Thomas Breen file photo
Chief Dominguez with Mayor Elicker, who selected her in January.
Responding to the spike in violence, mayoral challenger Karen DuBois-Walton called on incumbent Justin Elicker to conduct a search for a new police chief.
DuBois-Walton, who is challenging the first-term incumbent for the Democratic nomination for mayor this year, issued that call Monday for a change in leadership at the top of the New Haven Police Department.
During a half-hour campaign press conference outside the Amistad memorial in front of City Hall, DuBois-Walton said that the mayor should reassign Acting Chief Renee Dominguez to her previous role as assistant chief.
She said the mayor should then immediately start looking for a new, permanent chief.
Dominguez, a 21-year NHPD veteran, effectively took the helm of the department in January when Elicker tapped her to replace retiring former Police Chief Otoniel Reyes.
DuBois-Walton at Thursday’s presser
Why the call for a change in leadership?
DuBois-Walton leveled three specific critiques against Dominguez and Elicker amidst the ongoing spike in violent crime, which most recently saw the city’s 17th homicide so far this year over the weekend. Those critiques included:
• That Dominguez is not visible enough in the community, and that she hasn’t established deep, effective partnerships with community groups, religious leaders, local university scholars, block watch teams, and local advocates. “Right now, the only time we see the acting chief is at a city press event,” DuBois-Walton said. “We need deeper and stronger relationships with the person leading the department.”
• That Dominguez and Elicker have done a poor job clearly communicating the department’s goals and progress in responding to the current rise in crime, which has been a nationwide phenomenon during the ongoing pandemic in addition to taking place locally in New Haven. DuBois-Walton said the mayor demonstrated much more urgency around responding to and communicating publicly about the Covid-19 pandemic than the current violence crisis.
• That Dominguez and Elicker do not promptly and clearly communicate with the public in the immediate aftermath of tragedies like shootings and homicides. “We need better communication from our city,” she said. She said there was a time in the not-too-distant past when the mayor and the police chief would come to the community to provide information about what they knew about a violent incident, to let the public know what questions are still unanswered, and about what the public can do to help. In recent months, the city has changed how it informs the public about crimes: Sometimes the mayor issues a press release, instead of the department, with a brief mention of a crime followed by a list of policy achievements; other times the department issues terse releases the day after an event.
“These delays leave people feeling unsafe without any sense or information about what’s going on,” DuBois-Walton said. They leave the public feeling like there’s no sense of urgency or plan from the city about responding to crime. And it leaves people feeling helpless.
DuBois-Walton’s most recent criticisms of the leadership of the police department come soon after she laid into NHPD leadership’s embrace of controversial “Thin Blue Line” imagery that represents to some a militaristic, occupation mode of policing. Dominguez wrote an email detailing her support for the concept and its military roots earlier this year in response to a city resident’s concerns about seeing an officer carrying a Thin Blue Line face mask.
Since Domniguez took office earlier this year, top-ranking Black and Latino cops have left the department, leaving the NHPD without either a chief, assistant chief, or captain of color for the first time since 1993.
DuBois-Walton previously served from 2002 to 2004 in the former DeStefano Administration as the city’s chief administrative officer, which oversees such line departments as the police department. She then served three years as DeStefano’s chief of staff before heading to the city’s public housing authority, which she helmed for 14 years.
Update: Reached Monday afternoon by phone, Acting Chief Dominguez told the Independent that her department is doing everything it can to stop the violence.
“My commitment to this police department and the citizens of New Haven is very clear over my 20 years” with the NHPD, she said. “I do promote community policing.” That’s the law enforcement philosophy she was raised in during her decades as a patrol officer, district manager, assistant chief, and now acting chief, she said.
“I’m here to do my job and do everything I can to reduce the violence.” She said her “acting” title in no way inhibits her commitment to doing the full-time work of running the city’s police department.
“A Solid Job Under Incredible Pressure”
Mayor Elicker.
Mayor Elicker responded Monday to DuBois-Walton’s critiques, one by one.
Is Dominguez visible enough in the community, and connected enough to community groups?
“Chief Dominguez is a strong leader and I’m confident in her ability to lead the department,” the mayor said. “I’m continuing to evaluate her performance. I’d add that every week I’m out canvassing with officers and interacting with officers on the police force. They regularly reflect back to me about their confidence in her.”
The chief has been present in the community over the course of her decades in the department, and her nascent term as acting chief, he said. “I’ve walked with her myself. She’s been in the department for many, many years, and her commitment to the city is unquestionable.”
What about the critique that the mayor’s office and NHPD leadership are not acting with enough urgency to respond to rising crime?
“That’s just categorically false,” Elicker said. “That sense of urgency is felt by everyone in the city, everyone in City Hall, not just the police department.”
He said that his administration has been implementing a “multi-pronged approach to fighting crime. This work has been done for months and months.”
Some of those initiatives include opening a new one-stop reentry center for people returning to New Haven from incarceration, working with the state parole and probation division to reactivate call ins and custom visits with ex-offenders that were stalled during the pandemic, doubling the number of people going through Project Longevity and Project Safe Neighborhoods, building back up the city’s Shooting Task Force, and investing federal pandemic-era relief dollars in increased walking beats and more street outreach workers. He said these very types of public safety responses have been endorsed by President Joe Biden.
And what about clarity of communication?
The mayor was asked about the city’s communication on Saturday following the shooting death of 20-year-old Kevan Bonilla in Fair Haven.
The mayor’s office sent out an email press release at 10:41 a.m. Saturday saying that someone had been killed on Lombard Street between Poplar and Ferry. That release included no other details about the age, name, context, or ongoing investigation about the shooting death. Instead, it included a long list of initiatives the mayor’s office is pursuing to curtail crime citywide.
At 7:07 p.m. Saturday —more than eight hours after the mayor’s office’s limited release — the police department spokesperson sent out their first communication on the matter, providing the name and age of the person who had been killed, as well as some details about how 911 calls and ShotSpotter had alerted police to the incident.
“We all work very hard to communicate with the community about the work that’s being done,” Elicker said. He said that with homicides and shootings, the city needs to make sure details are accurate, notify the family, and be extra careful about not jeopardizing an investigation. Those can sometimes lead to delays in sending out press releases.
“We need to be cautious about how and when we release information.”
He also said that, after each homicide, he and members of the police department, Yale Child Study Center, and local pastors knock on doors and walk the neighborhood where the shooting death has taken place. “If I show up at a house with a reporter, that sends a very different message than if I show up with help.”
Dominguez agreed with the mayor’s assessment, and said the police department and district managers communicate clearly with alders in the wake of a violent crime so that they too can disseminate vital information to the public.
So, based on his ongoing evaluation of Dominguez’s performance, how does he think the current acting chief is doing?
“I think she’s been doing a solid job under incredible pressure.”
Union Stands Behind Dominguez
In a Monday afternoon email statement provided to the Independent, city police union President Florencio Cotto said that the union and its members support Dominguez remaining acting chief.
“As acting Chief of Police, through her words and her actions, Renee Dominguez has made it clear to the members of the New Haven Police Union, that once again she had our backs and that we were not the enemy,” he wrote. “After Connecticut’s police accountability bill, and the public narrative associated with it, I cannot envision any other leader who could have promptly helped restore morale in such a dark time period.”
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch Monday’s campaign presser in full.
All-
Asking for resignation of the Chief is plain wrong. I know how Elicker runs our city, employees, and constituents.
Elicker you are not a CEO! This is not your corporation. The fear and obstruction you create to narcissistically exert power over people.
We are dying here!
I understand that Chief has not done her job right but it is not enough to not give her an opportunity to explain and change.
We do not have enough police to drastically take chances with peoples lives!
Karen you obviously do not live in underfunded, mismanaged containment zones for steer racism as I! It is an insult to people, home owners, parents, elderly who live in oppressed areas like mine.
We the constituents and have the right to express ourselves in our we the people these matters per the constitution.
I don't think you understand our pain in fact you are no different than Elicker. It shows that cronyism and nepotistic attitudes hurt our city. You aren't no saint. Repent and atone.
Look per Elicker's own words "Chief doesn't have to respond to anyone but me". Is our mayor delusional?
No, he is a capitalist. So is Karen! How can you support anything to do with racism and then play both sides?
We need an open door policy government.
We demand it right now!
To all wards, thank you for allowing me to present as candidate for Mayor. But Democratic Party you too have a lot of cleaning up to do. Vinny, don't you think is time?
While the free given DNA identification will help us in resolving crimes in under 90 minutes; please Chief help us ensure our crimes are solved too.
We can work with you! Do not fear standing against politicians. Politicization and privatizing our government is inherently wrong!
Let's focus, organize, register to vote!
In a community college you don't get indoctrinated into the multi million dollar club. Stop using the emotionality of the voter to attain the vote.
Trumpism doesn't live in our inclusive city of great thinkers. Our NH!