20 New Walking Cops Meet The Neighbors

One used to ride a horse on the beat. Another took a shot at professional baseball. A third worked as an account manager.

Now they share a new mission: Getting to know Fair Haveners and keeping their neighborhood safe.

Two of them are Fair Haven’s new walking-beat patrol cops, Lizmarie Almedina and Eduardo Leonardo. The third is Lt. Darcy Siclari, who has taken over as the district’s top cop from Lt. Herb Johnson, who has been promoted to run the police department’s Bureau of Identification.

The three have been hitting the pavement in Fair Haven to introduce themselves to people. They showed up for a formal meet-and-greet at last Thursday night’s monthly neighborhood management team at the Blatchley Avenue substation, where neighbors also wished a fond farewell to Lt. Johnson.

Similar meetings have been taking place all over town this month: Twenty rookie cops have completed their field training and begun assignments as walking cops in the city’s 10 districts, a cornerstone of community policing. They’ve been formally meeting neighbors as well at this month’s management team meetings. (Another class of recruits is on the way in coming months, helping to refill walking-beat slots that declined due to a wave of department retirements.)

And Siclari is one of two new neighborhood top cops. As of Tuesday another popular district manager, Lt. Vincent Anastasio, handed over the reins of the East Shore to Sgt. Wilfredo Cruz. Anastasio is retiring.

As an officer, Siclari once patrolled downtown on a horse in the department’s mounted unit. ​“It was awesome,” she said. ​“No one felt threatened by a woman on a horse,” and neighbors felt more comfortable coming up to her and ​“engaging.” But she also policed on horseback. Once, called to break up a school fight, she rode towards the altercation with others in the unit. ​“The kids saw the horses coming and they ran,” she said, laughing. Sometimes they left the horses tied up at the Crown Street Garage and went to get lunch downtown. ​“It was a lot of fun,” she said. She subsequently worked in the police department’s records division before assuming the Fair Haven command.

Siclari decided to change her profession more than 17 years ago while working as an inside salesperson at a manufacturing company in Milford. Her brother, a West Haven police officer, helped her get in shape and prepare for the written tests. She said she is looking forward to sustained interactions with community leaders and business owners. As a patrol officer, she worked ​“call to call,” instead of thoroughly getting to know a community.

She does not speak Spanish. Almedina and Leonardo both do, and said the language is crucial to their work. “[Storeowners] tend to talk to us more. They tell us, ​‘It’s too cold; come inside,’ and they notice when we’re not here,” Almedina said. She said she has wanted to be a police officer since she was 20. It took her nine years to switch from a career as an account manager.

The mother of a 12-year-old son, Almedina said she wants to work with middle and high school students, perhaps through the Student Resource Officer (SRO) program, which places cops in schools to mentor, prevent crime, and provide security.

Since Jan. 21, from Tuesday through Saturday, afternoon through late at night, Leonardo and Almedina have walked around Fair Haven, getting to know business owners and church staff. They made a drug arrest at public housing unit Farnam Courts, and were called in after a robbery in front of a nightclub at the corner of Grand and Blatchley Avenues.

Leonardo took a year off from college in 2004 to play baseball semi-professionally in the Dominican Republic. He had ​“always wanted to be a baseball player” who couldn’t focus in college academically until he ​“got it out of [his] system.” After almost a year rotating tryouts for different major league teams, he realized it was time to go back to his studies, finish his degree and start a career.

Before applying to the police academy, Leonardo investigated insurance fraud for a private company. As a private investigator, he had to be ​“covert. Now he loves being able to interact with people in the community. A West Haven resident, he figured New Haven was a good place for someone who could speak Spanish.

“Hopefully, now that I’ve seen your faces here, when we see you out there, you’ll say hello,” Leonardo said to the management team and neighbors Thursday night.

Before formally saying farewell to neighbors Thursday night, Lt. Johnson played a last self-produced ​“state of the district” photo and video montage, summing up his last two years as district manager. In the video, Johnson warns potential bad guys: ​“If you’re a criminal coming to Fair Haven, I have one thing to say: ​‘Y’all don’t really want it now. Boom!’” as Nelly’s ​“Here Comes The Boom” starts to play.

Johnson’s self-described ​“boss at home,” New Haven police Capt. Julie Johnson, showed up at the farewell meeting with their two children, Jenna and Daniel, just in time to cut the cake. She said she brought the children so they could see their father being celebrated as a community-connected cop ​“especially recently, when they get a bad rap for being police officers.”

“It’s kind of bittersweet for him to leave,” she said. ​“He would have stayed here [in Fair Haven] for the rest of his career” if he hadn’t been promoted to run the Bureau of Identification.