Lower Chapel Gets Heard

From the third floor of the English Building Thomas Angelini took out his camera and recorded drug deals at the empty lot and among folks waiting for the bus on Chapel Street at Orange. Twenty pictures worth.

He sent them in to the police. Two weeks later, his crime-plagued stretch of lower Chapel has a new walking cop and district manager. And the department’s top brass showed up to strategize with worried merchants about what to do next.

The powwow took place at a special meeting of the the Downtown Wooster Square Management Team (DWSMT), held at Salon LULU — in the very space where the salon’s owner Angelini had taken the photos.

Angelini has been in business in New Haven for more than 20 years, for 13 in Wooster Square and for two at 839 Chapel.

A small group of drug dealers is scaring him and him clients, many of whom come in from the suburbs and would spend more time walking the area and spending money if the atmosphere were less threatening, he said ​“Seems like walking here includes being harassed from [some] people at the bus stop.”

The police have been hearing increasingly in recent months from merchants on Angelini’s block right off the Green.

In January, the owner of Nim’s Imports wrestled with an armed robber, an incident captured on video. (Click on the play arrow to watch.)

That incident prompted an cri de coeur from Angelini’s landlord, architect Robert Orr, published in the Independent, bringing to the surface festering complaints from others on the block burdened by crime. Nim’s alone had been robbed three times in 2012.

Angelini’s photo shoot followed. He sent his work directly to Chief Dean Esserman, who contacted him. Esserman, Assistant Chief Luiz Casanova, and new downtown District Manager Sgt. Tammi Means followed up with the merchants and agreed to attend Tuesday evening’s management team meeting.

The meeting began as a meet-and-greet. It developed into a serious yet polite forum for residents and business owners like Ben Berkowitz of SeeClickFix to air their specific issues and for Means and the beat officers she brought with her to respond.

Berkowitz’s building, at the corner of State on Chapel, has a growing loitering problem. An inebriated man recently made his way up to the third floor, and the vagrancy around the entryway has become more aggressive, he said.

“When you have citizens in a private space of the building blocking the entrance, that’s a problem. We need to see the walking beats there,” he suggested.

Means said that she has added another walking-beat patrol officer to the area. Assistant Chief Cazanova reported that hte department is in the process of hiring and training more officers. The department has also just purchased 20 bikes for patrol cops.

Means took out her notebook, jotted down Berkowitz’s complaint, and the two exchanged cards and contact info.

A woman who runs a check-cashing store on the same block called the loitering and panhandler situation even more serious. ​“It’s becoming dangerous to work where I work,” she said.

Tina Burgett, who lives on St. John Street, asked Means if she intends to have her cops patrol Grand Avenue, which is part of Wooster Square, and in particular the convenience store at Olive and Grand.

Means said yes, and jotted that location down in her notebook.

Acting as the temporary district manager for only the last six weeks, Means pronounced the meeting ​“definitely positive” and an opportunity to get to know the faces of the community.

As the meeting broke up, people lingered for Angelini to show the photos he had taken, stored on his computer. He pronounced the meeting ​“fantastic.”