BOA Public Safety Committee gathering Tuesday.
Honda Smith is concerned not just about young people involved in violence — but their parents and grandparents.
Smith raised that concern with top cops Tuesday night at an online workshop of the Board of Alders Public Safety Committee focused on local crime, crime trends, and solutions Tuesday evening. Alders expressed their concerns to the city top cops during the monthly meeting about what the city has and will be doing to keep crime trends from increasing further.
Alder Smith, who represents West Hills and West Rock, asked top cops present how specifically they plan to deal with kids aged 13 to 18 who are committing crimes — and hope to help parents and grandparents struggling to deal and cope with them.
Smith said she has talked to parents across the city who are kicking their kids out of their homes because of their involvement in crime.
“Parents are afraid of their children because they are carrying,” Smith said.
The engagement in violence is taking a mental toll on troubled youth that’s causing them to disrupt their households. “They have no more remorse for anyone especially after they shot someone,” Smith said.
Many parents are left with their hands tied because they fear taking back control of their homes with a violent child around, Smith said in a phone interview after the Tuesday meeting. She suggested that camp-like programming be put in place to give youth positive settings to engage with their peers, learn responsibility, and how to “just be a kid.”
“These guns are giving them power making them believe they don’t have to listen to their parents anymore,” Smith said.
Smith urged the city’s Youth @ Work ambassador program this summer to employ youth in their own neighborhoods to avoid placing the youth in potential situations that can cause “turf wars.”
Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Rebecca Bombero said the city plans to place 50 youth ambassadors throughout the city. Five will be assigned to each police district with the goal of hiring youth to work in their neighborhood.
Assistant Police Chief Karl Jacobson said that a small group of repeat offenders are responsible for most of the youth-related crime. To deter these youth, the department is working closely with juvenile probation and juvenile judges to push less juvenile lock ups while increasing follow-up and engagement services with the CT Violence Intervention Program and the city’s Youth and Recreation Department.
“We don’t wanna see these kids out, but we also don’t want to see these kids in,” said Jacobson.
Smith proposed that wraparound services be introduced for entire families dealing with troubled juveniles to deter the youth from getting involved in crime and the parents to cope and keep from putting their kids out and “giving them to the wolves.”
As of Tuesday, New Haven is at 42 non fatal shootings and 13 homicides so far in 2021, reported Acting Police Chief Renee Dominguez.
Officials responded that the NHPD is collaborating with the State’s Attorney Office, Yale Police Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to focus on violent offenders. The department is increasing it prevention efforts with custom notifications in partnership with the joint federal-local Project Longevity violence-prevention program, which focuses on young people most involved in violence. The police are also reintroducing walking beats this summer in some neighborhoods, and looking into expanding its ShotSpotter system.
In the past the NHPD did 100 custom notifications— or personal check-ins — per year. In five months however, the department and Project Longevity have already done 108 custom notifications for pre-intervention interactions with individuals who have been in trouble recently.
Project Longevity New Haven Project Manager Stacy Spell said the community must also help to decrease local crime and violence. He told residents to “stop waiting for the body to hit the pavement before you do something.”
Project Longevity’s next call-in will be June 10 at 4:30 p.m. at 200 Orange St.
“We’re still not at 2011 numbers,” Assistant Chief Jacobson reassured the committee Tuesday. Jacobson said 2011 was New Haven’s worst year of crime in recent decades. At this time in 2011 the city had 59 non fatal shootings and 15 homicides.
Remember that Mayor Elicker and the BOA cut the police budget by $2 million last year.