Amid Freeze, Cops Look Out For Homeless

As temperatures dropped into the single digits on Wednesday night, beat cops fanned out across the city searching for anyone who might be at risk of freezing to death.

Downtown, Officer Daophet Sangxayarath helped get one homeless man to a warming center just after dark, but otherwise his rounds didn’t turn up anyone else without a place to stay.

He took that as a sign that earlier check-ins on the Green had gotten out the word about where to go — even though he heard some grumbling about the options later in the night.

New Haven had activated an emergency cold protocol, including making 25 extra beds available at the city’s three homeless shelters and keeping them open 24 hours a day, and having the 180 Center, a warming facility, open on Grand Avenue.

Meanwhile, with the wind-chill factor projected to drop below zero, police officers were tasked with making sure no one stayed outside at night and froze to death.

Sangxayarath, a Bridgeport native who’s been on the force for five years, began his shift around 4 p.m. on Wednesday.

His assignment: to sweep downtown looking for anyone who needed an escort to a homeless shelter or the warming center.

Sangxayarath does that informally almost every winter night as he patrols downtown, but as a polar vortex brought subzero temperatures across the Northeast, it became a special priority on Wednesday.

Almost right away, Sangxayarath picked up one homeless person on Temple Street near the Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas. The man had fallen asleep in a bus shelter, as a squall blasted snow onto the ground.

Usually, Sangxayarath will check how badly the person is shivering. He’ll ask them if they know where they are. If they can’t answer who the president is, he’ll have a medical team do a checkup to see if the person need to be hospitalized.

This time, the guy was with it, just tired.

Sangxayarath brought him to The 180 Center on Grand Avenue.

Otherwise, he didn’t see any other recognizable faces out in the cold.

Making Sure

Around 8 p.m., after the New Haven Free Public Library let out, Sangxayarath went out for another check.

“Most of the people we deal with regularly are already in shelters,” he said. But he still wanted to be sure.

Sangxayarath left headquarters and cranked up the heat in his cruiser. Pop music played softly on the radio.

He started at the southern corner of the Green. Pulling his car onto the pedestrian walkway, he slowly crossed the park in a diagonal, from Chapel and Church Streets to College and Elm Streets. The park benches were unoccupied, and the bus stops were nearly empty too. Just one mom waited for a ride, holding her bundled-up toddler in her lap.

Next stop: the courthouse entrance on Wall Street. Sangxayarath got out of his car to check if someone might be sleeping, out-of-sight, behind the wheelchair ramp.

Not tonight.

From there, Sangxayarath checked the side doors of the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church on Orange Street, where homeless people sometimes toss a blanket over the floodlight and catch some shut-eye. His partner swept his cruiser’s beams over the block’s parking lots.

They did the same at Artspace, where they usually don’t bother anyone sleeping anyway, at the owner’s request. Then St. Michael’s Church and Lenzi Park in Wooster Square, where workers were readying to salt the sidewalks. And finally High School in the Community.

Still no one.

Sangxayarath said that the ​“constant contact” keeps people suffering from homelessness in the loop about the city’s resources.

“I think New Haven does a great job with homelessness,” Sangxayarath said. ​“In my experience, they already know where to go when it gets this cold. The only ones to watch out for are the new people in town.”

180

By the time Sangxayarath finished criss-crossing downtown, about 30 people without shelter had rolled into The 180 Center on Grand Avenue. In the dimly lit space, some sprawled out across rows of chairs and napped. Others sipped coffee and waited. (By morning, 65 ended up arriving there, according to city emergency management chief Rick Fontana.)

One homeless woman named Linda said that she normally finds other places to go, moving between the library, soup kitchens and the train station. ​“Sometimes I’ll get kicked out of there, but I don’t care,” she said. Sangxayarath asked her to be good.

The 180 Center is normally a daytime-only drop-in center that offers breakfast and Bible study. On Wednesday, workers served dinner and rolled out mats so people who don’t wish to abide by the rules and constraints of a homeless shelter at least had some place to avoid the deadly deep-freeze.

“We’re only open because of the cold weather. It’s a whole different realm right now,” said Jon Ecker, the co-director of The 180 Center’s sober housing. ​“A lot of times, people come in a little high, a little drunk. As long as they behave themselves, that’s fine. Most of the time, things are calm.”

Around 8:45 p.m., an older homeless man who’d been asleep had a seizure. A team of paramedics and firefighters rushed in, crowded around him on the floor and wheeled him out on a stretcher.

That’s when Alex, a homeless man who’d been grumbling about having to spend the night at the warming center, said he’d had enough. He stepped outside for a breather.

“Why do you think we don’t like being here? We don’t want to be around that. We’re healthy. We don’t need these creepy-ass people, half of them with mental-health problems, walking around talking to themselves,” he griped. ​“I’m not happy about it.”

Sangxayarath asked Alex if he wanted some blankets.

Seniors at Tower One/Tower East had sewn together mats made from plastic grocery bags. Capt. Patricia Helliger, who recently retired, had distributed them to the cop car trunks.

Alex took one, accepted an extra for his buddies, and said thanks.