Update: ​“Cap” & Crespo Will Stay On Beat

(Updated Thursday) Orlando Crespo doesn’t want you to know his age. How he dresses. How he finds photos of criminal suspects. Where he eats lunch. What he does for fun. But he does want people to know that he would miss taking guns off New Haven’s streets with Craig Burnett.

The two have spent the past two years doing that as members of the police department’s Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU).

They got good at it. The pair has recovered 25 out of 30 stolen or otherwise illegal firearms the unit has obtained during arrests and searches just in the past six months, according to supervisor Sgt. Karl Jacobson.

That partnership had been slated to end this Thursday. A last-minute intervention from the chief will keep the partnership together, the cops learned late Wednesday.

Burnett has worked for the unit on loan from the state Department of Correction. Amid budget cuts, DOC decided to bring Capt. Burnett back to the Whalley Avenue jail as a shift commander.

“This is tough for us,” Jacobson who runs the six-member CIU, said last week. (Then he said he learned late Wednesday that, after this story originally was published, DOC has agreed to allow Burnett to remain with the unit.)

No one felt that more than Detective Crespo, a 14-year veteran of New Haven’s police department.

“No one,” Crespo said, ​“is going to replace the Black Hammer.”

More on that nickname in a few moments.

But first an explanation of how Crespo came to feel that way.

IQ

Burnett was an original member of the CIU when it formed in 2013 to provide intelligence for multi-government-agency task forces hunting down violent gangs and tracking individual killers, shooters and dealers. The CIU’s intelligence helped lead to the seizure of more than 100 guns and the federal arrests of leaders of a drug-dealing gang called the Red Side Brims allegedly responsible for 11 murders. Crespo joined the CIU soon after it formed,

Burnett for a while returned to DOC after CIU members ​“begged” Chief Dean Esserman to prevail on DOC to send him back.

Soon, Burnett and Crespo found they were teaming up on cases. And that they had a lot in common.

Both grew up in Bridgeport.

Crespo played sports and fashioned himself a street poet while being raised in a single-parent household in tough projects like Father Panik Village and Marina Village. He became a dad at 18 and served in the Air Force in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. He wanted to become a cop and landed a job in New Haven. Which felt just like Bridgeport.

Burnett grew up in a more middle-class area in Bridgeport’s North End, raised by a mom who was a nurse and a stepfather who sold insurance. He too sought a law enforcement career. He thought he’d become a cop and instead got hired first in corrections. He worked his way up, from guarding prisoners to taking over the department’s gang unit.

In that capacity, he gained the trust of informants behind bars. He gathered lots of intelligence police could use to make arrests and prevent violence.

Crespo, too, gained a reputation for cultivating informants, out on the street. ​“You have to have a good reputation” to develop those relationships, Jacobson observed. Sometimes arrestees actually thank cops for arresting them. Some turn to cops they trust when they decide to share information. Some look to trade information for less prison time. Some, perhaps seeking to go straight once they’re out, look to earn some informant cash and help make their streets less violent.

Inside the third-floor CIU office at 1 Union Ave., Burnett and Crespo discovered their inside-prison and street intelligence was combining to help make cases. They were teaming up more and more. They tended to work 12-hour days. Even when DOC stopped covering overtime.

“We’re both the same — hungry,” Burnett said. ​“Workaholics. We like to get guns off the street. We just click.”

“We’re nonstop,” Crespo added. ​“We can do multiple cases at once.”

“He’s like me,” Burnett said. ​“You can’t clock out.”

And they believe in acting swiftly on information.

Crespo: ​“If you don’t jump on the information right away …”

Burnett: “… it gets old.”

Crespo: ​“You lose it …”

Burnett: ​“Especially guns.”

So when a confidential informant (a.k.a. a CI) called Burnett to tell him someone was selling illegal guns in Beaver Hills, Burnett got right on the phone to Crespo. Even though it was 11 p.m.

Whittlesey Commerce

Burnett had known the CI when the CI was in jail. A large man with a feared street rep, he had provided reliable information in the past. He had genuinely gone straight, according to Burnett, but had a history of buying guns on the street. Out of jail about three months, he had been helping the cops with illegal weapons investigations.

Burnett and Crespo agreed to hop on the information when they arrived at the office at 8 the next morning. There, Crespo checked a real estate database to see who lived at the house on two-block Whittlesey Avenue that the CI identified as the sale location. He found out who lived there. The man identified by the CI was among them.

A search of police records revealed he had prior convictions for larceny, drug sales, and weapons offenses. Through what Crespo called ​“other investigative measures” — a favorite phrase — he found another photograph of the suspect.

Burnett called the CI and arranged to meet with him later that morning. ​“CIs are always ready when you call them,” he said.

The two officers went out together. That’s standard procedure: The presence of a second officer makes the secret rendezvous safer. It also supplies witness testimony if questions emerge later about the transaction.

Where did they meet up?

“Undisclosed location,” revealed Crespo.

In what kind of car? A car.

Crespo did divulge that the car had tinted windows.

As usual, Burnett did the driving. Crespo took notes.

The CI hopped in the back seat. He directed them to the three-family house on Whittlesey. He pointed out the suspect’s white pick-up truck; Crespo jotted down the license plate.

The CI looked at a photo Crespo had printed out of the suspect. ​“That’s him,” the CI affirmed.

They dropped off the CI, thanked him.

Though they had amassed crucial information quickly, it would take four months long to arrange buys, gather more evidence, then produce a warrant and enough supporting data to win the OK from a state prosecutor to submit a search warrant to a judge, all while working on many other cases at the same time.

By Oct. 8, Crespo and Burnett had the warrant in hand. They assembled other CIU members along with patrol cops agents from the federal Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives bureau. Equipped with bullet-proof vests, 12 law-enforcement agents assembled outside the Whittlesey Avenue house.

It was 6 a.m. The CIU didn’t want to push a search any later, for fear of running into kids waiting for school buses.

The lead CIU man was, as usual, Detective Martin Podsiad. He knocked on the front door. No answer.

The officers used a battering ram to open the front door. They went upstairs to the second floor, where the suspect lived. Podsiad knocked again. Again, no answer.

Again, the officers again used a battering ram. They entered the apartment and announced their presence. Guns drawn, they fanned out through the apartment as a member of the crew video-recorded the search.

They found the suspect in bed with his girlfriend. He didn’t put up a fight.

In fact, he told Jacobson and Podsiad where to find three guns inside ​“old-fashioned” luggage in another room, Crespo recalled. They found ​“bows and arrows and samurai swords” there, too. ​“He was a collector.”

The suspect, Jeremiah Albright, pleaded guilty on April 12 to two charges of felony illegal-weapons possession. He received a sentence of two years in jail and 66 months of parole.

And three deadly weapons potentially destined for gangbangers’ hands — two revolvers and a semi-automatic handgun — were off the street.

More Rides Along

The past six months saw Crespo and Burnett replicate that search and seizure two dozen more times, according to Jacobson. They took a 9‑millimeter handgun following a chase on March 10. Another five guns, including a stolen .40-caliber, from 452 Eastern St. on March 15. Two guns from 95 Clinton Ave. on March 31. A pistol along with heroin from 177 Chapel St. on April 20. Three guns and 1.4 pounds of weed from 128 Circular Ave. in Hamden on April 29. A stolen handgun from 310 Exchange on May 20. A shotgun from 77 Sylvan Avenue on June 10.

To cite some examples.

Supervisor Jacobson said these arrests have contributed to New Haven’s five-year decline in violence: ​“Every gun we take off the street stops an act of violence.”

Crespo and Burnett made the cases in conjunction with the rest of the CIU — Podsiad, Joshua Kyle, Paul D’Andrea, and Jacobson — and with members of the the DOC intelligence and the ATF and other agencies, including Hamden police.

In each case ​“Cap” and Crespo worked as a team at the case’s core.

At least ​“Cap” is what Crespo and the other CIU members call Burnett most of the time.

Then Crespo and Burnett saw Ride Along 2. Crespo had a new nickname for his buddy: The Black Hammer. Who in turn dubbed Crespo the Brown Hammer.

They got a good laugh about that one while sitting for an interview in the scheduled closing days of their partnership. Then Crespo waved off any more personal questions. They might have some good laughs, but for this detective, getting illegal guns off the street is serious — not personal — business. Though conducting that business with a partner like Cap is all that much more rewarding.

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

• Shafiq Abdussabur
• Craig Alston & Billy White Jr.
• Joseph Aurora
• James Baker
• Lloyd Barrett
• Pat Bengston & Mike Valente
• Elsa Berrios
• Manmeet Bhagtana (Colon)
• Paul Bicki
• Paul Bicki (2)
• Sheree Biros
• Bitang
• Scott Branfuhr
• Bridget Brosnahan
• Keron Bryce and Steve McMorris
• Keron Bryce and Osvaldo Garcia
• Keron Bryce and Osvaldo Garcia (2)
• 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
• Steve Cunningham and Timothy Janus
• Roy Davis
• Joe Dease
• Milton DeJesus
• Milton DeJesus (2)
• Rose Dell
• 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)
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• Ray Hassett
• Robert Hayden
• Patricia Helliger
• Robin Higgins
• Ronnell Higgins
• William Hurley & Eddie Morrone
• Derek Huelsman
• Racheal Inconiglios
• Juan Ingles
• Paul Kenney
• Hilda Kilpatrick
• Herb Johnson
• John Kaczor & Alex Morgillo
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• Amanda Leyda
• Rob Levy
• Anthony Maio
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• Steve McMorris
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• Joe Pettola
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• Stephanie Redding
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• Luis Rivera (2)
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• Salvador Rodriguez (2)
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• 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
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• Daophet Sangxayarath & Jessee Buccaro
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