Tuesday night’s public safety hearing.
Recent spikes in shootings and violent crimes may have to do with a dozen or so people released from prison due to Covid-19 policies and resuming their group beefs.
Likewise, a concerning uptick in armed robberies may be attributable to kids out of school because of the pandemic shutdown.
Should the police department address these challenges by cutting back on technology like ShotSpotter and instead putting more cops on the street?
Those challenging developments and questions emerged Tuesday night during a public hearing and workshop on crime convened by the Public Safety Committee of the Board of Alders.
The meeting, which was conducted via the Zoom teleconferencing app, was chaired by Quinnipiac Meadows Alder and retired NHPD police Capt. Gerald Antunes.
Following presentations by Police Chief Otoniel Reyes and Asst. Chief Herb Sharp, the alders fired an hour’s worth of questions.
After Reyes showed graphs featuring that overall violent crime is down this year by 28.5 percent, East Rock Alder Anna Festa started off the sympathetic but pointed interrogation of officials.
She expressed a concern bordering on alarm that the shots fired in the city appeared “to be happening at all times of day, not just at night.” Is that because ShotSpotter sensors have been expanded throughout new neighborhoods, such as Fair Haven? Or are people, far more at home during the pandemic — just noticing more what has always been there?
The stats, Reyes conceded, do show an increase in shots fired, 21 percent up over last year so far. That in part is due to the increased number of sensors, he confirmed.
Yet that was only part of the story, he added. “Last year, and this, we’ve been dealing with lots of people coming out of prison and re-engaging with beefs.”
Despite the in-person-counseling limitations of policing during the pandemic, “we’ve still been trying to engage these youth,” he said.
“We are concerned about the summer,” Reyes said candidly, “about folks in prison coming out” as a result of early releases due to Covid-19.
“Blanket policies can cause more harm than good,” he told Festa. “Some individuals are really violent and should not be coming out.”
“We have a list of 12 people causing violence, and seven or eight of them were let out of prison just recently because of Covid,” Reyes said.
“What you just said is very alarming,” Festa replied.
“I’m equally frustrated,” Reyes replied. “We have had some meetings with our state delegation, with parole. It’s complicated with Covid.”
Festa, Antunes, and other alders turned the discussion to ShotSpotter, eliciting the almost $400,000 a year it costs to rent and service the equipment. If the ShotSpotter services provide cops a head-start on investigating crime, but still doesn’t stop the crime, is it worth it? they asked.
“Is it ShotSpotter or more cops on the beat? We are at such a point to ask that,” Reyes replied.
Dowtown Alder Abby Roth pressed Reyes on the number of “weapons violations” in the police stats, which are year-to-date 137, as opposed to last year’s 175.
Despite that dip, Reyes said the number of guns on the street “always seems to go up” and almost always are stolen and come into the city from out of state. He concurred with Roth about the need to continue working with task forces including the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Over a decade New Haven has seen a “staggering reduction” in robberies with firearms, Reyes noted. He attributed the recent spike, which involves largely juveniles, to “kids out of school.”
“So how,” pressed Festa, are the “PD and Board of Education collaborating if the shooting is from juveniles? I feel there is a disconnect.”
“We are constantly meeting with the outreach workers” and utilizing resources of YouthStat and Project Longevity, Reyes said.
Festa said her anecdotal experience is that officers “are missing opportunities” when they arrest juveniles. She asked for more coordination with the Board of Ed.
“The mechanisms are there,” conceded Reyes, “but, yes, we need to reinforce them.”
“I look forward to a plan from the city how to address gunshots,” Festa concluded.
Groups like Project Longevity and like Ice The Beef and local religious leaders should be reaching out the first day a prisoner gets released and keep in touch with them the first few months while they adjust to being home. They are being given a chance to reset their lives, and it would be a shame if they fall back into old patterns because they aren't given more direction and support to change. Violent offenders should not be released before their sentence is up unless they are almost finished with their sentence, are released to a halfway home or program, or are no longer considered a future threat. Young people with nothing to do to keep them out of trouble while school is out need direction and a purpose, can they be recruited to help Meals On Wheels, or other religious or community outreach programs for the elderly and disabled in their neighborhoods to distribute masks and help with food donation distribution? As Henry David Thoreau said "The Devil finds work for idle hands."