about for months: Covid-induced delays to probation and parole check- ins, a year-long gap in Project Longevity call-ins (for young people identified as most likely to be involved in gun violence), reduced walking and bicycle beats to minimize physical interactions, increased unemployment, closed in-person schools, people getting out of prison and looking to settle scores, and new gang-related beefs.
At the scene of a February homicide in East Rock.
Police brass offered a range of actions they plan on taking to curb the current crime spike — including restarting more regular Project Longevity call ins and launching a new one-stop reentry center on Grand Avenue with Project More.
They returned again and again to the worrisome rise in shootings as of late, and what can be done to stop more bullets from flying.
Thus the focus on building back up the shooting task force, which Jacobson said “has been depleted” over the years. It currently consists of three city cops.
He said that Yale has committed to providing some personnel for the task force, as have the ATF and the FBI and the state’s attorney’s office. The local department will also ask state police for a trooper or a detective. Jacobson said he and Dominguez have discussed moving over current NHPD officers from elsewhere in the department. He added that no officers will be moved from patrol to the task force until the 16 recent police academy graduates are fully online.
“We need to focus on those actually committing these crimes and be intricately involved in preventing the next shooting,” said Yale Asst. Chief Steven Woznyk.
Markeshia Ricks pre-pandemic photo
Griffin (pictured) agreed. City, state, federal, and regional law enforcement partners must prioritize “working on these non-fatal shootings to prevent fatal shootings from happening 30 days, six months, even a year from now.”
“I do think that a proactive, strategic approach to gun violence,” he added, “which means going after individuals before they pull the trigger, before they have the opportunity to shoot somebody, is the key to drive down the statistics.”
Thomas Breen pre-pandemic photo
Project Longevity Program Manager Stacy Spell (pictured at right) said that his program held its first call in a year on Jan. 26. Fifteen individuals attended. The program plans to host its second local call-in on May.
They’re also working with the police department and other community partners to make 20 “custom notifications” per week.
“We’re meeting 20 violent, gun prior offenders a week, wherever we can meet them,” Jacobson said, in order to deliver the message, “We want you safe, alive, and out of jail,” and to offer resources to help make that happen. “These are the kind of things we were not able to do for an entire year” because of the pandemic.
Hill Alder Kampton Singh and West Hills/West Rock Alder Honda Smith pressed the law enforcement officials on how to stop guns from coming into New Haven in the first place.
“You’ve got all these guns out on the street,” Smith said. “How are we going to stop this from happening?”
“We do extensive traces on all of the guns,” Jacobson said. A lot of the guns “come from down South where gun laws are a lot less strict.” He said the department has seen quite the increase in gun permit requests recently. At the same time, the department has also taken “a lot” of gun permits away as of late from people found to be using guns unlawfully.
ATF representative Scott Riordan said that his agency is committed to “continuing to stop the flow of guns in New Haven. We will continue to do everything we can.”
He said that includes sending detectives down to Georgia and South Carolina and North Carolina to track down where some of the guns that end up on New Haven’s streets actually come from.
There is a need to increase police presence as a deterrent! Let's get back to community based policing where officers are assigned to a neighborhood and they make positive connections with residents to prevent crime and improve the culture and climate within the neighborhood. There should be grants and other funding available to accomplish this. It's time to be proactive!
Get Police athletic league up and running!
Also, put more money into summer jobs! We can avoid a long hot dangerous summer if we invest in our young people!