Paul Bass Photo
No one told a carload of young men from the Shoreline that a team of cops would descend on the blocks near the Green after nightfall.
There they sat outside Rendezvous clothing store on Chapel Street Thursday evening in a dented Acura Legend, doing … well, it wasn’t quite clear what they were doing.
Four walking cops arrived and wanted to find out.
A half hour earlier, the officers had joined seven other colleagues on Church Street near the corner of George, to set off on “The Surge.” The New Haven police have started experimenting with the tactic to display an unannounced show of force in areas where they’ve recently received an uptick in complaints.
The New York Police have a “surge” operation, as well. That one targets transit facilities and terrorism concerns. A shock-and-awe operation, it features a fleet of cops suddenly appearing together on the streets, then driving in different directions.
New Haven’s Surge doesn’t involve cars. It targets loitering, vandalism, suspicious streetcorner behavior, along with muggings and other potential attacks. At the beginning of B squad, the 4 p.m.-midnight shift, police walking beats, along with some motorcycle and bicycle patrols from all over town, gather and concentrate for a half hour or an hour in one location. The department has been conducting a few surges a week, on a random schedule, to keep people guessing. The idea is to display “presence” to crime-weary citizens as well as potential troublemakers, to start the evening shift off right, and to enforce quality-of-life laws, said patrol chief Lt. Jeff Hoffman. He’s pictured at left in the photo above, joining the crew as it gathered shortly after 4:30 p.m. Thursday for a downtown Surge.
Thursday evening was the first time the downtown Surge began at Church and George rather than at the Green. The reason: Some recent street crimes have made people feel uncomfortable on Church Street South up through Knights of Columbus and Gateway Community College as work lets out, said Sgt. Tammi Means, the top downtown cop. Also, she said, some drinking, loitering and harassment, usually found at bus stops at the Green and at Chapel near Orange, have spread to stops on Church. (The Green has also been the site of social media-spurred gatherings of dozens of teens on bikes, who on some occasions have proceeded to harass passing citizens.) As she prepared to dispatch her team from its gathering spot on the sidewalk, Means joked about how one of her district walking cops, Justin Cole, was wearing short sleeves as the thermometer plunged into the 40s toward the 30s. Then she issued marching orders: “We just want to show some presence out here. Make people who are working safe. It’s getting dark; a few things have happened that we don’t want to have happen. So we’ll l split you guys up …”
Officer Jenna Davis headed north on Church. She immediately noticed a teen, waiting at a bus shelter near Center Street, bolt when he saw her. She caught up with him.
The boy told Davis he was waiting for the C bus. Davis, who is assigned to the downtown district, knows the C bus doesn’t stop at that corner She also knows that the convenience store at that spot has attracted its share of trouble. She questioned the teen further about where he lives (West Hills, he said) and his phone number. He said his number belongs to his mother, and he doesn’t know it. Davis noticed he had a phone on him while he said that.
As they spoke, Officer Cole began patting the teen down. He checked the pouch in the teen’s sweatshirt. He removed the teen’s backpack and set it on the ground and pulled down his hoodie to complete the check. He did not check the backpack. Davis explained how the teen’s initial bolt and subsequent questionable responses prompted the stop and the search. “You understand how that looks? You were kind of nervous,” she told him, increasing measures of sympathy coursing into her speech. “We want to keep you safe, OK?” At that the officers let the teen go, and he walked away from the corner. Officers like Davis who remain in the district for the full shift after the Surge get a better sense of who’s hanging around the district, and why from these stops, she said.
Just then, shouts and laughter emerged from across Church Street, where a half-dozen or more male teens whooped it up on their way toward the corner of Chapel. Four officers rushed behind them and followed. The teens stopped at Starbucks, where they greeted a friend standing on the steps by the coffee shop’s entrance. No conflict was evident; the energy level was high as rush-hour pedestrians coursed through in the darkness. The police presence didn’t lower the volume.
“Big sign right there,” Cole declared, calling the teens’ attention to the “No Loitering” message on a column.
The teens crossed the street and dispersed. Four of them continued walking together toward the holiday tree. Several officers followed. “Go home,” one officer remarked.
The officers had dispersed, too. Four of them were a block and a half away outside Rendezvous checking out the young men from the Shoreline in the parked Acura. The front license plate was in the window, not out front, as required by law. And the front lights were off, another violation. Officer Garry Monk, whose regular beat is on the east side of town when he’s not on the downtown Surge, spoke to the driver, who told him the three had come to sell their telephones. Monk was dubious; he later said that he had noticed they still had phones on them. He ran their paperwork. The car belongs to the mother of one of the young men.
The front-seat passenger was upset about the stop and told Monk so. “You getting all this?” he appealed to a reporter. Meanwhile, another officer noted that the meter had expired. Monk said later that the the driver had appealed: He already has a case pending from another town. Could he catch a break? “You haven’t learned your lesson?” Monk said he responded, then cited him for the license-plate offense. The Shoreline crew drove off. (The driver, who attends Southern Connecticut State University and works as a shoe salesman, later contacted the Independent to give his side of the story. He said his passenger had “gone into the wireless store to see if he could get money back for his phone.” He wasn’t able to. Back in the car, “We were about to leave. I was about to turn on the ignition. All of a sudden there was a rap on my window.” The driver also said he didn’t ask the officer for a break: “I told him I do have another ticket for the license plate in Clinton. I asked, ‘Is this going to join that ticket? Or will they be decided on after another day?’”)
After citing the driver Monk headed for his regular shift on the east side, as the Surge ended for the night. Back on Church Street, motorcycle cops Robert DuPont and Mark O’Neill reported having issued a pedestrian violation as well as a ticket to a driver who ran a red light.
Downtown/Wooster Square bike cop Scott Durkin touched base with Means before returning to his Cannondale. He said his Surge duties included shooing double-parkers back into traffic so buses could get through on Chapel. Means said her officers did make one arrest, of a troublemaking teen violating a no-trespassing order at the Subway at Temple and Chapel. Otherwise, the police made their presence felt without any drama or major incidents, she said. The way the Surge is supposed to work.
The NHPD is starting to come full circle. This was successful in the late 1980s. By a different name, and by a different administration, that Dean Esserman has never acknowledged existed, about time !