Shooting Task Force Expanding To 13 Officers

From three to 13 investigators, with fast access to a federal crime database.

Those are some of the details of an in-process expansion and ​“reenergizing” of New Haven police’s shooting task force in response to a local and nationwide spike in violence.

The task force currently has three New Haven detectives focusing specifically on following up not just new shootings handled by the Major Crimes Unit, but ongoing cases.

Now it has four New Haven members, two Yale cops, one West Haven cop, one Hamden cop, and three federal agents assigned to it, with representatives from Meriden and East Haven soon coming on board, according to New Haven Assistant Police Chief Karl Jacobson.

In addition, the New Haven State’s Attorney’s Office has assigned two inspectors and two prosecutors to the task force. Inspector Al Vazquez, a retired New Haven assistant police chief who has extensive contacts in the community and decades of institutional knowledge, will be the office’s point person.

State, local and federal law enforcement officials lined up alongside Mayor Justin Elicker at a press conference Tuesday afternoon on the third floor of police headquarters to discuss the task force’s expansion.

“If you shoot in New Haven,” Mayor Elicker declared, ​“we will bring you to justice.”

He insisted that that statement wasn’t just ​“aspirational.” But he also conceded that New Haven’s ranks of detectives have slipped and closure rates on shootings over the past year have fallen.

Hence the need for the task force expansion — to help New Haven’s department, like counterparts throughout the nation, wrestle with the increased violence amid a wave of retirements and resignations.

“We are reenergizing the task force. We are bringing new talent, new members,” said New Haven State’s Attorney Patrick Griffin.

Interim New Haven Chief Renee Dominguez detailed three ways the expanded force will help the police solve more cases:

• It will enable investigations of more cases of shots fired in which no one was hit. Those cases always present ​“a potential of someone being shot and someone being killed” by a person who fired those original shots and remained at large.

• The department will now have enough people to revisit cold cases, unresolved cases from a while back. Often people who didn’t feel comfortable speaking to investigators at the time of a shooting may be more comfortable offering information months or years later, she said.

• The task force will have fast access, usually within 24 hours, to information tying shell casings found at the scene of new shootings to other incidents, including in other communities, through the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) operated by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. (Click here for a story about how city cops recently tied four local shooting incidents to a gun connected to the Massachusetts man arrested for allegedly killing Yale graduate student Kevin Jiang.)

Dominguez cited a recent investigation conducted by Officer Bleck Joseph, who’s assigned to the task force, as an illustration of what can happen on a larger school: He obtained video from the scene where shots were fired but didn’t hit anyone. He identified a vehicle connected to the incident. People in the community helped him identify the shooter. The police obtained a warrant and made an arrest. ​“That arrest will stop a potential shooting in the future,” Dominguez said.

Also, the cooperation of additional communities in the task force means they’ll share information about shootings that the same person may have committed in more than one municipality. The members from different cities and towns share intelligence daily.

“The borders are silly. We are all in this together,” said Hamden Mayor Curt Leng.

“Successful major case investigations are the direct result of leveraging the right resources with a collaborative effort among various law enforcement agencies, and Yale has been committed to those efforts,” state Yale Assistant Chief of Police Steven Woznyk.

“Our city has faced challenging times before, and the goal here is to incorporate a more holistic approach in preventing the next incident of gun violence, which often knows no geographical boundaries.”