(Updated) After their community experienced two homicides in 16 hours and five in eight days, African-American leaders called on the city to bring in state troopers to patrol the streets.
Over 150 people gathered in front of the Dixwell Mini Market on Dixwell Avenue on Sunday afternoon for a rally in response to the recent spate of murders in the city’s African-American neighborhoods. Religious and political leaders spoke from a podium in front of the store where 19-year-old Tywan Q. Turner was shot multiple times on Saturday night.
Turner, who was from Hamden, became the city’s 11th homicide victim of 2010. His shooting, at 7:57 p.m., occurred just one block away and several hours after 29-year-old Kenneth Thomas was shot dead at 4:16 a.m. on Saturday morning. Thomas was shot in the neck, according to Lt. Julie Johnson. Turner was shot in the chest.
The two incidents were the latest in a string of homicides, including two last weekend, and a body found in a trash can on Thursday.
“These homicides are tragic and unsettling,” Mayor John DeStefano said Saturday night.
“The idea that these men would inflict this level of violence upon each other and their communities is intolerable. In the coming hours and days police and the community must redouble their efforts to just stop this behavior.”
Thomas MacMillan Photo
“Enough is enough!” chanted the group assembled on Dixwell Avenue at 2 p.m. Sunday for the rally. Rev. Scott Marks, the organizer of the rally, led the crowd in that and other chants. Speeches from church leaders and former and current elected officials were punctuated by gospel songs. Marks was joined by pastors from local African-American churches, Newhallville Alderman Charles Blango, State Rep. Pat Dillon, and former Mayor John Daniels.
“We’ve got a problem. We have a problem. … Our sons and daughters are dying on the street,” Marks said. “We make a request for the state troopers to come in.”
Marks repeated his call for state police intervention several times throughout the event. He led the crowd in a chant of “Bring the state troopers!”
“We have a city out of control!” he said.
Marks’ request was seconded by former Mayor Daniels when he took the mic. He brought up the September 2009 murder of Yale grad student Annie Le. That murder was solved within days because of the leadership of the Yale university president, who called on “every law enforcement in the world” to help solve the crime, Daniels said.
The response to Le’s murder contrasts sharply with with the response of city officials to the recent murders, he said. “Their silence is deafening!”
Daniels urged aldermen to put in a request to the mayor to ask the governor to send state troopers to New Haven, “to help patrol until this city can come up with a comprehensive plan” to deal with the violence.
In 1990, when he was mayor, Daniels once asked then-Gov. William O’Neill to send state troopers to New Haven in the wake of an outbreak of street violence. O’Neill complied. However the move was controversial. Some argued that it showed a lack of faith in city cops; or that it circumvented community policing by bringing in cops who don’t know the people or the streets here.
More recently, state police took over the city’s narcotics squad after it was disbanded in the wake of a corruption scandal, until it was reconstituted with a new team and a new mission.
On Sunday night, Mayor John DeStefano said he doesn’t think it would be appropriate to call in state police.
“The city needs to police itself,” he said. That’s why a new batch of rookie cops was graduated last week and why his budget for next year includes even more officers, DeStefano said.
Unlike city police, state police don’t have the time to make relationships with New Haven communities, the mayor said. Deploying state troopers here is thus not the best use of resources.
State resources would be helpful in prisoner reentry, support for prosecutors, and speeding up the forensic processing of guns seized as evidence by police, DeStefano said.
The city needs to continue to look at its allocation and placement of police officers, DeStefano said. He noted that, “There was a police officer on the other side of the building,” when Turner was shot on Saturday night.
“Police will continue to be out there in significant numbers,” DeStefano said. The city will be working to “engage with the community” on near and long term issues associated with gun violence, he said.
The city’s new police chief, Frank Limon, took office last Monday. Three homicides have occurred since then. He was not at the rally Sunday; he has not held any press events or issued public statements so far amid the violence this weekend. He did launch a weekend campaign called “Operation Corridor”to saturate high-crime neighborhoods — like Dixwell — with extra cops. The mayor confirmed on Sunday night that Saturday night’s shooting occurred while cops were in the parking lot in the rear of the convenience store.
At Sunday’s rally, Alderman Blango introduced another theme that was taken up by the speakers: the importance of parenting. Parents need to watch their children more closely, even search their rooms if necessary, Blango said. He mentioned the television ad that used to ask parents, “Do you know where your child is?”
“I know where my child is,” said Cassandra McCoy when she took the microphone. “My child is at the Beaverdale Cemetery.”
McCoy’s son Melvin McCoy was killed in 1992. She also encouraged parents to be active in their children’s lives.
Ben Hunter, who runs a summer basketball league in New Haven, said he spoke at the Thursday funeral of Radcliffe DeRoche, who was shot while riding a four-wheeler on Easter Sunday. Things have changed since he was a young man in New Haven, Hunter said. It used to be that people would talk to the police after a murder. Now after bullets fly, “nobody seen nothing!”
The rally ended with a prayer and the announcement of a follow-up meeting on Thursday at 6 p.m. and the Elks Club on Dixwell Avenue. Marks called on the mayor and the chief of police to attend that meeting.
“I have no reason not to meet with community members,” said Mayor DeStefano on Sunday night. He said his attendance at meetings depends on scheduling and making sure that the format of a meeting is useful one.
He said a 1 p.m. city hall press conference is scheduled, to talk about the recent violence.
“It’s been horrible for everybody,” he said.
Alderwoman Alfreda Edwards, who lives across the street from the house on Sheffield Avenue where a murder victim was found in a trash can on Thursday, said after the rally that she and Alderman Blango are planning to meet with the chief on Monday to speak with him about police response to the murders.
Asked if bringing in state troopers was a good idea, Edwards said, “They’re going to have to do something, but what it is I’m not sure.” She mentioned block watches, Guardian Angels, and parents as parts of an answer to the violence.
As for state troopers, “I’m not sure that’s the solution,” she said.
Honda Smith, co-chair of a Democratic Ward Committee in West Rock, said she thinks the annual Freddie Fixer parade should be canceled. The parade, scheduled for the third Sunday in May, is a celebration of the African-American community. It has a history of coinciding with street violence.
LEAP Grad
According to one officer’s account, Tywan Turner was chased into the Dixwell Mini Market and then shot dead. Police officers were behind the store at the time of the shooting, but the gunman or gunmen got away.
One commenter to this article (see below) recalled working with Turner in the LEAP youth program. He called him a “vibrant young man.”
A WTNH report showed a man being arrested at the scene. However, according to Lt. Johnson, that arrest was unrelated to the homicide.
Kenneth Thomas, 29, was shot at 4:16 a.m. on Saturday, near 43 Charles Street.
Turner and Thomas are the 10th and 11th homicide victims already in 2010. New Haven reported 13 homicides in all of 2009.
This is also the second consecutive double-homicide weekend.
Five people have been killed in New Haven in eight days, all in the black community.
On Thursday police found a body wrapped in plastic inside a garbage can in a back yard on Sheffield Avenue.
Lt. Johnson said Sunday that police have identified that homicide victim. They’ve not yet released the name because they haven’t yet reached family members, who are out of state, to notify them first.