When two men leapt out of the swerving car she’d been following through Dwight, Detective Karen Bell (pictured) chased after the bigger one on foot, caught up to him for a fight in the middle of Kensington Street, and managed to wrestle his handgun from him and throw it in a snowbank behind her. At a police department awards ceremony, she wanted to thank other people.
“I’m very appreciative of the community of my colleagues voting for me,” said Bell at Sunday’s police department 2006 Awards Ceremony at Anthony’s Ocean View out on Lighthouse Road, where she received a Medal of Merit, the second highest department honor awarded to three officers who “in the line of duty performed an outstanding act risking personal hazard to themselves.”
Bell called her mid-street feat “hard to talk about, because in a way that incident has affected me professionally and personally.” To Bell, it was just doing her job. “I wouldn’t say I was scared,” she said. “That’s what we’re trained to do.” But she admitted she was “very excited” to be receiving the Medal of Merit, and gave thanks again to her partner and colleagues.
With an easy 1,000 police people and family members filling the tables of Anthony’s, it was a day of thanks all around — from elected officials to captains to chiefs to officers to husbands and wives, and from everyone to the cops and civilians receiving awards for making New Haven’s neighborhoods safer.
“Looking at today’s list of awardees, it’s a who’s who in our communities,” said Chief Francisco Ortiz, recognizing not just recipients of honors for outstanding service to the department like Lt. John D. Smith and Officer Brian T. Donnelly, but those heroes like Frank Redente of Fair Haven, Lenora Moore-Turner of Dixwell and Curlena McDonald of Dwight working independently to make the city’s neighborhoods stronger and safer through block watches, community events, and programs for youth. Chief Ortiz didn’t leave out officers’ family members: “With every phone call, it’s a gamble. They didn’t sign up for this like you did,” he said.
Thanks flowed back in the other direction, too.
“The police has gotten much better since they started making it a point to listen to the community,” said Lenora “Lil Mama” Moore-Turner, the Dixwell district recipient of a Civilian Award. She said the department had been supportive of her community events in Dixwell, sending officers in for dialogue with neighbors.
Moore-Turner said she was glad for a day of recognition of those like Officer Shafiq Abdussabur, recipient of a Certificate of Commendation.
Abdussabur said he assumed he was being honored for his recovery of a gun at Grove and Temple thought to be a part of a pattern problem of Asian-descent Yale students robbed at gunpoint, he said. Abdussabur (shown at the ceremony with his son Ismail) had interrupted one of these incidents and chased down the offender at gunpoint until the weapon was dropped, and “after that, the robberies stopped,” Abdussabur said.
No thanks, finally, went to the New Haven Register for a story run the same morning under the headline “Police OT also fattens pensions,” on what it contended were the swollen benefits and overtime pay of Connecticut cops.
“What it didn’t talk about in that article is the blood and sweat of time away from our families,” said Col. Lynch, who called himself “very angry” over the piece.
In his welcome, Captain Stephen Verrelli agreed that “what’s most interesting is what’s not in the Register story,” citing the sweat, sacrifice, and hazard police face daily. “And lastly, why shouldn’t we make a buck? Baby needs new shoes, and we earn it!”
