“Sausage” made a promise to Quinnipiac East neighbors: He’ll bring his Guardian Angels over as early next week.
Sausage, head of Connecticut’s Guardian Angels chapter, made the promise at a Ward 12 Democratic Committee meeting Wednesday night. The meeting was exploratory in its purpose, but Sausage was all action;. He said he hopes to set up a citizen’s foot patrol in the neighborhood as early as next week.
(Angels members use one-word nicknames, rather than their real names, in public.)
Some Guardian Angels began patrolling and trying to establish a solid local chapter in New Haven’s Edgewood neighborhood last year. There was talk (a press conference) this summer about possibly doing the same in West River. This would be their first foray on the east side of town.
The Ward 12 committee’s co-chairs, George Pige and Tina Jendrewski, met Sausage at Police Chief James Lewis’ swearing-in ceremony last month. Upon discovering that he grew up on Quinnipiac Avenue, they invited Sausage to meet with community members on an informational basis.
“We’re not trying to start a chapter of the Guardian Angels,” said Page at the meeting’s outset. “But we feel that some of the things that they do, some of the things we might be able to find out from them, should help us, either to recognize problems or to give us an idea of what we can do.”
The Guardian Angels are an unarmed volunteer patrol force which claims to have chapters in 30 states and 15 countries. In addition to New Haven, the Connecticut chapter says it has teams in Hartford and South Norwalk.
Sausage, along with another Angel named “Cobra” and a 17-year-old trainee, arrived an hour into the meeting, just as organizers were starting to worry that they weren’t going to show. He said the Angels have been working with kids, talking to neighbors, and patrolling the streets to deter crime, especially in the Winthrop Avenue area. “We get a good response, even from the kids, just by being there,” he said.
Sandy DePoto (pictured), who lives on Roosevelt Street, wanted to know about legal limitations on what Guardian Angels can do, and how they interact with professional law enforcement.
“I can’t go to a guy’s house and arrest him,” Sausage said. But Angels do carry handcuffs, and they can make citizens arrests and hold offenders until the police arrive.
He related a recent incident in which he pulled over an erratic driver. Finding the driver and passenger too drunk to stand, the ook the keys and offered them a ride, he said. When they tried to start a fight with him, Sausage said, he handcuffed the two men and called the police.
When it comes to apprehending robbers or drug dealers, he added, Angels must have hard evidence. “We have to make sure.”
A former marine who is now retired, Sausage said he spends “every hour of every day” working on how to make communities safer. He coordinates patrols, works on youth engagement, and trains new recruits what he described as ‑to-hand combat.
When it comes to working with youth, he said, Guardian Angels try not to involve law enforcement too much. “If you start calling the police on these kids, they don’t want to listen to you,” he said. “We try to work with the kids.” He said he’s been talking with Yale about keeping some of their dining halls open at night for youth programs.
Wednesday night’s discussion touched on issues that neighbors had raised before the Angels arrived, like the importance of creating new block watches in the neighborhood and strengthening existing ones
Jerry Celotto (pictured with Cobra) stressed the importance of giving kids recreational opportunities to keep them off the streets. Page said the community is actively working with representatives from the Board of Education to open up school facilities in the evenings. He’s also working on a youth bicycle safety program.
After the meeting, Sausage said that he plans to get a foot patrol in the Quinnipiac neighborhood by next week, and that he’s looking to attend more community meetings in the coming months to see how the Angels can best serve different neighborhoods.
Page remained cautious, stressing that he is more interested in learning from the Angels than in necessarily engaging them directly. “We’re here to get information,” he said. “We’re here to find out what we can do.”
But Jendrewski seemed impressed by reports that a Guardian Angels presence in a neighborhood can dissuade the kinds of problems residents have been living with, from drug dealing to garage break-ins to reckless driving. “If your presence could save a life over here,” she said, “you are an angel.”