Top Cops Put 2019 Crime Spike In Context

New Haven police brass sought to square a few circles at the 2019 year-end crime statistics review.

They recognized that the city did indeed see a year-over-year uptick in violent crime — following a record year of public safety and a decade-long trend of reduced robberies, shootings, and homicides.

They also pointed out that city residents do not necessarily feel as safe as they actually, statistically, are, and that police need to step up their community outreach efforts to instill a ​“mindset of safety” in the new year.

Police Chief Otoniel Reyes and his assistant chiefs made that pitch Thursday morning over the course of a two-and-a-half-hour CompStat meeting on the fourth floor of police headquarters at 1 Union Ave.

Roughly 50 city, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as Mayor-Elect Justin Elicker, State’s Attorney Patrick Griffin, and local healthcare and youth services representatives, filled the conference room for the year’s last regular weekly overview of citywide crime numbers.

The annual year-end gathering, just like last year’s, was largely a celebratory affair.

Reyes applauded the dedication and hard work and collaborative efforts of his officers and state, federal, and community partners. The city’s six district commanders presented on highlights and challenges from the last 12 months, as well as on crime-prevention strategies they plan to pursue in the year to come.

And the chief, who was confirmed to the department’s top spot in September, stressed time and again that the city is a dramatically safer place than it was five years ago, 10 years ago, and several decades ago, when he was a kid growing up in the Hill.

He said he still remembers a time when one couldn’t walk down Winchester Avenue in Newhallville or Congress Avenue in the Hill without fear of getting shot or robbed.

“We have come a long way in this city,” he said. ​“I can assure you: New Haven is a safe city.”

Reyes acknowledged that neighbors don’t always feel that relative security in their day-to-day lives.

That’s in part because of the bump in violent crime numbers in comparison to last year’s record lows.

There have been 74 shootings throughout the city as of Dec. 15. That’s two dozen more than the 50 shootings that took place in 2018.

It’s also nearly 50 fewer than the high of 133 shootings that occurred in 2011.

There were 10 homicides in New Haven so far this year, the same number as the total last year. Fewer than a third of the 34 that took place eight years ago. And there were 605 aggravated assaults this year, over 100 more than the 496 that took place in 2018.

Click here to download the latest Compstat report.

“Not one person in this room feels good about” this year’s shootings and aggravated assault numbers being higher than last year’s, Reyese said. ​“The community doesn’t feel as safe as they are.”

That’s the case, Reyes said, even though the department is down to 237 officers as of November 2019, quite the drop from the 314 it had on staff in August 2017 and the 283 officer positions included in this fiscal year’s city budget. The last three years have seen an outflow of city officers, including the former chief, to the suburbs and the Yale police force as the rank-and-file waited for a longstanding contract dispute with the city. A new contracted was ratified by the union and approved by the Board of Alders this fall.

Officers responded to over 69,000 calls for service this year, he said. And they’ve deepened close working relationships with the state’s attorney’s office, the FBI, the DEA, state parole and probation officers, Yale New Haven Hospital medical providers, community management teams, and many more law enforcement and community partners besides.

“We have to have a mindset of safety with our people,” Reyes said.

“We Want You Safe, Alive, And Out Of Prison”

Asst. Police Chief Karl Jacobson, who is in charge of the department’s Investigative Services Division, is the city’s point person on addressing homicides and shootings. He presented a detailed accounting Thursday of the consistent drop in crime of this city over the past 20 years.

He also spoke about the few exceptional bouts of violent crime that took place in 2019, and how the department responded each step of the way.

“You have to see where you came from,” he said, ​“and where you are now.”

From 2003 to 2011, he said, the city averaged 133 non-fatal annual shootings. ​“For this size city,” he said. ​“That’s unacceptable.”

The department responded by starting targeted crime suppression programs like Project Longevity and Project Safe Neighborhoods, which seek to provide job and mental health and community support services for people most likely to commit a shooting or be shot themselves.

“If one of those gentlemen or ladies decide to change their lives,” he said, ​“that’s a person not shot.”

The city subsequently saw its annual average number of non-fatal shootings drop to 65 between 2012 and 2018.

Nevertheless, he said, Reyes always reminds him not to rest on the department’s laurels from 2018. ​“If we could get to 50 [shootings per year], we could get to 40.”

He then jumped into a month-by-month, incident-by-incident violent crime timeline for 2019.

“We had a tough January,” he said. There were five shootings, one homicide, and a total of 16 shots fired that month. February saw six more shootings.

In the middle of February, he said, the department got together with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and targeted two feuding groups, one based out of the Farnam Courts public housing complex and the other near Exit 8 in Quinnipiac Meadows. The city-federal partnership went out and made arrests, he said, ​“and we were able to calm it down for a little while.”

Then in April, the city saw a new spike of violent crime because of the rise of an Ashmun Street gang called ACP, for Adam Clayton Powell. This ended in the shooting of a 9‑year-old on on April 28. ​“Not good. We were going through a tough time.”

So the department and the state’s attorney’s office targeted weapons violations. ​“We upped our ante on Project Longevity,” he said. ​“We upped our ante on Project Safe Neighborhoods.” The department concentrated on reaching out to people in the neighborhood with weapons violations and those who had been involved in shootings.

“We called them in. We said, ​‘We’re offering you resources. Put the guns down. We want you safe, alive, and out of prison.”

Between May 6 and May 11, he said, the department’s criminal intelligence unit was able to seize 10 guns and make eight arrests.

After a quiet subsequent three months, the city saw another spike in violent crime in July. That’s when the FBI and the city wrapped up a case known as Operation Fantasy Island. ​“They were able to get some violent people wrapped up in that,” he said, particularly gang members who had recently returned to the city from prison and had become re-involved in gang life.

One month later, Captain Tony Duff was shot and West Haven resident Troy Clark was murdered in a shooting in Dixwell.

“We amped up our efforts again,” he said. ​“We’re going after specific targets. We don’t want to harm the community.” The person who committed the crime is still at large, he and Reyes said, and solving that case is one of the department’s top priorities for 2020.

In the wake of that shooting, Jacobson said, the department seized another 10 guns and arrested 12 people in a one-month period between Nov. 5 and Dec. 5.

“We’re focusing our attention on the people who carry guns and do shootings,” he said, ​“and we’re trying to get them to put the guns down, get them a job, get them into a different life.” If that doesn’t work, then the department and its law enforcement partners move in and make arrests.

Jacobson said that efforts like Project Longevity have been successful in reducing gang violence in the city. In 2016, he said, 76 percent of the homicides were related to gangs. That number was down to 30 percent this year. Similarly, the total number of gang-related non-fatal shootings dropped from 53 percent to 42 percent in that same time period.

He said the department next year is looking to beef up not just Project Longevity, which targets people involved in gang life, but also Project Safe Neighborhoods, which targets individuals not necessarily associated with gangs who have a history of gun violence.

Without disclosing the name of the individual who was shot outside the Catholic Academy school in Westville earlier this week, Jacobson did say that that victim was a prominent gang member back in 2011. He then went to prison for several years ago and returned to New Haven this year.

He attended a Project Safe Neighborhoods call-in in November, Jacobson said, as well as a department-sponsored meet-up in December. And then he was shot.

“That tells us our intelligence is correct,” Jacobson said. This man was on the city’s radar, and the city had been looking to help him get out of the gang life upon his reentry into society.

“Maybe he wanted to get out of the game, and somebody didn’t let him out.”

West Side Burglary Response

During the district commander presentations, Westville top cop Lt. Rose Dell, Dwight/Beaver Hills top cop Lt. John Healy, and Sgt. Gary Hammill discussed how they and their colleagues responded to one particularly busy stretch of burglaries, car thefts, and home invasions on the western side of town during the summer.

Dell noted that property crimes and burglaries have been a problem in her district all year, and that she has participated in a number of community conversations and meetings with concerned neighbors on the topic. 

Beaver Hills also saw several instances of violent crime, including a shootout that rattled the neighborhood in November.

Dell said she instructed her officers to go to areas that had seen a rash of property crimes and write reports with their cruiser lights on to amplify police presents. She also encouraged her officers to get out of their vehicles and do ​“park and walks,” where they put foot to pavement, handed out ​“Lock It or Lost It” postcards, and talked about what residents could do to make sure their homes are less susceptible to crimes.

Between July 27 and Aug. 9, she said, there was a rash of residential burglaries: 10, to be precise, including on the Boulevard, Roydon Road, West Park Avenue, West Rock Avenue, Yale Avenue, and Edgewood Avenue.

Hammill then proceeded to lay out a play-by-play timeline of how city detectives wound up catching and charging seven juvenile suspects, many of whom confessed to participating in the crimes.

That police work included tracking down stolen cars, identifying suspects before they had enough evidence to make an arrest, gathering video evidence from various convenience stores of the suspects using credit cards stolen in the various burglaries, and then conducting interviews with the juveniles’ parents in the room so as to encourage confessions.

“We were able to charge all seven suspects with burglary, larceny, and using stolen credit cards,” he said.

Praise For Community Partners

During Hill top cop Justin Marshall’s presentation, the sergeant didn’t just review the various incidents that took place on the most dangerous streets in his district over the course of the year.

He also singled out for praise the Hill neighbors, activists, and management team stalwarts with whom he’s forged close working relationships over the course of his first year as the neighborhood’s top cop.

Longtime Hill South resident Johnny Dye, he said, ​“took me out for lunch before I started and offered me a prayer for success for the Hill. He told me what to expect, how to be successful, and the do’s and don’ts.”

Fellow Hill resident Leslie Radcliffe did the same, he said. She invited him over to his house and ​“laid out her expectations for me as a district manager, what she thought I should do to be successful.”

Hill Alder Dave Reyes was instrumental in helping him communicate with the public when an officer-involved shooting took place in Kimberly Square just two days after he started as the neighborhood’s top cop, Marshall said.

“He was my point of contact, the person I relied heavily on during that time. He put a lot of information out to the community. I can’t thank him enough.”

Also after that shooting, Project Longevity’s Stacy Spell took Marshall into Lane’s barbershop and helped break down barriers between the police and members of the community.

Angela Hatley, the secretary of the Hill South management team, is his point person for getting all kinds of news and information out to neighbors on a weekly basis. ​“I’ll contact her and let her know, and she’ll put out an email blast to the community, letting them know if there’s a rash of burglaries on a block, or anything like that.”

Tommi Shaw and Livable City Initiative (LCI) Neighborhood Specialist Art Natalino always help out with neighborhood cleanups, he said.

Kathy Eggert at the APT Foundation methadone clinic, he said, responded to community concerns and changed that healthcare provider’s medication delivery time from 7:30 a.m. to 5 a.m. to minimize overlap with the start of the school day across the street at John C. Daniels School. The APT Foundation also invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in building out an internal waiting area at their facility so that patients wouldn’t have to wait out on the sidewalk, he said, and they’ve paid for extra duty police officers for four-hour blocks of time.

Carmen Rodriguez helped deliver Thanksgiving dinner to residents, and retired police Captain Holly Wasilewski coordinated Toys for Tots donations with the Hill North management team.

“We’re all working towards the same goal,” he said, ​“a safe neighborhood.”

“Help You Do Your Job Better”

At the end of the marathon meeting, Reyes gave the mayor-elect the last word. Elicker praised the district commanders for being at the front line of community policing, and pledged his support to continue crime preventative efforts like YouthStat, Project Longevity, and other programs ​“that have been doing so much to address the issues particularly with young people who have not been provided the opportunities to success, and people coming out of prison who are not provided the resources to stand on the ground and lead a productive life.”

“I believe my job as mayor is to help you do your job better,” he continued. ​“Period.

“I promise I will be working hard in partnership with you to listen, to learn. I have a lot to learn. To be there when times are good and when times are tough. Because this is about partnership with the community and partnership with the police force.”

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch part of Thursday morning’s Compstat meeting.