Markeshia Ricks Photo
A man had threatened to shoot not just his ex-girlfriend, but his two sisters and a young child at the house.
Officer Joseph Perrotti’s shift was beginning when that call came in. He went to meet the women and learned that the former girlfriend had become an “ex” that same day.
“It was actually kind of like lover’s quarrel,” Perrotti recalled. “This woman had been dating this guy on and off for many years. She broke up with him that day. I guess he was upset about the break up.”
The man allegedly was so upset that he came to the house, assaulted the now ex-girlfriend, and got into a fight with his sisters, who tried to intervene and help the former girlfriend.
“He ends up leaving, but when he left he said, ‘I’m gonna shoot everybody. I’m going to shoot the house up,’” Perrotti said.
The sisters were scared. The man has an extensive criminal history, and after the fight, he had returned to the scene with a handgun.
Fellow officers in the Dixwell neighborhood were already out canvassing the area looking for the man. Perrotti, who is 28 and has been on the job almost two years, collected additional information from the women at the scene and relayed that back out to other officers.
One of the key pieces of information that Perrotti obtained from the victims was the phone number of the man’s new girlfriend. It would play a crucial role in locating the man.
“Initially, I called it asking where [the man and new girlfriend] were,” Perrotti said. “They didn’t want to tell me.”
The officers didn’t give up. They knew the man from the neighborhood. They considered him dangerous.
“Hey, be extra careful if you run into this guy,” one officer made a point of phoning Perrotti to warn him. “Because he had an assault with firearms charges and robbery charges in the past.”
In addition to the new girlfriend’s phone number, the women had also told Perotti where they thought the new girlfriend lives at in Hamden.
“We went out there [with Hamden police] and tried to find [the house], but it was the wrong house.”
They hit a dead end, or so they thought.
Perrotti said the women were scared and upset that the man might make good on his threats. One of the sisters asked that an officer escort her home to make sure she got there without harm.
“I was putting out the broadcast like, ‘Hey, let’s try to find this guy,’” he said. “And something said, ‘Just give him another call.’”
So Perrotti called the phone number again. And the wanted man “called [back] and he actually started talking to me.”
Mr. Telephone Man
“I wasn’t there,” the man told Officer Perrotti. “I wasn’t there. I was here all day.”
“I just kept trying to ask him, ‘Can you come meet me and we can talk about this?’” Perrotti recalled. “He didn’t really want to, but after some dialogue, he said, ‘Yeah, I’ll come.’”
The man told Perrotti he’d come meet him in about half an hour. Thirty minutes went by. The man didn’t show. So Perrotti called him back.
The man picked up. “Hey, where are you?” Perrotti asked.
“Oh, I’m 10 minutes away,” he said. Another 10 minutes went by. Perrotti called back again. “Hey, are you coming or not?” he asked when the man picked up a third time.
The man grew suspicious. “Why are you so eager?” the man asked. Perrotti simply told him he wanted to talk to him. Sensing that man might be looking for an excuse to give him the slip, Perrotti backed off a little and suggested that they meet the following day. Again, the man agreed.
So the next day, Perrotti called the man. Once again, the man answered the phone.
“He’s like, ‘Ah man, I forgot. Can I come meet you at 6?’” Perrotti recalled. “I thought he was just going to give me the normal [runaround]. Because we get this a lot where we say, ‘Hey come meet with us,’ they say yes and just never show. So I thought that I was going to have to go the write-a-warrant route.”
Perrotti wanted to avoid that route; it’s harder to find a person once a warrant is issued. Especially in cases like this, in which the man was no longer staying with his ex-girlfriend and was no longer welcome at either of his sisters’ homes. Given that officers had gone to Hamden to try to locate his new girlfriend’s home, he might conclude that that wouldn’t be a good place to hide either.
“I also wanted to get him quickly because they were scared,” he said of the sisters and the ex-girlfriend. “It was an imminent threat, and I didn’t want to wait for the warrant and wait for me to find him.”
To Perrotti’s surprise, this time the man showed up at the Dixwell Police substation on Charles Street.
“Even [the suspect], when he first met me, said ‘I’m sure you looked at my record,’ and something like, ‘I know you know who I am.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I was shocked you were coming.’”
Perrotti presented the charges he was facing — felony risk of injury to a child, three counts of felony threatening in the first degree, third degree assault and three counts of breach of peace in the second degree, which are misdemeanors. “I think at that point we’d talked a little bit and he knew I wasn’t playing around.”
The man denied that he’d committed any of the alleged acts, but he went into custody without incident. He has since been released from custody on a $50,000 bond, and is slated to appear in court next Tuesday at 10 a.m.
The skills Perrotti’s been using since he started working in Dixwell paid off. “I think I’ve always had pretty good communication skills, and I think over time, being a police officer, you understand how to gauge people,” he said. “I knew when to give and when to take with him. I kind of had the feeling that he wasn’t going to come that night, so I said, ‘Let’s try tomorrow.
“I think all the police officers use them on a day to day basis,” Perrotti said of the quick thinking and negotiating he used with the man. “I just feel like with more time and more experience it’s getting better.”
Perrotti, who is originally from Ansonia, said he always wanted to be a police officer. He chose to pursue a career in New Haven because he wanted to work in an urban environment.
“It’s fun,” he said of the job. “I wanted a city with great diversity, and I feel like in New Haven you have everything. It’s just a great city.” He said he would like to one day work with the department’s SWAT team. He said arrests like this one keep him invigorated on patrol.
“There’s going to be challenges and difficult days,” he said. “Making arrests like this where you truly made people feel safe at night and where they feel they don’t have to worry — that’s the reward. That’s what makes all those tough days and challenges worth it.”
Read other installments in the Independent’s “Cop of the Week” series:
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