Police intelligence chief Karl Jacobson (center) at press announcement with outreach chief Len Jahad (right) and Hamden Mayor Curt Leng.
New Haven and Hamden have committed over $200,000 to start rebuilding an outreach program with “street cred” that’s credited with helping cut violence.
The effort, the Street Outreach Worker Program, is being reborn with a new nonprofit staffed by some refugees from the former organization that ran it.
The Harp Administration announced Wednesday that its youth department is ponying up $50,000 through the rest of the fiscal year and $160,000 next fiscal year to the new nonprofit, Connecticut Violence Intervention Program, to build the program back up. Hamden is adding another $60,000 a year to have the crew work in that town as well.
That money is supporting part-time, 25-hour-a-week salaries to four outreach workers as well as the salary of the director, former local adult probation chief Leonard Jahad.
The program sends outreach workers — some of them former convicts who have turned their lives around — to the scene of shootings and to hospital rooms to help 13- to 21-year-olds involved in violence straighten out.
Jahad: We want to go statewide.
The program launched in 2007 under the auspices of the New Haven Family Alliance. Workers helped negotiate truces (like this one) and, in the view of law enforcement, worked with cops to bring shootings in New Haven to the lowest level in decades. At its height, the program had eight full-time outreach workers plus a director. The city was just one of numerous financial supporters.
Over the years the program’s funding dried up. Last year the workers told the city the program was on the verge of closing. Jahad — who previously ran the program at Family Alliance since 2015 — formed his new nonprofit. He brought along four veteran street outreach workers with deep ties in city neighborhoods: William “June Boy” Outlaw, Douglas Bethea, Pepe Vega, and Lopez Jones.
Youth Services Director Jason Bartlett said a condition of the new contract is that Jahad’s group find new partners and new sources of funding. So far it has been working on an agreement with Yale-New Haven Hospital to provide help, including training and uniforms. (The agreement has not yet been signed.) Jahad said he’s speaking with officials in Hartford, Waterbury, New Britain, New London, and Bridgeport to try to expand the program there as well. He’d also like to obtain funding for full-time workers in New Haven’s Newhallville and West Rock neighborhoods and the streets near I‑91 Exit 8.
Police intelligence chief Karl Jacobson (center) at press announcement with outreach chief Len Jahad (right) and Hamden Mayor Curt Leng.
At Wednesday’s City Hall press conference, Bartlett pointedly criticized the Board of Education for not coming up with another $75,000 for the street outreach program. He claimed the board had committed to paying the money.
“I don’t understand why they’re not here today and making a statement that it’s a done deal,” Bartlett complained.
Mayor Toni Harp — who on two other occasions this week had already made comments critical of school Superintendent of Schools Carol Birks’ positions — echoed Bartlett’s remarks.
“My expectation is that this is some glitch that will be worked through and those dollars will be forthcoming,” Harp said.
Birks did not respond to a request for comment before this story was published. The Board of Ed had publicly considered granting Family Alliance $85,000 back in December for the outreach worker program, then didn’t take action on the proposal.
Board of Education President Darnell Goldson told the Independent in a conversation after Wednesday’s press conference that the board is looking at all its contracts to make sure it gets what it’s paying for (as detailed in this story by the New Haven Register’s Brian Zahn).
Goldson said the board is open to hearing the new street outreach program organization’s pitch and approves of its stated mission.
“Any program that actually goes to where the kids are and tries to encourage them to not be involved in violent activities is a good program. We have to make sure that is what actually happens,” Goldson said. “At this point in time, I haven’t seen anything from this program that that is what happens. I’m not saying that’s not happening. I just haven’t seen the data.”
Leng: We’re one community.
Meanwhile, Hamden Mayor Curt Leng said at Wednedsay’s press conference that his town’s support for the program reflects its development of a community policing approach. He called New Haven and Hamden one community “with an imaginary border.”
Or, as Bartlett put it, “Our kids go to Hamden. Hamden kids come here. We’re one big community.”
Street outreach worker Outlaw, who is known to pull in long hours that can double his official schedule, vowed to continue putting in the time even if the organization struggles for funding. Street outreach is a mission, he said. “If I lose this job tomorrow,” he said, “I’m still going to be at the hospital. This is my community”
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the full press conference:
Hmmm. The schools are in a multi-million dollar hole and they're being strong-armed to put up money for this???