Paul Bass Photo
Rain pelted down in the darkness as Milton DeJesus wrestled in a puddle with a felon who refused to let go of his loaded gun.
DeJesus wasn’t in East Haven anymore. Boy was he glad.
Some people might prefer to be other places at 4:20 a.m. Doing something else. Like sleeping, maybe. Or watching TV.
Some other people in DeJesus’ line of work — wearing a police badge and keeping the public safe — might prefer to ply their trade in other places. Like a quiet suburb.
DeJesus tried that. He left New Haven’s police force to take a job as an East Haven cop. He lasted six months.
Then he hurried back to New Haven, suited back up, and returned to his overnight patrol beat in the Dwight and West River neighborhoods.
Within weeks, DeJesus ended up in the chief’s office — to be thanked personally for taking two loaded illegal guns off the street in separate incidents within his first two months back on the job.
“Sometimes you have to step out of the box,” DeJesus concluded, “to realize what you really have.”
“What Am I Doing Here?”
DeJesus, who grew up in the Hill’s Columbus West housing project and is now 36, joined New Haven’s force in 2008. He brought a mixture of energy and keen peripheral vision (read about that here) to the job. He especially got to know the pulse and the people of Dwight and West River in the overnight hours.
Then East Haven came calling. After a federal investigation found that town’s department was systematically harassing, beating, and framing Latinos and then lying about it, a new chief went looking for cops of color. DeJesus was recruited. He took the job last October. He thought it might be easier on his family.
DeJesus declined talk specifically about what happened next, no matter how many times or how many different ways a reporter asked the question. He did say the East Haven job was a bad fit from the start.
“The first week I said to myself, ‘What am I doing here?’” he recalled. It just got worse after that.
“I was taught differently here [in New Haven] how to do police work, investigative-wise,” he said. “A Red Sox ballpayer will not do well as a Yankee player. That team [East Haven] wasn’t right for me. I wasn’t meant to be there. I didn’t like the vibe. It wasn’t me”
In addition to unspecified “headaches,” DeJesus basically just missed New Haven, he said. And he was bored.
“The people there treated me nice. It’s much quieter. It was too slow for me. I like working constantly.
“I was homesick. I missed the guys in New Haven. I missed the district.
“I felt I was making more of a difference [in New Haven]. More community-based policing. You interact more with people here. You get to know more people. People trust you more here.”
He did take the lead on one murder arrest in East Haven. More often, he found himself spending as long as four to five hours at a stretch doing not much at all.
He called New Haven Assistant Police Chief Luiz Casanova.
“I told him we’d take him back in a New York minute,” Casanova recalled. “He’s not one of those guys who sit idle and wait for something to happen. He goes and shakes the trees. He’s dedicated and very passionate about what he does. He loves New Haven.”
By the end of March, DeJesus was back on C Squad patrolling Dwight and West River from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. And, on one of his first nights out, wondering why a 49-year-old man was walking slowly along Chapel Street toward Kensington Street at 3 a.m.
A Polite Gun-Toter
“He threw his hoodie over his head real quick” when he spotted DeJesus. He avoided eye contact with the officer. He kept walking.
DeJesus drove his cruiser around the block. He parked. He got out at a spot where the man was approaching. The man had taken off his hood again.
“How you doing?” DeJesus asked him.
He asked the man’s name.
“What are you doing out this late at night?”
“I’m not doing nothing. I’m taking a walk,” the man replied. “I have lower back pain.”
Happen to have any drugs or weapons on you? DeJesus asked.
Funny he should ask.
“I have a gun in my back,” the man replied.
DeJesus thought the man was kidding. He checked anyway. And retrieved a loaded .9mm handgun. It didn’t belong to the man.
DeJesus searched the man further. He said he found 249 morphine pills and 248 oxycodone pills. He charged the man with six felony drug and weapons violations. The man gave him no trouble.
A Wigged-Out Gun-Toter
That’s more than DeJesus can say for the 34-year-old man he ended up wrestling in a puddle in the rain a few weeks ago.
DeJesus recalled the incident Thursday in a return visit to the scene of the incident, the front walkway to Haven Market, right where Chapel forks onto Derby. That’s the same spot where someone had shot a man named Qusaan “QB” McKoy to death at 3:45 a.m. a month earlier.
As he spoke, DeJesus peripherally kept an eye on three familiar troublemakers hanging out by a “no trespassing” sign at a house next door. His shift hadn’t started yet. So instead of a police uniform, he wore a Mister Rogers T‑shirt reading “It’s all good in the hood.” Neighbors still recognized him; one woman leaving the store spoke with him in Spanish to tell him about loiterers causing trouble at a nearby building. At another point in the conversation, a strung-out woman emerged from the store, stepped to the side of the door, and vomited onto the ground. When she finished, DeJesus offered her help. She and her male companion said it wasn’t necessary.
Then DeJesus returned to recalling the puddle/wrestling story.
It began around 4:20 a.m. DeJesus was driving down Chapel onto Derby Avenue at the time, responding to a report of a man who had been choking a woman. The man was reported to be hiding in bushes.
Now DeJesus saw a man standing by the sidewalk, under a sign for the store, right near a soggy memorial display for QB McKoy (pictured). The man was wet, looked disoriented. Was he the choking suspect?
“Let me see if it’s him,” DeJesus thought to himself.
He stopped. “Hey, my man,” he remembers saying, “can I talk to you?”
The man wasn’t up to talking. He mumbled unintelligible answers to DeJesus’s questions.
The man reached to his side. DeJesus grabbed the hand, felt a gun handle in the man’s waistband. DeJesus pulled out the gun.
The man grabbed it, too. And wouldn’t let go.
DeJesus pushed the man to the ground. The man stayed up on his hands and knees. The two wrestled for the gun. The man crawled to the street. The two ended up in a puddle, DeJesus placing his body weight on the man’s back.
“He was high on something. He had a lot of strength,” DeJesus recalled.
By this time, DeJesus’s uniform was soaked. With his left hand, DeJesus radioed for backup. Officer Lars Vallin arrived with his canine sidekick Xander.
“Stop resisting,” Vallin and DeJesus urged the man. “Show your hands.”
“He was in another world,” DeJesus said. Even the presence of Xander, a German Shepherd, didn’t stop him from trying to free his hands and keep the gun.
Xander grabbed the man’s arm with his mouth: Wrestling match over. The officers handcuffed and arrested the man, who lives in Newhallville and has a string of criminal convictions, including for felony burglary and larceny, dating back eight years. They held onto the hand gun, a silver and black Jiminez Arms .9mm loaded with 10 rounds. (The man remains behind bars on a $75,000 bond. He has not yet entered a plea on the weapons and interfering charges filed against him. He turned out not to be the suspect in the choking case.)
Given where the man was at that time of night, given what he was carrying, he was likely “out there to do something,” DeJesus reasoned. DeJesus may have saved someone from getting robbed. Or shot.
He felt he had made a difference.
And, he said, “I felt like I was home.”
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
• Dennis Burgh
• Anthony Campbell
• Rob Clark & Joe Roberts
• Sydney Collier
• Carlos Conceicao
• Carlos Conceicao (2)
• Carlos Conceicao and Josh Kyle
• David Coppola
• Roy Davis
• Joe Dease
• Milton DeJesus
• Brian Donnelly
• Anthony Duff
• Robert DuPont
• Jeremie Elliott and Scott Shumway
• Jose Escobar Sr.
• Bertram Ettienne
• Bertram Ettienne (2)
• Martin Feliciano & Lou DeCrescenzo
• Paul Finch
• Jeffrey Fletcher
• Renee Forte
• Marco Francia
• William Gargone
• William Gargone & Mike Torre
• Derek Gartner
• Derek Gartner & Ryan Macuirzynski
• Jon Haddad & Daniela Rodriguez
• 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
• Steve McMorris
• Juan Monzon
• Chris Perrone
• Ron Perry
• Joe Pettola
• Diego Quintero and Elvin Rivera
• Stephanie Redding
• Tony Reyes
• David Rivera
• Luis & David Rivera
• Luis Rivera (2)
• Salvador Rodriguez
• Salvador Rodriguez (2)
• Brett Runlett
• David Runlett
• Allen Smith
• Marcus Tavares
• Martin Tchakirides
• David Totino
• Stephan Torquati
• Gene Trotman Jr.
• Kelly Turner
• Lars Vallin (& Xander)
• John Velleca
• Manuella Vensel
• Holly Wasilewski
• Holly Wasilewski (2)
• Alan Wenk
• Stephanija VanWilgen
• Matt Williams
• Michael Wuchek
• Michael Wuchek (2)
• David Zannelli
• David Zaweski