She Followed Up. Again

The latest train traveler to get mugged at Church Street South couldn’t remember much about his attackers — at first.

Officer Elsa Berrios (pictured) had a hunch he might remember more the next day. She had a hunch he’d appreciate it.

She was right on both scores.

The victim was back home in New York. He thanked Berrios for calling. And he now remembered what one of his attackers wore: a red jacket and knit cap.

It was just one detail in a case that the police have yet to crack. But it mattered for two reasons.

One reason the Church Street South follow-up mattered: Police brass have pushed officers in recent months to make follow-up calls with victims a regular habit, in some cases to help solve crimes, in all cases to build community trust. Berrios hasn’t needed the push. The 19-year veteran patrol cop has long made follow-ups a part of her routine.

“Some people look at follow-ups [as primarily]: ​‘You have to solve a crime,’” Berrios said. Often the follow-up can have nothing to do with that, she said. It may involve referring a mentally ill person to the Connecticut Mental Health Center, for instance. Or just seeing how a victim is making out. ​“It makes a person feel comfortable, lets them know you care.”

“It was typical of her,” Captain Holly Wasilewski, until this week Berrios’ district manager, said of the Church Street South follow-up. ​“I have never had to remind her to follow up.”

Another reason this follow-up mattered: In this case Berrios’s follow-up call may not have solved the crime. But it did advance the investigation. Which can help solve a bigger problem: A rash of attacks on people, mostly train travelers, at the privately-managed, publicly subsidized Church Street South housing complex across from Union Station. At least five such robberies, some of them including attacks on the victims, have occurred there since Oct. 30, according to Sgt. Manmeet Colon, head of the police department’s robbery and burglary unit. Colon said police believe the same group of teens may be responsible for the attacks. Thanks to Berrios, investigators now at least have a lead to go on.

“Who Can Help?”

Berrios was a member of one of the early classes of cops recruited during New Haven’s first community-policing experiment, in the 1990s, when the department sought to hire more women, more blacks and Latinos. She had already had a banking career. Lessons she drew from there, and earlier from her family while growing up in the Hill, would guide her to make follow-ups a practice when she returned to her old neighborhood in uniform.

One day she accompanied another officer on a child-custody call. Berrios was there to translate; she often gets called to help with Spanish speakers.

They entered the home of a single mom with five children.

“I saw all the other kids there,” Berrios recalled. ​“This poor family had, like, nothing. The kids had to sleep on a mattress on the floor. No furniture in the living room. I didn’t see too many toys around.”

The custody complaint was taken care. For Berrios, the case wasn’t closed.

“I started thinking, ​‘This poor family. They need things. Who can I get to help me?’”

Normally she would ask her Hill colleagues to pitch in. This job seemed bigger.

She contacted then-Sgt. (now Assistant Chief) Anthony Campbell, who at the time ran the police training academy. Campbell agreed to have his cadets help gather and then deliver them to the family, whom Berrios was getting to know through return visits.

One day the cadets delivered food, blankets, curtains, and a little girl’s bed to the apartment. ​“I’ll never forget the faces of the kids when the recruits came in,” Berrios recalled.

“I didn’t grow up in the best [financial circumstances] myself,” Berrios said. Her family didn’t always have enough food; relatives regularly pitched in for each other to make sure everyone got fed. In tough times, when there’s no money for meat, ​“Puerto Ricans made this dish called arroz con leche—a rice soup with milk.” The family ate it often. ​“I won’t eat that now,” Berrios said.

The family lived in Fair Haven when Berrios was born at the former Grace-New Haven Hospital. The family returned to Puerto Rico for a while. It settled back in the Hill during Berrios’s teen years, when she attended and graduated, in 1982, from the old Lee High School.

Her late father, Jose Tomas Berrios, ran the Howard Market on Howard Avenue between Putnam and Carlisle. ​“In a quiet way,” Jose made sure his customers ate, even when they didn’t have money to buy food. He’d regularly pack boxes of sandwiches and drop them off at the former Columbus Avenue home of the Columbus House emergency shelter.

Berrios hasn’t had to eat arroz con leche as an adult. She began as a teller at the old Bank of New Haven, worked her way up to branch manager. She remembers how the bank’s president, Joseph Ciaburri, took an interest in every employee’s lives. Each month he’d take all employees who had birthdays to breakfast at the Quinnipiack Club. ​“He would sit with you, not at the head of the table,” and he would discuss the employees’ lives with them. ​“I thought: ​“Here’s the president of the bank getting to know us on a personal level. When they do that, what happens? People work for you.”

She remembered that lesson — the importance of making time for people — when she decided to make a career change, when she felt a calling to work ​“out on the street, not indoors.” A fellow employee noticed that Berrios had a knack for successfully investigating fraudulent accounts, and suggested she consider police work. Berrios attended a recruiting session, then signed on in 1995. The job took. She has particularly enjoyed patrolling terrain she knows from growing up, bumping into people she knows. She greets people with a lively demeanor, sometimes with playful sass. Like the girls who, upon learning her first name, exclaim: ​“Just like in the movie Frozen!” ​“I’m not the Ice Princess,” Berrios informs them. ​“I’m the Ice Queen. Let’s get that straight; it’s the real deal.”

On the beat, Officer Berrios remembered to make time for people like the mother of a 14-year-old sexual assault victim whose complaint she handled. A relative had assaulted the girl. Not just the girl, but the mother, took it hard. So Berrios made sure to check in once a week. The mother trusted her. She started telling her about harassing text messages she was receiving from the perpetrator. Because the perpetrator texted from a home in Hamden, the Hamden police would have to handle the case. Berrios arranged for the mother to file a complaint, then accompanied her to the Hamden police station to file it. The man was arrested again for the harassment.

Ambushed

It’s unclear whether Berrios’s follow-up will produce an arrest in the Church Street South case. It has definitely helped, according to Sgt. Colon.

The five Church Street South attacks have stuck out as a problem for Colon’s unit; muggings have been persistent at the slumlord-owned complex at a time when robberies have otherwise dropped 21 percent this year citywide.

Some of the attacks have been downright nasty. Like the 3:50 p.m. Nov. 4 attack on a Wooster Square man who cried out for help as teen muggers kept punching and kicking him, in full view of dozens of people, until a security guard ran across the street to rescue him. Church Street South teens attacked a Yale professor on his bicycle at 5:55 p.m. on Dec. 1, stealing his money and credit cards and driver’s license. A man was robbed and beaten at 8:31 p.m. on Oct. 30. Another attack took place at 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 25, when teens targeted an exchange student from Hong Kong; they took a MacBook Air, an iPhone 5, a passport, and credit card.

In general some of the teens are spotting people leaving or approaching the station while on cell phones, following them, then attacking them along with cohorts who had been hiding at Church Street South and waiting to spring, Colon said. The attackers then run and disappear into the concrete complex’s many open pathways.

That appeared to be the case in Nov. 5 mugging to which Berrios responded.

A 26-year-old Brooklyn man had arrived at Union Station from New York a little before noon. He started walking toward downtown to attend an event at Yale.

He saw two teens walking near him. He didn’t think anything of it, he later told Berrios. They disappeared into Church Street South.

The Brooklyn man turned right onto Church Street. He was carrying a black leather bag with long handles. Four teens emerged from an alley and grabbed him. They threw him down some metal outdoor stairs. He held fast to his bag, which contained an MP3 player, his passport, an identification card. One of the teens held him; the others punched him in his face and head. They bloodied his nose. They got the bag, then fled into the complex.

The victim yelled for help. Tenants came to comfort him. He retrieved his cell phone; he’d had it inside his jacket. He called 911. So did a tenant.

Berrios responded. She spoke with the bloodied victim. Paramedics cleaned him up. The victim hesitated to go to the hospital. He told Berrios his jaw hurt. ​“I’m OK. I’m OK,” he insisted. She noticed a bruise between his eyes, on his forehead.

“You should really get checked out,” Berrios told him. He agreed to go to Yale-New Haven.

Berrios stayed with him at the emergency room, discussed the incident. He said he couldn’t remember any physical details about his attackers.

Berrios phoned him the next day. ​“It’s something I always do. I felt really bad. He was a victim of a crime.” In addition to saying he appreciated her concern, the victim now recalled the red jacket and knit cap worn by one of the attackers.

Not a lot to go on. But something.

Usually detectives do the ensuing investigative work. Berrios decided to go view video surveillance footage from the area. She did find two teens walking by where the Brooklyn man had walked, one of them wearing the jacket and cap. (Pictured above.) She has a hunch who it might be. She has since made a point of dropping by the complex to keep an eye out for the suspect. No luck so far.

Sgt. Colon’s unit is, too. She said Berrios’s work definitely advances the investigation. More follow-ups to come.

Read other installments in the Independent’s ​“Cop of the Week” series: 

• Shafiq Abdussabur
• Craig Alston & Billy White Jr.
• James Baker
• Lloyd Barrett
• Manmeet Bhagtana (Colon)
• Paul Bicki
• Paul Bicki (2)
• Sheree Biros
• Bitang
• Scott Branfuhr
• Keron Bryce and Osvaldo Garcia
• Dennis Burgh
• Anthony Campbell
• Darryl Cargill & Matt Wynne
• Elizabeth Chomka & Becky Fowler
• Rob Clark & Joe Roberts
• Sydney Collier
• Carlos Conceicao
• Carlos Conceicao (2)
• Carlos Conceicao and Josh Kyle
• David Coppola
• Mike Criscuolo
• Roy Davis
• Joe Dease
• Milton DeJesus
• Milton DeJesus (2)
• Brian Donnelly
• Anthony Duff
• Robert DuPont
• Jeremie Elliott and Scott Shumway
• Jeremie Elliott (2)
• Jose Escobar Sr.
• Bertram Ettienne
• Bertram Ettienne (2)
• Martin Feliciano & Lou DeCrescenzo
• Paul Finch
• Jeffrey Fletcher
• Renee Forte
• Marco Francia
• Michael Fumiatti
• William Gargone
• William Gargone & Mike Torre
• Derek Gartner
• Derek Gartner & Ryan Macuirzynski
• Tom Glynn & Matt Williams
• Jon Haddad & Daniela Rodriguez
• Michael Haines & Brendan Borer
• Michael Haines & Brendan Borer (2)
• Dan Hartnett
• Ray Hassett
• Robert Hayden
• Robin Higgins
• Ronnell Higgins
• William Hurley & Eddie Morrone
• Racheal Inconiglios
• Juan Ingles
• Paul Kenney
• Hilda Kilpatrick
• Herb Johnson
• John Kaczor & Alex Morgillo
• Jillian Knox
• Peter Krause
• Peter Krause (2)
• Amanda Leyda
• Rob Levy
• Anthony Maio
• Dana Martin
• Reggie McGlotten
• Steve McMorris
• Juan Monzon
• Chris Perrone
• Ron Perry
• Joe Pettola
• Diego Quintero and Elvin Rivera
• Ryan Przybylski
• Stephanie Redding
• Tony Reyes
• David Rivera
• Luis & David Rivera
• Luis Rivera (2)
• Salvador Rodriguez
• Salvador Rodriguez (2)
• Brett Runlett
• David Runlett
• Betsy Segui & Manmeet Colon
• Allen Smith
• Marcus Tavares
• Martin Tchakirides
• David Totino
• Stephan Torquati
• Gene Trotman Jr.
* Elisa Tuozzoli
• Kelly Turner
• Lars Vallin (& Xander)
• Dave Vega & Rafael Ramirez
• Earl Reed
• Arpad Tolnay
• John Velleca
• Manuella Vensel
• Holly Wasilewski
• Holly Wasilewski (2)
• Alan Wenk
• Stephanija VanWilgen
• Elizabeth White & Allyn Wright
• Matt Williams
• Michael Wuchek
• Michael Wuchek (2)
• David Zannelli
• Cailtin Zerella
• Caitlin Zerella, Derek Huelsman, David Diaz, Derek Werner, Nicholas Katz, and Paul Mandel
• David Zaweski