Car Break-Ins Bedevil Beaver Hills

Benny Lieblich’s 8‑year-old daughter had just gotten out of the back seat of the family’s 2017 Honda Pilot when joy-riding teens hopped out of a stolen car and hopped in.

They drove away, with Benny Lieblich in hot pursuit.

That was one of dozens of automobile break-ins and thefts that plagued Beaver Hills in recent weeks, with similar numbers in other neighborhoods across town.

Lieblich and his neighbors are demanding action from politicians and police.

“Our politicians have hamstrung the police department, which allows these criminals to run around the city in stolen vehicles and put people’s lives in danger,” Lieblich said. ​“The whole summer has been like this …

“The politicians need to be held accountable for the quality of life problems that we’re having in New Haven now. It’s hard to be interested in moving to a place, settling down, buying a house, starting a business if your car is going to be stolen, your children are going to be unsafe on the street.”

One hundred nineteen motor vehicle thefts were reported citywide in the four weeks leading up Sept. 1, a 68 percent increase over the same period in 2023, according to the most recently published Compstat statistics. Before the number had been falling in 2024: The number of reported motor vehicle thefts citywide is still 23.6 percent lower than in 2023. (Larcenies from vehicles have risen 35.3 percent.) But the recent spike has reignited concern about a still-prevalent problem.

Teen car thieves have plagued cities across the country and have been posting their exploits online, especially since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Journalist Andrew Callaghan earlier this year earned the trust of New Haven and Bridgeport-area members of the ​“Kia Boyz” about why and how they operate. (Watch his report here or at the bottom of this story.)

Mayor Justin Elicker told the Independent that the police are using ​“every tool available to them” to address problem. He noted ​“limitations to our power” such as a policy banning most car chases and a criminal justice system that aims not to lock up troubled young people for long but in his view doesn’t offer alternative ways to help them straighten out their lives.

Police Chief Karl Jacobson said he understands Lieblich’s and his neighbors’ deep frustration. He said he is working to take action within the department’s constraints, including a deep staff shortage: The department is currently 87 officers below budgeted strength, he said. Up to another 29 officers may leave the department by the end of the year thanks to planned retirements as well as other departments poaching city cops, Jacobson said. He reported that the lack of a new police contract, and the move of the negotiation process to state arbitration, has increased the trend of officers looking to leave. The NHPD’s targeted approach has helped cut the number of violent crimes, including homicide, despite the staff shortage; tackling quality-of-life crimes, by contrast, often requires having more physical bodies in uniform on the street. 

Jacobson said he personally joined officers the Sunday before last trying to track down teens driving recklessly through town in stolen Kias. They followed the teens into Hamden, where Hamden officers joined the effort; the teens bailed from a car, and one of them was arrested. He is 14 years old, according to Jacobson.

Jacobson said undercover officers have been working to recover stolen cars and catch thieves. On Saturday night they succeeded in arresting a 16-year-old who had stolen a Kia, he said.

The Chase Was On

Lieblich described recent encounters with teen car thieves Sunday in between serving lunch customers at Ladle & Loaf, the restaurant he and his wife Ephrat have operated since 2019 on Whalley Avenue.

Before arriving at the restaurant Sunday, Lieblich said, he discovered someone had again broken into his Honda overnight and rummaged through it. But it was still there.

Teens did make off with the vehicle outside his Bellevue Road home on Monday, Aug. 19 at 7:27 p.m.

Lieblich’s family was stopping by the house for a moment before he planned to head to the restaurant to finish the dinner shift.

His daughter was the last to exit the car. Just then teens drove by in two vehicles (which would later be determined to have been stolen).

The teens popped out. One got behind the wheel of Lieblich’s Honda Pilot. They started pulling away in the three stolen vehicles.

Lieblich saw them. In his slippers he ran out after them. (See above video taken by a neighbor’s security camera.) The slippers fell off.

Lieblich’s father-in-law was in another car. Lieblich hopped in. They chased the teens through the neighborhood. They lost them at the Crescent Street roundabout.

Lieblich and his father-in-law ventured in Newhallville, where they thought the teens appeared to be headed. They flagged down an officer at W. Division and Dixwell. Lieblich, barefoot, exited the car to report the incident. The officer promised to let the Beaver Hills district cops know about it.

Back in the neighborhood, Lieblich discovered the thieves had ditched his Honda on Colony Road and taken another car. Other neighbors were reporting similar incidents to the police. Officers showed up.

The officers told them that the Newhallville cop had not forwarded the report about Lieblich’s incident, Lieblich said. They also said the department does not have the manpower to investigate these incidents; and officers are not allowed to chase fleeing drivers in most cases under city policy. (The reasoning includes that such chases increase the chances that cops, bystanders, or targeted drivers will be injured or killed.) The officers noted that the car wasn’t damaged, his daughter wasn’t hurt.

“The police were like, ​‘Oh well. She wasn’t actually kidnapped.’ I was beyond pissed off.”

Neighbors shared notes: Lieblich said 15 told him of having their cars either stolen or broken into during the recent spate. The already active Beaver Hills WhatsApp crackled with more info-sharing and outrage. Lieblich began compiling a list of neighbors who reported thefts and break-ins. The same pattern was reported in other neighborhoods: According to the latest Compstat update, Newhallville residents reported 31 car thefts over four weeks, and Westville and Fair Haven and the East Shore district 16 apiece.

Assault With Batteries

Lieblich was pissed off anew when teens in a stolen red Hyundai stopped in front of his house again on Sept. 1 at 4:03 p.m. A neighbor yelled; Lieblich heard him and ran out. He started running at the teens, who abandoned his car and sped off in another stolen vehicle.

Three minutes later they returned. Other neighbors were outside. The teens started throwing batteries and flashlights and screwdrivers at Lieblich, he said. They missed.

“I decided I had enough. I was gonna chase them out of the neighborhood.”

He hopped in the car and drove after the teens. Adrenaline flowing, he said, he thought it was a good idea at the time.

He changed his mind ​“when they turned and tried to hit me head on.” (“Later on when I thought about it, I thought, ​‘That was kind of crazy.’”)

Neighbors called police. Hours later, they flagged down a patrol officer on Colony Road. The officer told the neighbors that the police feel they have their hands tied. The police have too few officers available to chase too many crimes. If they do occasionally arrest teens for crimes like this, they’re released within as little time as hours of arrest, according to police. And they’re rarely prosecuted. 

Lieblich said he and a neighbor offered to help the officer pin in the teens still driving around the neighborhood in stolen cars. The officer responded that the police aren’t allowed to engage civilians in police work, Lieblich said.

But that prompted officers to find and stop the teens. The teens had an illegal gun on them. So officers made an arrest.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” said Beaver Hills neighbor Abe Vail, who said his car was recently stolen and abandoned in a parking lot after a joy ride, with $5,000 in damages. ​“It feels like there’s nothing the city’s doing policy-wise to fix it.”

Lieblich and neighbors pressed the issue last week in a meeting with top Beaver Hills cop Sgt. Jonathan Lambe and Ward 28 Alder Tom Ficklin. They’ve complained to the mayor as well. Lieblich said they’re not willing to ​“do nothing” and just accept the situation.

“Our children are playing outside” while the car thieves roar through stop signs, he said. Thieves ​“don’t care if a a 10-year-old girl is playing with her friend.”

Alder Ficklin urged neighbors to attend Tuesday’s monthly Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills community management team meeting. It begins at 333 Sherman Ave. (Neighborhood Housing Services) at 7 p.m. as well as on Zoom (Password: 927260).

Mayor Elicker noted that the city has received state funding to expand job opportunities for young people. He noted the work by a ​“119k Commission” to craft policies supporting rehabilitation for arrested young people. He also noted that ​“a very small number of young people” are responsible for the majority of crimes like those plaguing city neighborhoods.

Jacobson said he knows much more needs to be done in the meantime. He said he’s speaking with the chiefs of the Yale and Southern Connecticut State University police departments about forming a task force to pool their staffs to tackle the problem, potentially along with suburban departments, similar to the way they have addressed ATV and dirt-bike problems. New Haven’s not giving up, he said.