A campaign aimed at truants. A gang intelligence unit. “Wide latitude” for problem-solving cops: New Haven’s new top cop said he has those plans in mind.
That cop, Wisconsin-based (and accented) James Lewis, will move to downtown New Haven and take over as the city’s police chief on July 7. At a City Hall press conference Monday afternoon, he offered a taste of his approach and a preview of his plans.
After a nationwide search that turned up nobody willing to take the job, the city — through an outside firm called the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) — has convinced the 58-year-old Lewis to come out of retirement and fill out the final 18 months of the current police chief’s contract.
Lewis will replace Stephanie Redding, who has been filling the chief’s slot on an acting basis.
The city undertook a national search for a new chief after a series of scandals — an FBI corruption investigation and arrests involving bribery, false statements, among other offenses, by various cops. The new chief will be asked to carry out a series of reforms recommended by PERF at a time when New Haven’s once-vaunted community policing experiment has been in decline.
The clearest message Lewis sent was to the rank and file.
“I trust the cops,” said Lewis, 58. That means, he said, that “officers will be given unprecedented latitude to be involved in … partnerships in their neighborhoods” to solve problems.
Lewis offered a case in point after the press conference: traffic safety. In one of his previous gigs, as chief of the Pomona, California, police department, he said, he supported an idea offered by a traffic cop. The cop was concerned about injuries to children hit by double-parked cars outside their elementary schools. The cop noticed that he would write a ticket to an offender — then watch the other double-parkers pull away, only to repeat their offense the next day. So, after sending home warning flyers with the children, the cops brought a video camera to the schools and filmed the double-parkers. Then they went back to the station to write out tickets for all the offenders.
“Overnight, there was zero double-parking in front of elementary schools,” Lewis said. “Nobody’s getting hit.”
He said he’s looking to encourage similar problem-solving to deal with the traffic safety concerns spreading these days through the Fair Haven and Westville neighborhoods and around Yale-New Haven Hospital. (Click here, here, and here to read about that.)
Click on the play arrow to watch how Lewis handled various questions at the press conference.
Other plans Lewis discussed Monday: creating the gang intelligence unit (New Haven had a similar effort int he 1990s) and launching a Truancy Assessment Center. He said he has already discussed the latter idea with Superintendent of Schools Reginald Mayo. Lewis said he oversaw a similar project when he was chief of Green Bay, Wisconsin. The idea is to have cops take truant teens not back to school, where they’re causing trouble, but to a special center where experts try to find out what problems are leading them to stray in the first place. In Green Bay, the center was at a Boys and Girls Club. A club member and a school system employee worked with the students once the cops dropped them off.
Rank-And-File Ride-Alongs
The compact Lewis spoke with a straightforward, upfront Midwestern mien. His track record in Wisconsin bears it out, according to a reporter who covered him.
The reporter, John Lee, covered the Appleton and Grand Chute police departments during Lewis’s tenures there, for the daily Appleton Post-Crescent.
Lee said Lewis took over Appleton during a period of low morale, and raised it. “He’s open. He’s up front… He was like a breath of fresh air… He empowered police” to devise solutions to problems like traffic safety.
In Appleton, which has a 118-member force, Lewis would work on weekends and do ride-alongs with the patrol officers, in order to learn the views of the rank-and-file, according to Lee.
Lewis ran the Green Bay force from 1995 – 2002, then Pomona, California’s force from 2003 – 2006. He returned to Wisconsin to retire. Then he agreed to run Appleton’s force from January through June of 2007. He agreed to a similar stint on the Grand Chute force (serving a town of 20,000 people) for eight months, beginning last October.
In those towns, as in New Haven, he came on board for a limited time frame to fix systems and improve the force. He has agreed to serve 18 months in New Haven, for the duration of the current chief’s contract.
Lewis said Monday he doesn’t know if he’d stay longer.
“Eighteen months from now you will see improved policies and procedures in place,” he said. “The majority of the PERF report will be completed or in process.” (He was referring to a report by the police consulting group recommending widespread systemic changes in the New Haven department.)
If that work is not completed by then, with a groomed successor in place, he might “have a conversation with the mayor” about staying here beyond then.
Police union president Louis Cavalier said “look[s] forward to working with” the new chief.
“Local 530 is looking forward to setting the parameters and establishing a relationship with the new chief,” Cavalier said. “No one wants to bang heads right off the bat.”
City Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts, to whom Lewis will directly report, said he was impressed with how the chief made changes in Pomona, a city Smuts described as “Fair Haven writ large” with many of the same challenges as those facing New Haven’s department.
“He picked his replacement and rode off into the sunset” a success, Smuts claimed. Smuts said the Pomona department won a national award in 2005 under Lewis’s direction; earlier, he won a PERF award in 1999 for his stewardship of Green Bay, Wisc.‘s force.
For another view of the condition in which the Pomona force was left, click here.
Good luck to this guy. If he wants to see the level of intelligence he is working with he should walk down church St. across from the mall there is a white car with a boot parked in front of a fire hydrant and in a tow zone. Only in New Haven unreal.