Shirley Lawrence: Support is needed for traumatized residents.
Newhallville neighbors issued a resounding call for mental health support in the wake of violence at their latest management team meeting.
The Newhallville Community Management Team met via Zoom on Tuesday evening.
At the meeting, New Haven Police Lt. Dana Smith, Newhallville’s top cop, and Hamden Police Capt. William Onofrio presented on crime in the Newhallville/Southern Hamden area. Since the management team had convened for a holiday party rather than its usual meeting in December, the presentations touched on crime over the past two months.
Smith spoke of a shooting that occurred on Dec. 9 on Shepard Street, in which one man was murdered and another was injured.
Onofrio described two more recent shootings that occurred in Southern Hamden on Friday and Saturday. Friday’s incident was a “rolling shootout exchange between two cars” that “littered the entire subsection of Hamden with gunfire.” One man was shot in the back of the head. Saturday’s shooting was a road-rage induced fight on Dixwell Avenue, in which nobody was hit.
Upon hearing these presentations, Darlena Young, who had recently purchased and moved into a Neighborhood Housing Services-built home in the neighborhood, asked about the time of day when these shootings occurred. Young said she wanted to know when it was safe for her to let her kids play outside.
“It can happen at 1:30 in the afternoon, sometimes it could be 6:30 at night. It’s just really random unfortunately,” said Smith. “We don’t have a particular standout time when the gun violence is happening.”
The Friday shoot-out took place at 12:30 in the afternoon, Onofrio added.
As the cops gave their reports, Shirley Lawrence thought back to the night of the Dec. 9 Shepard Street shooting. She had been on the phone with a friend when “I heard some of the shots” coming from the other end of the line, she said.
Lawrence called for stronger mental health support for witnesses and neighbors near the shooting.
“Did anyone go and talk to the families who were there?” Lawrence asked. “It’s very important.” She said she’s still feeling the emotional aftershocks from hearing those bullets on the phone, among other shooting incidents.
“Yes,” said Smith. He noted that the Clifford Beers Community Healing Support Team, a group of professionals at the local nonprofit that canvasses communities in the wake of traumatic incidents like a homicide or shooting, responded after the Shepard Street shooting.
“Clifford Beers came out with a team,” said management team Chair Kim Harris, who said that the team appeared at her preschool, Harris & Tucker. “They came with goodie bags” full of information, she said.
Addie Kimbrough, who founded the Shepard Street Block Watch, said those efforts weren’t enough. “I talked to five people that live on the street and no one talked to them after the situation happened,” she said.
“Maybe Clifford Beers can go back out? I’ll even volunteer,” Lawrence said. “I need to talk to somebody too.”
Maritza Spell, a community health organizer with Clifford Beers who said she “works closely” with the Community Healing Support Team, explained that the team knocks on doors every other Wednesday. “We don’t get to every house, but we do leave our materials and how we can be reached.”
Spell said that the team’s capacity is limited. “We’re out here as much as we can. We are going to every neighborhood,” she said. “We’re stretching ourselves thin. We’re trying to support everybody.”
Kim Harris: Emotional support should come from "people who know the community."
Winchester resident D’Mario Parish spoke up in support of “having people canvass the neighborhood to help process trauma.” He said that he and his housemates “personally haven’t seen any of that support from the officers or the person that you named.”
“I’m hearing a plea,” said Harris. “We need help. We need support. But our police department cannot do all of this work.” She suggested that local churches could help provide solace to neighbors in the aftermath of traumatic incidents.
“And community,” added Lawrence. “I’m gonna get some help and then I’m gonna go out with them.”
Harris agreed. “We need to have people who know the community.” She proposed reaching out to local colleges and churches as a starting point. “We’re gonna get us some help in Newhallville. … We’re not gonna suffer in silence.”
Sinclair Williams, one of Parish’s housemates, said his own church might be able to serve as a resource.
“Let us know how we can join in in teamwork,” he said. “It seems like we have a lot of power, even within the community we have.”
The community has tremendous power by coming together and creating a network of support and resilience.
They can stand up, speak out and say no more. They can bear witness and turn over information to the police to help catch the violent offenders.
They can help tutor students in math and reading in the Hamden and New Haven public schools.
They can volunteer in the youth centers and after school programs and community centers and share their skills and hobbies and storytelling of their lives with young people. They can join neighborhood community gardens, and start or join neighborhood clean up groups and fix up groups to beautify their neighborhoods, and pick up trash and report illegal dumping or blight, and they can help the elderly and disabled or people who have fallen on hard times homeowners to fix up the outside of their homes with yard work or painting or minor repairs.
They can put up motion controlled outdoor lighting and camera doorbells to deter and track crime.
They can sit out on their porches or on their front lawns and sweep and pick up trash and plant flowers and weed in front of their homes every day.
All of those things tell the rest of the community that they care, that they are watching, that they are getting busy, and that they won’t sit by in silence while people disrespect their community and cause fear and harm to their community.
By creating a web of positivity and accountability and productivity, the community can change their little corner of the world.