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Winfield: "Not new."
New Haven’s gun violence came to Gary Winfield’s front door Monday night — and left him as resolved as ever to find alternative solutions to “lock-em-up” policies.
Winfield, a 48-year-old state senator who co-chairs the legislature’s Judiciary Committee, was with his three kids inside his home at Winchester Avenue and Division Street in New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood around 7 p.m. when they heard gunshots.
“I immediately went to the ground and took the kids with me,” he said.
“I hear somebody. It sounds like he’s out in our yard, saying, ‘He got shot,’” Winfield’s 16-year-old son said.
After ensuring the kids were OK, and that his older son was watching the 4‑year-old twins, Winfield went outside to look. He found a 33-year-old man on the front porch. He’d been shot.
Neighbors were already there, including State Rep. Robyn Porter, who lives across the street.
The victim was alert, able to talk. At least one bullet had passed through his body.
“I was so grateful [Winfield’s] kids didn’t get hurt, and the man was able to walk to the stretcher,” Porter later said. Porter had been on her way to Winfield’s house to pick up a memorial frame at the time for local activist Arthur Perlo, who recently died.
Cops arrived almost immediately.
“From the beginning of the investigation, it was clear the senator obviously wasn’t targeted. Somebody was walking down the street. A [driver] opened fire. [The victim] ran toward the house,” said Assistant Police Chief Karl Jacobson. Jacobson said police collected “multiple shell casings” at the scene and are pursuing leads about a suspect’s vehicle.
Winfield’s focus shifted to a third stage: From the immediate concern for his family, his subsequent concern for the victim, to … “Let me see if the house was hit.”
It was. One bullet went through a window above the front door and took out the framing. There was debris in the house. One bullet entered the garage.
Winfield called his wife, who wasn’t home at the time. She’d already seen the news online. Winfield was the legislature’s original social-media maven, building a thousands-strong following back in the day before other lawmakers learned how to tweet and post on Facebook.
Most of the hundreds of messages Winfield received in subsequent hours expressed love and support. Some critics of his political positions offered “how does it feel now?” type of responses: Winfield (along with colleagues like his neighbor Porter) has been among the state’s leading opponents of mass incarceration and proponents of police reform. He led the successful effort to ban the death penalty, for instance, and pass a police accountability law.
The morning after the shooting, Winfield remained as resolute as ever to pursue policies addressing the roots of crime over the long-term locking-up of large groups of people.
Winfield said he has grown accustomed to hearing gunfire on his street. This time it happened to come to his doorstep.
“I grew up in a housing project in the South Bronx. I’ve lived in these kinds of neighborhoods all my life. I’m not new to crime,” Winfield said. “It doesn’t change my mind about mass incarceration. When I was a kid I slept with a knife under my blanket. If crime was going to make me conservative, more lock-em-up, I would never have been the person any of you have known. It is the fact that I know crime and where it tends to be — that makes me who I am.
“This just further convinces me. This is part of a panoply of traumatic issues that young people have to live with. When they happen over and over again, it does something to the human psyche. We can put in place all the laws we want to punish people. If we’re not dealing with the trauma, all the other stuff we talk about in terms of economics, you’re going to have people walking around who are damaged, who are more likely to succumb to the negative things around them.”
“If I had arrived two or three minutes earlier I could have been the one on the stretcher,” Porter said. “If that doesn’t drive me to demand the things that need to be done to end this gun violence, then what else does? Being in the trenches is the fuel in my belly.” She said that policymakers who return home at the end of the day to “lilywhite suburbs” with closer connections between police and neighbors don’t understand the violence issue the same way.
Asst. Chief Jacobson said the shooting victim is in stable condition.
First I hope the victim is alright. My prayers are with him. thank god everyone in the neighborhood and Mr. Winfield's family is alright. These kind of things can be traumatic for everyone especially children. The quote from him about if crime was going to make him conservative is puzzling to me. Crime is Crime, yes things need to be fixed in the judicial system. But if you are taking a gun and shooting someone and bullets are flying all over the place you have no regard for life. An innocent person could have gotten hit. That person needs to be locked up for a long time. If you rape especially a child you need to be locked up for a long time. If you rape a child and mom kill them and set them on fire, you don't deserve to live. You can't go shopping without fear of being car jacked. Liberal or Conservative we both have to agree that crime is bad. It's the punishment that is the issue. But there has to be a punishment. You can't just keep giving people chance after chance. A lot of it is the repeating cycle of no father in their lives. We need to start shaming fathers who don't take care of or are not in their kids lives. Someone has to stop the cycle.