Thomas Breen file photo
Chief Jacobson, now 1 year in to his tenure as New Haven's top cop: "We've done things to show that we care about this work being done."
City police have received nearly 12,000 more calls for service so far this year than at this same point in 2022.
To Police Chief Karl Jacobson, that number is one among many that shows that New Haven cops are getting better at what they do — and winning more public trust along the way.
Jacobson pointed to that call-for-service stat during a recent interview with the Independent about his first full year at the helm of the New Haven Police Department (NHPD).
To him, that rising number of 911 and non-emergency calls to the police does not simply mean that there’s a greater need among the New Haven public for urgent help.
Rather, he sees the increase in calls for police service — from 37,361 in the first six months of 2022 to 48,897 in the first six months of 2023 — as a recognition that city cops are effective and trustworthy and able to assist.
“One of the theories behind that [rise in calls for service] in criminology, and I’m hoping that this theory is correct, is that people call the police more when they have more trust in the police,” Jacobson said. “I feel like they’re trusting us more to call,” all the more remarkable given just how much the police department and the city have been through over the past 12 months.
NHPD chart and data
Calls for police service from January to June, 2015 to 2023.
A 17-year NHPD veteran who worked his way up the ranks to assistant chief, Jacobson was sworn in as the city’s top cop on July 6, 2022.
His confirmation as police chief came just a few weeks after a 36-year-old Black New Havener named Richard “Randy” Cox suffered paralyzing injuries while in police custody — and just a few months before Officer Chad Curry was shot and injured in the line of duty and Officer Michael Hinton died of cancer and two officers in Bristol were shot and killed, rattling cops across the state, including in New Haven.
“If you told me a year ago that we were going to experience what we experienced as a police department, as a city, I would have been like, ‘You’re crazy,’ ” Jacobson said.
In the year since taking office, he’s succeeded in firing (and all-but-firing) nine officers, including four involved in the mishandling of Cox; overseeing the implementation of de-escalation training and a safer prisoner transport policy; and responding to an increase in homicides, up from five at this time last year to 13 so far in 2023. All the while, the 300-plus city cops who work under him have gone a year without a contract since their last deal expired right before he officially became chief. Cox’s mishandling by the police and subsequent paralysis also recently led to a $45 million settlement between Cox and the city, an amount that Cox’s lawyers have described as the largest police misconduct settlement in the nation’s history.
But amidst all that, civilian calls for police service are way up.
And that’s not the only piece of data that Jacobson finds encouraging when reflecting on how the police department is working one year so far into his tenure as chief.
Stats from the latest weekly CompStat report.
While homicides are up, from five to 13, city police have already made arrests in nine of those cases.
“That’s something I’ve never seen before in my 17 years here,” he said. Usually a good closure rate for homicides is around 40 percent, and those arrests often come a year or so after a murder, given the time needed to investigate. “We’re making arrests the same day, in some cases.” City cops have also made five arrests so far this year for murders that took place before 2023.
These are solid, well-grounded arrests, Jacobson said. “We’re not putting cases on people anymore. There’s video evidence. There’s real good witness identifications. We’re collecting the firearms. … These issues of the 70s, 80s, 90s that are coming back to haunt us a little bit, we’re not going to have those issues in the future” because police accountability acts prohibit cops from treating suspects “the way they did before,” like interviewing someone for three days straight. “Everything’s on video [now], it’s not just a report. Scientific evidence is way better than it used to be.”
Another number Jacobson points to approvingly: The number of people shot in New Haven so far this year is down, from 68 at this time last year to 48 so far this year. “That’s a big decrease in violence,” he said, even though “we still have a lot of work to do.” The latest CompStat report also shows that the number of confirmed shots fired is down from 143 to 134 year over year.
Still another number Jacobson looks to as an encouraging sign of his officers’ hard work: motor vehicle stops are up by 76 percent since last year, from 3,623 at this time in 2022 to 6,383 so far in 2023.
And another: gun arrests in patrol are up 83 percent in comparison to this time last year.
And another: Internal Affairs (IA) complaints by civilians about alleged police misconduct are down by 25 percent.
And another: Police use of force is down significantly, from 481 instances in the first six months of 2022 to 133 in the first six months of this year.
All the while, Jacobson stressed, the department has roughly 70 vacancies (with around 340 on staff now out of a budgeted department of roughly 410 positions).
Jacobson had worried that city cops would rebel in the face of all of the police officer firings he’s pursued in his one-year tenure to date. “You worry, are they gonna keep working for us? Are the cops gonna sit down, lay down” in the face of these terminations of their colleagues?
The numbers, however, tell a different story. “We clearly saw an increase in work product. We’ve seen more guns seized. More motor vehicle stops. Less IA complaints.” And, again, more calls for service.
“I think it sets a precedent,” Jacobson said about firing cops who seriously misbehave. “It shows that the officers need to act towards the community in a certain way. You can make a mistake. You can write a wrong report by accident. But you can’t treat the community like crap. … Sometimes firing somebody is backing [other officers] up in the right way. You have to set a precedent and say: This is a line we don’t cross, guys and girls.’ ”
He noted how coming into this top job he was committed to the tenets of procedural justice — a criminal justice theory that argues that fairness and dispute resolution are key to successful, legitimate law enforcement. One year in, he feels all the more confident in following that policing philosophy.
The flip side of forcing out officers who should not be on the force is supporting those many good cops who want to and continue to be great at what they do, he said.
“I think we’ve done things to show that we care about this work being done,” he said. “We’ve given them technology that we’ve never had here before,” including License Plate Readers [LPRs], many more cameras, stop sticks, and StarChase trackers. He thanked the mayor and the alders for signing off on purchasing so much new tech. “It’s showing the cops we’re giving you the tools you need to catch people, and we want you to do the work. … I just think we’re trying to create an atmosphere where they can safely do their job.”
In addition to providing city cops with better, easier-to-use technology to assist with arrests, Jacobson said, the policing data from the past year reflect the “relentless pursuit of the officers and detectives” to make New Haven a safer place. “The officers get sick of the violence, too,” he said. “The officers are tired of being told that they’re bad and don’t do a good job. I really feel like they want to turn it around. I think they want to show this city, ‘Hey, we’re good cops. We are making a difference when it comes to violence on the street.’ ”
Up Next: Officers' "Mental Health & Wellness"
What are some of his top priorities for the year ahead?
“Starting this new year, the thing I need to work on is mental health and wellness” of city police officers. “Hurt people hurt people,” he said, “and we need to make sure we’re not putting officers on the street that are traumatized. We talk about the community being traumatized so often, and they are, but the officers are traumatized too.”
Part of taking care of the mental health of officers, he said, is hiring and retaining more city cops so that an officer who comes in for an eight-hour shift doesn’t regularly find that they in fact have to work 16 hours straight. Jacobson said that the police department spent its most on overtime ever last year, and police officer vacancies and high calls for service are key drivers of that.
“We need more walking beats. We need more bicycle beats. We need more interactions between officers and community, and that takes a lot of officers,” Jacobson said. “This is really a great place to work.” A goal of the year ahead: To try to convince more people to see that that’s true to bring on more officers to help respond to those calls.
The things Chief Karl Jacobson is saying sounds good in terms of weeding out people unsuited to be police, punishing bad behavior, taking care of good police who may need mental health support to address anxiety, depression, stress, burnout, PTSD. All first responders work under extremely intense and stressful situations and should have easy and regular access to mental healthcare support. Reducing the shenanigans to obtain convictions of anyone at any cost, rather than the correct suspect under the correct circumstances, and reducing police misconduct of previous years goes a long way to restoring public trust, along with the new technology and science which make it more likely that the evidence is accurate. Supporting officers who intervene when they feel a fellow officer is going too far or are behaving inappropriately, and preventing retaliation when they intervene, will also help to change the culture and prevent bad behavior from undermining good police work and police relations with the public.
Having a crisis intervention team to work in collaboration with the police to address situations that would be better served by social services helps the community be healthier and safer.
There is still a lot of work to be done to transform the culture of policing, but if these improvements continue, then I have some hope things will get better. If the public can feel trust and feel safe calling the police when they need help, or to want to help the police to reduce violence and crime, then everyone will be safer.