Paul Bass Photo
The phone rang at 1:30 a.m.: Another homicide. The assistant chief needed to get to the scene.
The baby had already woken John Velleca. Dad needed to feed her.
Velleca had to make a quick decision: The job, or the bottle.
“I know in the back of my mind I should put on a suit and go to the crime scene,” he recalled. That’s what he usually does when a homicide call comes in. Not this time. “I made the decision to be with my family.”
Four days later, that led to another decision: After 20 years on the job, including four years quickly ascending the department ladder and helping to steer the department through a period of tumult and transition, Velleca plans to retire on Jan. 21. He informed Chief Dean Esserman of his decision this past Friday morning. He planned to inform his team of supervisors at a 10 a.m. meeting Monday in the detective division’s conference room.
Two weeks before that 1:30 a.m. call, Velleca had decided not to rush to another nighttime homicide scene. That time anyone could understand: His wife Lori was about to give birth to their first daughter, Jenni (pictured at the top of the story in her dad’s lap at their home).
The second instance signaled to Velleca that the time had arrived for a life change: Spend more time at home. Finally finish that criminal justice degree that got sidelined by a year of (to date) 130 shootings and 32 homicides. Let New Haven’s new police chief pick his top team.
“I’ve gone as far as I can go in the department,” Velleca, who’s 42, said in a relaxed interview at his Durham home Sunday. Though he has another six weeks on the job, the imminent release of day-to-day stress was already visible. “I don’t want to be one of those guys who have a problem giving up a position like that.”
He described the priority that a job like like assistant chief assumes in a person’s life. “You’re out on every murder. Every major incident your detectives go to, they should have their assistant chief. The family of the victim deserves to have [top brass] there. That’s the life of a detective no one sees — getting up in the middle of the night, working the case for days while you’re missing family functions and holidays.”
If he could no longer do that, Velleca concluded, then he should “step aside and let someone else do it. I spent 20 years and gave my all to the city of New Haven, the police department, the cops. Now I don’t want to shortchange anybody — my family or the community.”
Velleca’s departure could be the opening move in a larger reorganization of the department under Esserman, who began work last month.
Esserman said Monday that it is premature to say how he will fill Velleca’s or other positions.
“I’ll discuss this all with the mayor. My plan is to continue to listen and learn. I’m still doing one on ones with every captain, lieutenant and sergeant in the department along with meeting with the assistant chiefs every week. I’m getting to know the team that’s there,” Esserman said. He said Velleca “needs to be thanked by a grateful city for giving 20 years of service to the people of New Haven. He has been entrusted with some of the most important responsibilities in the department.”
Velleca praised Esserman for giving him the chance to figure out his next step. “[Previous Chief Frank] Limon got to pick his team. I was on that team. This is an important position; he [Esserman] should pick someone he’s comfortable with.” Velleca said he saw what happened years ago when the chief didn’t get to pick his deputy. “The chief and the assistant chief didn’t get along. All that really hurt was the rank and file patrol officers. It transcended the entire department.”
Thomas MacMillan Photo
Velleca at the scene of March 9’s triple arson homicide.
Over the past four years, a series of chiefs and other officials tapped Velleca for a wild ride of promotions and pressure-cooker responsibility.
The first tap came in 2007 from then-Police Chief James Lewis. Lewis arrived in town after the FBI raided the department’s narcotics unit and made corruption arrests. Lewis disbanded the unit — then decided Velleca was the man to reconstitute it. Velleca did. (Read about that here.)
Unlike a 2007 stop-and-frisk saturation campaign called “ID Net” and the department’s notorious “Beat Down Posse” of the 1980s, the reconstituted 15-person tactical narcotics unit (TNU) avoided random stops of people on the street, Velleca said.
“We didn’t grip and rip-roll into an area, shaking down everyone. We didn’t just roll in there. We knew who we were looking for. We had done an investigation. If there were 100 kids, we knew the one or two we wanted. The other 98 shouldn’t be bothered. It’s their neighborhood. They have a right to be there.”
In its first full year, 2009, the TNU executed close to 100 search warrants, made nearly 1,000 arrests, according to Velleca. He said he was proudest of a different statistic: It had zero citizen complaints filed against it. “The right people [to be arrested] know what they were doing [and don’t complain] as long as you don’t beat the shit out of them. You don’t pile a thousand charges on them to break their balls.”
An oversized TNU sticker greets visitors on the door leading from the garage to the inside of Velleca’s house. He had on a black TNU hoodie on during Sunday’s interview. His role in reviving the unit remains his proudest accomplishment.
Lewis also turned to Velleca after a Yale lab tech strangled a graduate student named Annie Le to death. They had a suspect, but weren’t ready to make an arrest. Lewis put Velleca in charge of keeping tabs on suspect Raymond Clark for days while investigators compiled to evidence for an arrest warrant. (Read about that here.)
In a conversation Sunday night, Lewis called Velleca his “most important” internal appointment in New Haven. He said if he were “starting another organization some place,” he’d seek to recruit him.
“He had to start from scratch [with the TNU] — redo the policies, get it up and running, pick the people.. He had to rebuild the credibility,” Lewis recalled. “I was always comfortable knowing he was handling it. He is a very focused guy. He would sometimes rub people the wrong way because he was so focused; we talked about dealing with other people internally and externally to get good teamwork. He always tried to improve. I was always real impressed with John.”
Lewis left town after 20 months. A new chief, Frank Limon, came into town. Like Lewis, he brought his own deputies.
One of those deputies, Assistant Chief Tom Wheeler, tapped Velleca in August 2010 to take over the Major Crimes Unit. That included overseeing the TNU, among other divisions.
The TNU, in concert with suburban cops and state and federal law enforcement agencies, spent a year compiling evidence against the city’s most notorious gang, Newhallvile-based R2. By the time they finished, more alleged dealers and shooters — 77 people in all, from street soldiers to the alleged capo — were arrested than in any other gang takedown in city history. (Read about that here.)
Under Velleca, the detective division also dusted off cold cases, and made this arrest in an 11-year-old murder.
Paul Bass Photo
Velleca announces Oct. 24 arrest of 13-year-old “Quelly” Banks’s alleged murderer.
Meanwhile, MCU went from a record of having solved two of the 22 most recent homicides in August of 2010, to a current 90 percent solvability rate, according to Velleca.
Wheeler said Sunday night that he credits Velleca with helping him reorient how the division investigates murders, focusing intensely on the first 24 – 48 hours; upping training; and mentoring young detectives in a division that had lost many of its veterans.
“I couldn’t have done it without him. He was my right hand,” said Wheeler, who ran the Chicago police department’s busiest detective division before coming to New Haven. (He now works as a senior policy adviser for the director of the Illinois state police.) “[Velleca] was knowledgeable. He had the integrity. He was as good as my best” lieutenants in Chicago. “[New Haven is] losing an asset when they’re losing John.”
Chief Limon then tapped Velleca this past April to serve as one of three new assistant chiefs. Velleca oversaw the detective division as well as major crimes. By the time Limon went AWOL this fall, Velleca had already been filling in as acting chief in his absences. Mayor John DeStefano turned to Velleca to serve as acting chief when Limon’s departure became official this October, until Esserman’s November arrival.
Esserman is the department’s fourth chief in four years, not counting the interludes in which Velleca and Stephanie Redding served in “acting” capacities. The turnstile, and a leap in murders this year, have left the department directionless at times and under pressure from both the inside and outside.
After Chief Lewis, his mentor, left town, Velleca was learning his new jobs largely on his own. Meanwhile, tensions surfaced between the cops and the state prosecutor’s office, and infighting grew inside 1 Union Ave.
“I rolled with that,” Velleca said of the challenges he took on. “Sometimes it was difficult. Sometimes people bristled. I was of the mind you do your job, that’s it. That’s what you owe the community. I never felt as if I needed to ask you to do a good report or investigation. That’s what you were paid to do.
“Some people didn’t like it. Some people appreciated it.”
Esserman has promised to start in a new era with a renewed commitment to community policing. Meanwhile, Velleca will begin a new era — as a dad, at a job in a quieter quarter with no 1:30 a.m. homicide calls (“I’ve had more than a few job offers” already, he said), and as an Albertus Magnus student finishing up his undergraduate criminal justice degree. If the professor asks the class at Albertus what it’s like to walk a beat, solve a murder, reorganize a narcotics unit, or oversee an urban police force, he might see a hand go up.
Sorry to lose him. Good luck chief!