gothamciticafe.com
In the wake of a fatal shooting outside Gotham Citi, New Haven is looking to speed up plans to change how it polices the rowdy downtown club scene.
Mayor John DeStefano said this week that his administration is looking to move quickly to create a “virtual” new policing district comprised of nightclubs that draw big crowds on weekend nights and all let out around the same time after midnight, often creating mayhem in the area around Crown Street.
Last weekend a man was shot to death in a parking lot outside Gotham Citi after a fight that began in the club.
“We’re very aware of what happened at Gotham this week,” DeStefano said. “It has put an additional level of urgency” on proceeding with the new plan.
The plan will probably include creating a separate club district detail with its own supervisor separate from the district manager, he said. “I think of it as an 11th district.” It will feature one supervisor in charge of the extra duty work and “interacting with clubs on a weekly basis.”
The nightclubs currently fall under the broader downtown/Wooster Square police district.
DeStefano said he also hopes to put into place as soon as possible a dedicated fund that nightclubs will pay into to fund extra duty work for the district. Participation will be voluntary. “There’s incredible self-interest for everybody here to work together” on keeping the district under control, he said. He said his staff is working on the details.
The new plan is related to recently passed legislation that requires organizers of major entertainment events to pay for extra police work required as a result. As part of that requirement, the city is working on an agreement with bar owners that would require them to make annual payments into a fund to pay for overtime cops for the club district, said Rob Smuts, the city’s chief administrative officer. The city hopes to raise $300,000 a year, he said. That money would add to the $200,000 the city already pays annually for a bar detail. It would fund a “more robust bar detail” of overtime cops, Smuts said.
The city hopes to pay for some of the cost of the new detail with increased parking enforcement by the cops assigned to the club area, where cars are often parked illegally at night, Smuts said. “We’re going to be giving out a lot more tickets.”
Smuts said details of the plan will be announced next week.
More overtime shifts would not require concessions from the police union, Smuts said. But the city will need to ask the union to allow a sergeant to be assigned to oversee the new, more robust bar detail, he said.
Sgt. Louis Cavaliere, head of the police union, said he would oppose the creation of any new mini-district as a violation of contract. He called the idea “smoke and mirrors” and “window dressing.” It’s an attempt by Police Chief Frank Limon to take credit for a bar detail that has been around since the 1990s, he said.
During their first three years out of the academy, rookie cops are regularly assigned a special 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. shift covering the downtown night club area, Sgt. Cavaliere said. That’s allowed under the union contract. What’s not allowed is the creation of a dedicated unit and supervisor to cover the area, he said. “It can’t work according to our schedule,” he said.
Smuts said the new “more robust” bar detail would be overtime cops and not a separate, dedicated unit.
“It’s never going to work and I’m never going to agree to it,” Sgt. Cavaliere said.