Ofcs. Cotto And Blanco Walk The Beat

City police Officers Martha Cotto and Kevin Blanco were in the middle of their walking beat on Grand Avenue when a call came over the radio: An 85-year-old man with dementia had wandered away from home, and he was now missing somewhere in Fair Haven.

The New Haven police officers received that call Wednesday while on a walking beat that started at the police substation at 295 Blatchley Ave. at around 4:30 p.m.

Cotto, 38, and Blanco, 32, have both worked for the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) for four years. 

They both graduated from the police academy in 2018, and they both have spent nearly their entire careers working on the ​“B Squad” afternoon and evening shift in Fair Haven. 

But it’s been nearly three years since they worked a Fair Haven walking beat side by side. Until now. As new Police Chief Karl Jacobson has prioritized resuming walking beats across the city, Cotto and Blanco are now back together on foot in Fair Haven, just like they were at the start of their careers.

Roughly 40 minutes into starting Wednesday’s walking beat, Cotto and Blanco paused at the corner of Grand Avenue and Maltby Place to listen in to a radio call notifying Fair Haven police officers that an 85-year-old man had wandered away from the porch of his Peck Street home. 

They then received over the radio a description of an older man who was spotted by a family friend in the area of Blatchley and Grand Avenues. That man was wearing a blue shirt, dress pants, a fedora hat, and carrying a cane. 

Blanco and Cotto immediately began retracing Grand Avenue on foot while their colleagues patrolled the neighborhood by car. 

While walking down Grand Avenue heading east towards C‑Town, the officers kept their eyes out for a man who met that description. 

Nearby the corner of Grand Avenue and Poplar Street, a woman in a parked car called the two officers over to her. They soon learned that she was the daughter of the missing 85-year-old man. 

“Are you guys working now?” she asked. 

“Yeah. Did you just make a call for the missing man?” Blanco replied. 

The daughter provided the officers with a photo of her father and gave them more details about the situation. She said the man usually sits on his front porch and occasionally walks to the corner of the street then back home. 

However, at around 5 p.m. Wednesday, the daughter received a call from a friend telling her that they had just spotted her father walking around in the area of Grand and Blatchley. The daughter called her father’s wife and she confirmed that she hadn’t noticed that the man had walked off. 

She then told the officers her father suffers from not only dementia, but also schizophrenia. 

The daughter agreed to drive around the Peck Street area looking for her father, while Officers Blanco and Cotto continued their search on Grand Avenue. 

At around 5:30 p.m., Blanco sent the photo of the man that the daughter had shared with him to a group chat of fellow Fair Haven police officers.

The walking-beat police officers next stopped into businesses like Botanica Chango and Justin’s Deli Market to ask the employees if they had seen the man around. They showed each business owner and employee they met the picture of the man that the daughter had shared with them. 

At 5:50 p.m the officers headed back to the Blatchley Avenue police substation to meet with an East Haven police department officer who had brought a police K9 to help with the search for the man.

But before the East Haven officer and K9 could start assisting with the search, Cotto and Blanco received another radio call saying that other police officers had found the missing man near Clinton Avenue School, and that he had been transported to the hospital to be checked out. 

Now that they were no longer searching for the missing man, at around 6 p.m., Cotto and Blanco headed off in a patrol car to park then continue their walking beat on Ferry Street. 

"Those Normal, Human Interactions"

In an interview with the Independent Wednesday afternoon, Fair Haven district manager Lt. Michael Fumiatti said that the NHPD is prioritizing community outreach and walking beats in busy areas around the city to help residents and business owners get to know the officers, deter crime, and address quality of life concerns. 

“Walking beats are really helpful too because people don’t necessarily know when a cop is going to come around the corner,” Fumiatti said. ​“As we start to hire more officers, that’s great because it frees up officers to do more stuff that we want to do.”

He said that walking beats also help community members to make connections with officers to contact directly, and for officers to build trust with people who ultimately share information when they need the police’s help.

District managers make the assignments of walking beats to neighborhood hotspots that could positively benefit from an on-the-ground police presence, he said. As a busy shopping center, Grand Avenue is often assigned a walking beat to help deter loitering at businesses and allow safe shopping for residents, Fumiatti said.

He said the department plans to increase walking beats across the city as it recruits more officers. Officers assigned to patrol cars will be able to get to calls for help more quickly, he said, while walking beat officers will be able to interact with the community and make officers more approachable.

“When you’re in a police car the mentality is you’re going from call to call to call, so generally people aren’t happy to see you, because of the nature of the emergency,” Fumiatti said. ​“When you’re walking a beat you get to have those normal, human interactions with people. You can have more friendly conversations with people.

That type of approachability was on full display Wednesday as Cotto and Blanco received waves and greetings from residents passing by on Grand Avenue. 

Several residents attempted to help the officers keep cool by offering to buy them tropical ice cups or a treat from a corner store. Both officers declined the many offerings to avoid spoiling their dinner. 

“It’s nice to get out the car,” Cotto said while walking down Grand Avenue. 

“These are important to have,” Blanco said of walking beats. ​“The goal is to show our presence, to put the community more at ease.”

Need A Bike? Not Today

While passing by Jireh Multiservices at 326 Grand Ave., two employees called out to the officers saying, ​“You guys need a vacation. And you need a bike so you don’t have to walk!” 

The two men were putting a tarp over the shop’s bike rack full of new and used bikes to close for the day. 

“We have bikes, but we’re here to walk today,” Cotto responded. 

“I didn’t even know you guys had bikes here. Do you fix them too?” Cotto asked while telling the men in Spanish about her son’s bike that needs a tire repair. 

The men confirmed they do repairs, and said the repair to Cotto’s son bike would cost $20.

“Wow, that’s perfect, I’m going to come to you guys,” she said. 

Cotto said she dreamed of being a police officer since she was a child. She graduated from the University of New Haven with a major in criminal justice and a concentration in investigative services.

Blanco too grew up with an interest in law enforcement. Before joining the NHPD he followed in the footsteps of his father and worked as a correctional officer at the New Haven Correctional Center on Whalley Avenue. He attended Albertus Magnus College for criminal justice.

Before joining the NHPS, Cotto worked at Continuum of Care Inc. doing work around mental health and substance abuse. She said her work there allows her to better work with residents as a police officer. 

The officer duo recalled being on a walking beat in August of 2019 on the day now-retired New Haven Police Capt. Anthony Duff was shot at Henry Street and Dixwell Avenue. At the time, Blanco and Cotto were at Grand Avenue and Fillmore Street. 

They recalled hearing Duff call out a signal four over the radio. ​“It was a scary start to the job but it really confirmed that we have to pay attention to our radios at all times even when walking,” Blanco said. 

Taser Talk

In another brief interaction Wednesday, a 51 year old man stopped the officers outside of the Fair Haven mini mart. 

“That shit hurts right?” he asked while pointing to the tasers on their belts. 

“It definitely doesn’t feel good,” Cotto joked in response. 

Before heading inside the store to buy cigarettes the resident asked the officers if they knew how a taser feels. They both said they did. That’s because at the police academy, all officers are required to withstand a five-second tase.

“We’re people too. The pain you feel, I feel,” Cotto said. 

Blanco recalled experiencing the tase test in the academy and said he ​“didn’t mind the pain much.” Unlike some of his classmates’ reactions of screams and flailing, Blanco said he was able to tolerate the test well. 

Chatting in both English and Spanish, the officers also briefly spoke with the man about his love for graffiti art and tagging. He said it is one of the main reasons he loves Fair Haven.