Allan Appel Photo
Across the street from a murder spot, Stacy Spell showed beginner Tyisha Walker how bishops move at an angle and castles along straight lines.
It was Saturday’s sunny afternoon in West River. Spell, a retired New Haven cop, was out playing chess right in the middle of the square at Derby and Norton across from the Dunkin’ Donuts where two shootings( including one homicide) have occurred since December. Spell was taking on a new mission: using new tools, from rooks to trash bags, to keep his neighborhood from being checkmated by crime.
“Once we take ownership, we can address the crime problem,” Spell said.
The neighborhood has seen a recent spike in drug-related crime. In December a murder took place at the nearby eatery. In mid-February two people were shot as bullets flew at the same location.
Spell and Walker and about a half-dozen neighbors had just finished a two-hour clean-up by tying up six bags of litter, which included lots of discarded liquor bottles, two marbles, and a hub cap.
Spell decided to keep the marbles.
While periodic clean-ups have been occurring in the area for years, the troubled neighborhood had not seen public chess matches.
Ever.
Spell recently became chairman of the West River Neighborhood Services Corporation (WRNSC). He vowed to “take back” the neighborhood, to use the chess terms that he often employs.
“While our crew is out here, [people] are not doing the drug dealing,” he said.
He pointed out the casual manner in which a young man dressed in gray had recently been at work perhaps 20 yards from the chess match in front of Mother’s Restaurant.
“There are two young men practicing their entrepreneurial skills, with the wrong product, in front of us. He did it right in front of me [before]. Now they know I’m watching.
Since he’s a chess lover, Spell has decided on that game as one alternative option for the neighborhood. It’s competitive in a way that may appeal to young men. The pieces are at war, as it were. But it’s safe, a make-believe war.
So Spell plans to be playing in the spring and summer every Saturday. Regularity is key, he said.
“The main thing is modeling,” added Spell, a 27-year police veteran who has lived for three decades in the neighborhood. “I’m trying to mobilize people, not just twice a year [for the cleanups], and I’ll be out here every Saturday. We’re going to occupy the space.”
On the clean-up that preceded the chess, landlord’s agent Jason Basilicato (pictured) stopped to pitch in and praise the initiative. That gratified Spell.
But Basilicato wasn’t his primary audience.
Spell ultimately wants to have sitting across from him at the chess board not only Tyisha Walker but the young men who are “poisoning our community.”
He said hopes the chess in the coming weeks and months will attract such kids and who will eventually sit down opposite him to play a game.
Spell came to the West River neighborhood in 1978 back when New Haven cops had to live in the city. He’s been here ever since.
Since retirement he’s put in many hours as a volunteer with the Brotherhood Summit, at the Wexler Grant School, and at New Haven Reads, where he still tutors.
Now he’s dedicated to using whatever it takes, even bishops, towers, castles, and kings and queens made of wood or plastic, to “retake” West River, following up on initiatives launched by his hard-working predecessor, Kevin Ewing.
John Fitzpatrick, who is now Spell’s vice president at the WRNSC, is helping to revitalize the arrow-head park with the great eagle statue at Winthrop and Chapel.
Springtime plantings are coming there and to a “peace park” that the WRNSC helped to inaugurate last September on Ella Grasso Boulevard between Frontage and Legion.
Spell said that this spring the Urban Resources Initiative will help revitalize a small park at Derby and the Boulevard, where last Sept. 11 Spell and a crew of 55 Yale students made major headway on that day of service.
Chess on the little square is Spell’s priority. He doesn’t care how many people come or how long that it takes.
The WRNSC meets every fourth Tuesday of the month at the Barnard School at 6:00 p.m. Next meeting is March 22, and then April 26.