Paul Bass Photo
John Velleca at WNHH FM: Banking on a surveillance society to stem violence “a ridiculous notion.”
New Haven is not going to reduce violence by having the mayor show up at crime scenes or ordering 500 more surveillance cameras, in the view of a retired top cop who oversaw the police response to the city’s previous prolonged spike in violence.
That top cop is John Velleca, a retired city police assistant chief who now teaches criminal justice at Albertus Magnus College.
Velleca was serving as assistant chief overseeing detectives and then as acting police chief in 2011 when — as in 2020 and 2021 — shootings skyrocketed to over 100 a year and homicides doubled their previous rate.
At the time, through intensive intelligence gathering in conjunction with federal investigators, the police were able to identify a small group of gang members responsible for the bulk of the violence. They were able to identify just two men they believed were responsible for as many as 15 homicides, and win convictions that sent them to federal prison for decades. The crime rate plummeted again.
Until last year, when New Haven, like cities across the country, saw gun violence explode back to previous levels amid the pandemic.
This time the challenge is more complicated, Velleca said Thursday during an appearance on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” While some of the shootings involve retribution from loosely organized groups, gun violence has become more prevalent and more random for more reasons. (Watch the episode in the above video.)
“We have created a culture — we, everybody — where it has become acceptable, almost expected, that you will settle a low-level problem with a handgun,” Velleca argued. “When I started out on the job, you would see fistfights. Now you’re seeing shootings. That’s a national thing.”
Meanwhile, social media is amplifying petty disputes within moments, leading to more of those disputes.
No one easy answer exists, Velleca said. He agreed with the city’s continued participation in joint intelligence task forces with the state and the feds to identify and address the small number of people responsible for the greatest amount of violence. He also argued that schools have to start early — before kids hit teen years — to deal with the “urban trauma” amid which young people now grow up. He supported increased training on conflict resolution that emphasizes avoiding guns to settle disputes, as well as “teaching respect of others in society.”
Velleca said that two of the Elicker administration’s recent strategies are off base.
In one case, Mayor Justin Elicker announced Monday that his administration plans to spend some of the federal pandemic-relief dollars flowing into the city on purchasing 500 new surveillance cameras to place around town. “We struggle to get community members to share information” after a violent incident like a shooting, the mayor said about the camera proposal. “People are afraid. They don’t want to be a snitch.” Buying and installing cameras all around the city should help with that problem, he said.
“That’s a ridiculous notion,” Velleca said on “Dateline.”
For starters, he said, cameras don’t work the magic some people believe they do, and they are not a substitute for the hard work of winning public trust and participation.
“We’ve had a lot of homicides on video. Very rarely do we get to use anything off that video,” Velleca argued. Due to poor lighting and grainy images, rarely can officers get a good look at the suspect, for instance.
The video does help in interviewing witnesses, he acknowledged: “If a witness and they come in and they haven’t seen the video,” the investigator can see their version of events matches the footage.
So “it helps to a degree. If you balance that against the invasion of privacy, I don’t think it’s worth it. I don’t think we should be a society of surveillance.”
Times have changed in the past decades, Elicker argued when contacted for a response.
Technology has improved, so that surveillance video can show more details, the mayor said. He called the department’s current cameras outdated; the police visited Hartford and Bridgeport departments and saw that newer models helped police “very quickly piece together what happened in certain cases to hold someone accountable.” Some of the cameras New Haven would buy now would specifically be able to read license plates better than in the past. “That will allow us to very quickly identify vehicles in question and address his point about [how] sometimes camera resolution isn’t ideal,” Elicker said.
“Adding cameras is not a fix-all solution. It’s one of many different components of our approach to addressing the violence,” he said.
The mayor called Velleca’s privacy concerns “old-school thinking. In today’s world, everybody has a phone. Everyone’s OK with GPS knowing where they are in every moment. We’ve already opted to give up a lot of freedom.”
Thomas Breen Photo
Mayor Justin Elicker headlining one of numerous recent press conferences at police HQ.
Paul Bass Photo
Then-Acting Chief John Velleca at a 2011 press conference at police HQ announcing the arrest of a teen accused of murdering 13-year-old Marquell Banks: mayor not in picture.
Velleca also addressed the mayor’s decision to visit the scene of all major shootings, then issue a press release from the mayor’s office about the events. Those releases usually contain a single sentence reporting that a shooting or homicide occurred in a particular location, without any other related information. The rest of the releases typically contain paragraphs summarizing the initiatives he has taken as mayor to combat crime. The police department will sometimes follow up a half day or more after that release with a sentence or two more about the incidents.
“That’s part of why there’s no trust” in the police, Velleca observed.
For high-profile shootings involving, say, young victims or multiples victims, it would make more sense to have the police chief rather than the mayor show up, he argued. “The chief of the police takes the burden off investigators. The detective boss doesn’t have to deal with the media or start answering questions. [If] you have politicians show up, that’s what the chief can handle. Keep the politicians back. Hold a briefing. The investigators can investigate.”
In response to public complaints about a lack of substantive information about crime, Mayor Elicker has also begun headlining regular press conferences at 1 Union Ave. to offer a few details about selected recent crimes or arrests.
During the last major spike a decade ago, then-Mayor John DeStefano would rarely show up at a shooting scene, Velleca noted. “The chief should be speaking for the department, not the mayor. Mayor DeStefano used to say to me, ‘What should I say here?’ Not that he didn’t know. But it was our show to run. … The mayor left [it] to me to put out what I thought was correct.”
“I’m going to show up at everything I can because it makes me better understand what’s going on and make sure I can help people the best I can. I don’t understand why anyone would criticize me going to these things,” Elicker said. “I actually find it quite helpful to my role as mayor to talk with neighbors at the scene of a homicide and knock on doors after an incident.”
As for his office releasing the initial crime information and his role at police press conference, Elicker said, “It’s not an either-or. That why we’ve started the weekly police press conferences. We [the mayor’s office and police department] both should be doing this work.”
They shoot cameras, don't they?