nothin Westville Fights Crime With Ideas | New Haven Independent

Westville Fights Crime With Ideas

Markeshia Ricks Photo

Neighbors hash out crime fighting ideas at Edgewood School.

Westville neighbors went looking for solutions to a recent uptick in crime in the neighborhood. They found them by picking each other’s brains instead of their pockets.

More than 50 neighbors gathered to do that at a community meeting held Wednesday night at Edgewood School.

Ideas included having a citizens’ patrol much like those credited with helping clean up parts of the Edgewood neighborhood back in the day; bringing back the neighborhood soups; and turning on porch lights.

All ideas were welcomed even if they made people uncomfortable.

The meeting was organized by neighbor Jonathan Gordon and Ward 25 Alder Adam Marchand as a way to respond proactively to a wave of crimes that have alarmed both Westville newcomers and lifers alike.

Alder Marchand addresses some of the way the city’s tight finances are impacting police.

Ideas flowed after neighbors listened to about 45 minutes of people asking questions of Marchand and new Westville top cop Lt. Rose Dell and sharing anecdotes about repeated car break-ins, stolen cars, and theft.

One woman said prior to moving to Westville, she’d lived in the Smoothie building in Wooster Square and Downtown across from the Green. Living in Westville has been the most unsafe I’ve ever felt,” she said. She said she’s afraid to come out of the house and walk her dog.

Ouch.

It was tough to hear for a walkable family neighborhood that is proud of its reputation as among the safer” ones in the city.

Jonathan Gordon joined a group in the center of the room that included longtime Westville residents Janis Underwood, Susan McCaslin, Tom LoRicco and Westville Village Renaissance Alliance’s Lizzy Donius. His first suggestion was one of the evening’s most provocative: a citizens’ patrol.

Westville top cop Lt. Rose Dell talks about some of the tactics the police are taking in the neighborhood.

Neighbors would volunteer to attach a yellow dome light to their vehicles and patrol the neighborhood in shifts, keeping an eye out for suspicious activity and call the cops.

That’s a very risky idea,” Underwood said. You don’t know what state of mind someone might be in. There has been a huge spike in addiction to opioids.”

LoRicco saw the idea as more of a block watch on wheels. McCaslin raised concern that it could open the door to vigilantism.

Underwood said she liked the idea that Gordon had offered at a previous community management team meeting to install blue lights similar to those downtown around Yale University. But that costs a lot. (Fair Haven recently did it.)

Gordon had directed neighbors early in the meeting to a possibly more economical solution, a phone application called Noon Light. It offers a similar quick way to reach the police department in the case of a crime, assuming that a thief doesn’t take your wallet and your iPhone X. Lt. Dell said she tested it and it works, though it’s not a direct line to police. It also has a free trial and then a $2.99 a month fee.

Donius said she often walks the neighborhood because she lives and works in it. Instead of formal patrols, she suggested that neighbors make a point of getting out of the house.

It’s dark, and there’s not a lot of people on the street,” she said. I would feel better if we all were out more.”

(Amen from this reporter, who lives in the neighborhood and is often walking around at night. My suggestion: Turn on your porch light to help illuminate dark streets that also badly need tree trimming.)

We have block watches. Couldn’t we beef them up?” Underwood suggested. And how about an emergency response system of sorts that alerts neighbors if there is police activity in an area? she added.

Some neighbors had complained early in the meeting about the quality of police response. Underwood noted that she has seen an increased police patrol, and she lives on a dead end street.

Donius cautioned people to have some perspective about what has happened in the neighborhood. She noted that in Ward 25 (the Westville flats, between Edgewood Park and the elevated Upper Westville area) there had been two street robberies in recent months. That is as violent as crime has been in that part of the neighborhood. The gun incidents at Roosevelt’s bar in Westville Village (technically in Ward 27) are fairly localized to that part of the neighborhood and generally involve only people who patronize that business, she said.

Our police district is a much broader area,” she said. That means that when big increases in crimes, including violent crimes, are reported, they cover a district that includes West Rock, West Hills, Westville Village, Amity, Beverly Hills, Westville, and Upper Westville. Also, because violent crime is so rare, one or two more of a particular crime than usual makes the increase appear dramatic.

McCaslin said she likes an idea that Underwood had offered at a previous meeting: designating safe houses. She said an extension of that idea would be for groups of neighbors to make it a point to go to each other’s doors and introduce themselves and share details about when they’re home. That way people in the neighborhood would know that they can knock on a neighbors door if they need help.

Donius seconded that idea, especially for the neighbor afraid to leave her home.

She’s new and she’s our neighbor. We should talk to her,” Donius said. I have two kids under 12 who run across the street and down the block and I don’t think about them for hours at a time because I know the neighborhood. And the neighborhood knows my kids.”

Neighbor Jonathan Gordon, center, listens to feedback.

Gordon brought the conversation back to the citizen patrol suggesting instead a private security guard paid for by Ward 25 neighbors.

We could hire an armed security guard to do the job,” he said. That takes the burden off the neighbors.”

He made the suggestion because the police these days have a staffing shortage, especially for patrol cops. Because of concerns raised by an uptick in reported thefts and car break-ins, Dell has been given the police department’s only D Squad officer (who works from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m.) Gordon noted that the staff shortages are only expected to get worse given the city’s financial outlook and the problem of officer retention. So even that officer is likely to be reassigned at some point.

A paid security person would need to be someone local who knows the neighborhood, Underwood said.

I think we’re underestimating our own power,” she said.

She noted that neighbor Kate Bradley and those who live on West Rock Avenue were successful in stopping prostitution on their street simply by calling each other and en masse going out on their front porches nightly and showing that they could see what people were doing.

Guess what?” Underwood said. It was no longer convenient for them to do their business there.”

Dell said that there is nothing to stop neighbors from creating a citizen’s patrol. She said she would encourage any such patrol to view itself as an extension of the block watch and not the city’s police department; and to ensure anyone neighbors hire privately has the right training. That person could even be an extra duty officer.

Longtime Westville resident Kate Bradley reports out from her group.

When neighbors reported out at the end of the meeting they had many similar ideas about reactivating block watches, working with the city to get trees trimmed. Gordon’s group was the only one that offered the citizen patrol and private security detail solution, which drew audible grumbles of no” in parts of the room.

Another group comically suggested that neighbors set bear traps but also engage in shaming the hell” out of building owners who take on tenants that refuse to be good neighbors. There also was a suggestion from a neighbor who is originally from Mexico that people deploy whistles. The neighborhood could have signaled whistles that let people know if they should stay in their house or call for help. A curfew for children under 18 was among the solutions offered, too.

Dell said she thought the meeting was great and exactly what the shared responsibility” for policing should look like.

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