Instincts Led To Video, Then Shooting Suspects

When Officer Baltazar Rivera saw three young men biking up James Street at two in the morning — wearing clothing similar to that of the suspects in a shooting that had taken place a few blocks away, a few minutes prior — his instincts kicked in.

If these were indeed the young men he had just seen in a Ring camera-recorded video of the shooting, they could be armed. 

Since two were perched atop a single bike, with one in the seat and one on the handlebars, they could be unsteady. 

If Rivera jumped out of his car at the right time and reached in the right direction, he could knock them down without any more shots being fired.

So Rivera turned on his cruiser’s lights, opened his door, stepped towards the bikers, and jumped.

Two of the bikers got away on foot. 

But one, a 21-year-old Fair Havener, ended up on the pavement and in the custody of Rivera and his partner, Officer Heriberto Rodriguez. As Rivera tackled him, reaching for the suspect’s waistband in the process, out flew a stolen 9mm handgun with an extended magazine right into the middle of the street.

The two Fair Haven police officers wound up arresting the young man on four felony weapons charges — carrying a pistol without a permit, carrying a dangerous weapon, stealing a firearm, illegal purchase of a large capacity magazine — and on one misdemeanor count of interfering with a police officer.

A Shooting, On Video

Rivera, 43, and Rodriguez, 27, are partners who work on the overnight C Squad shift in Fair Haven.

They’ve both been with the New Haven Police Department for two years. 

They met on the same day while applying for a police job in Bridgeport. They sat next to one another in the same class in the New Haven police academy. And now they patrol Fair Haven side by side on the same shift, two Spanish-speaking Latino officers — one of Puerto Rican descent, the other Dominican — working in the heart of the city’s Hispanic community.

Rivera was born and raised in Bridgeport, and now lives in Hamden. He worked as an operations manager for a private security company, and then for the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS), before applying to be a cop ​“in the big cities” of Bridgeport and New Haven. He chose New Haven because that’s the department that called him back first. Rodriguez, who grew up in and still lives in Danbury, joined the U.S. Marines at age 18, then went to college and worked at Enterprise, before also taking a job with the NHPD because that’s the one that called him back.

On a recent overnight shift, in the early hours of Monday, Aug. 14, the two put their knowledge of the neighborhood and training as police officers and law enforcement instincts to the test in an incident that started as an armed attempted carjacking, and ended in an arrest. 

According to Rodriguez’s official written report, Rivera’s body-worn camera footage from the incident, and a recent interview the two officers did with the Independent, here’s what happened:

At around 1:24 a.m. on Monday , Rodriguez and Rivera responded to Saltonstall Avenue near James Street to investigate a ShotSpotter report of five gunshots fired.

Upon arriving at the scene, Rivera followed his first instinct: check to see if there are any cameras about. Maybe a camera recorded what happened, maybe that could help him identify a suspect.

Sure enough, after knocking on a nearby door, some ​“family-oriented” people opened — and right away agreed to share with the officer a video recording of the incident that took place right outside their house. They had a Ring camera on the front of their house that caught the whole incident. The video was available on the person’s phone, and they passed it along to the police right away. Rivera said it was only a matter of minutes between when the shooting took place and when he first watched it. Usually police aren’t that lucky; usually it takes hours, or days, to get video — if any exist at all.

The video showed three young people walking across a parking lot. ​“One was wearing a multi-color jacket with black pants, another a black hoodie with blue jeans, and the other was clad in all black,” Rodriguez wrote in his report. The suspects appeared to hide and wait for a vehicle to appear.

And then a car did show up. One of the individuals approached the vehicle’s passenger side and spoke to the driver. Then the two other individuals walked around to the driver’s side, and tried to open the door.

“The operator pulled off, and the two suspects opened fire on the car,” Rodriguez wrote. ​“The suspects then ran off on foot.”

After watching the video, Rivera had a hunch that the three suspects involved in the shooting were neighborhood kids. Rivera said he grew up ​“in the hood” in Bridgeport. Something about their clothing, their body language, how they dispersed on foot, made him think they were likely familiar with the neighborhood and young and didn’t have a lot.

Which meant they might still be in that area of Fair Haven. Even half an hour after the shooting had occurred.

So Rivera convinced his partner, Rodriguez, to drive around that section of Fair Haven, and be on the lookout for people who fit the image of what they saw in the video. 

It was a stretch, Rodriguez admitted. ​“In our experience,” when someone shoots a gun in the street, ​“they go in a car and they’re off.” They’re not usually staying on the block.

But the police officers checked anyway.

"You're In A Lot Of Trouble, Papi"

Soon thereafter, at around 2 a.m., Rodriguez saw three young men ​“wearing clothes that matched the suspects’ clothes in the shooting video” on Lloyd and Saltonstall, just a block from where the shooting took place.

Two of the young men were on one bike, the third on another. Rodriguez radioed Rivera and then followed the suspects as they turned on James Street.

In a separate car, Rivera drove alongside the suspects on James Street and took a look at their outfits. One was wearing a black hoodie with blue jeans, which matched the description of one of the suspects in the shooting video.

Rivera’s body cam video shows what happens next. He turned on his cruiser’s lights. He pulled the car to a stop. He got out of the car and, as the two young men on a single bike wheeled up James Street, Rivera made his move.

“Come here,” Rivera said.

“What happened?” one of the bikers asked.

That’s when Rivera lunged for the bike with two people on it. He knocked down one of the riders. The other two young men ditched their bikes and ran away on foot.

Rodriguez wrote in his official report that ​“a violent struggle ensued between us and the other suspect … [who] began kicking and swinging his arms left and right at us.” (The available body camera footage shows a blur of activity as Rivera and Rodriguez sought to subdue the 21-year-old suspect.)

The suspect ​“refused to comply with the commands given and actively resisted arrest by pulling his arms close to his body while still trying to get his feet,” Rodriguez continued. ​“During the ensuing struggle, a handgun dropped onto the street. At one point, [the suspect] stood up and attempted to flee toward the firearm as we grabbed him. Fearing he was trying to retrieve the firearm, I delivered a close first strike to [the suspect’s] face knocking him down and causing a knot on the right side of his face. [The suspect] then gave up and was secured in handcuffs.”

On Rivera’s body cam footage, the suspect can be heard saying, ​“It’s not even my weapon.”

“What’s wrong with you, man?” Rivera can be heard asking him. ​“You’re in a lot of trouble, bro.”

The suspect asked what he was being charged with.

“You’re a suspect in an attempted robbery,” Rivera replied.

“Robbery. I ain’t attempt to rob nobody,” he said.

Rivera said he had a video. ​“Video of what?” the suspect asked. ​“You’re in a lot of trouble, papi,” Rivera said.

The gun that the two cops retrieved in the street after this altercation was a Glock 9mm with different serial numbers on the slide and frame. Rivera explained to the Independent during a recent interview that that’s a telltale sign of a ​“ghost gun,” a gun pieced together from the parts of other guns.

The magazine in the gun had 12 live rounds.

The suspect in this case had no criminal history, no warrants out for his arrest. He also didn’t have a pistol permit. And the serial number on the frame of the gun ​“revealed the firearm was stolen out of Charlotte, North Carolina,” Rodriguez wrote.

The suspect is currently being held on a $400,000 bond. His next court date in this case is Aug. 30. He hasn’t yet entered a plea for any of the five charges. (He could not be reached for comment for this story.)

Reflecting back on the incident a week and a half later, Rodriguez marveled at how things could have gone so much worse.

“When you think about the whole thing, you just rolled into a fight with two people with guns,” he said. People don’t always appreciate how, for police, ​“things escalate so quickly.” From the time he spotted the three young men on Saltonstall to the time Rivera tackled them and a gun fell out was only a minute, maybe.

But ​“you can’t just let fear” stop you from acting, Rodriguez said. ​“They were shooting up the block” and could have seriously hurt their target, themselves, a neighbor or bystander.

Asked why he decided to jump out of the car and tackle the two men on the bike instead of telling them to stop and pull over, Rivera said, ​“It was instinct. Because of the reckless nature we just saw” in the video recording of the shooting. He felt a ​“sense of urgency” to stop another shooting from taking place.

Assistant Police Chief David Zannelli praised Rivera and Rodriguez for following sound instincts and training — for not just pulling over kids because they’re biking through Fair Haven, but instead recognizing that three young men out at 2 a.m. who matched the clothing of suspects in a shooting that took place just a block away should be stopped. 

“It’s two in the morning. They’re by themselves. There’s three kids. They have to make a decision,” Zannelli said. And they did. ​“This was a very serious, heinous, violent crime, and they were able to get the gun off the street.”

As for the role that the video played in helping these two officers identify suspects and make an arrest so soon after the shooting, Zannelli said, ​“Cases are becoming more solvable now because of cameras.” These officers, who are both ​“brand new” to the department, were able to win the trust of a neighbor to show them their video, and then watch a recording of the gunfire and attempted robbery basically in ​“real time.” That video played a key role in helping them identify potential suspects — who, because of their decision to stay in the neighborhood and look around, they soon saw just a block away.