(Updated) Rifles are on their way, along with police dogs.
New Haven’s new police chief, James Lewis, has had a chance to take a good look at the ragged department he’s inherited for a year and a half with a mission to whip it into shape. Among his conclusions: His officers are underarmed.
He said in an interview in his third-floor office at 1 Union Ave. Monday that he plans to order rifles to supplement the handguns that most of his officers carry on the job. An exception: Walking beat cops will carry only handguns and will not be issued rifles.
(Added, 2:54 p.m.): “The rifles will supplement the handguns. They’ll be kept secured in the vehicles” of officers on patrol, Lewis said.
In his previous posts running police departments he made the same move, Lewis said, to enable his officers to meet threats from ever-better-armed wrongdoers as well as to protect the public, and the cops themselves, on the unusual occasions in which they’re required to shoot. He ordered AR-15s for the Pomona, Calif., force, he said. He currently has New Haven cops looking at what kind of rifles to order here.
Click on the play arrow above to watch him address the issue as well as describe a time in his previous job when he had to use his rifle.
“Some people see that as offensive,” he said of cops carrying rifles. “The fact is a long rifle is much more accurate than a handgun.” They can hit longer-range targets with more accuracy — which is why, he said, you never see reports of accidental police shootings with rifles. Only with handguns.
He’s planning to replicate another move he made in his previous chief positions: instituting a canine unit. New Haven used to have a couple of bomb-sniffing dogs, but that was it. Lewis wants “patrol canines.”
“Historically they got kind of a negative connotation because of how they were used in the ’60s for crowd control,” Lewis said of police dogs. Today’s police dogs are trained to “bark and hold,” not “bark and bite,” he said. “They don’t bite you as often.” It might take a team of officers an hour to clear a building, he calculated; a dog can do it in 10 minutes, and can better sniff out people who are hiding. Dogs can also track lost children and search for bombs and narcotics.
Lewis was asked whether rifles and canines will give his cops a less friendly, more military image on the street, intimidating people instead of earning their trust.
“We have to convince the public,” he responded. “If you were to have a shooter with an assault rifle on top of a building or even in the middle of the Green, and the police officers could not adequately respond to that with a handgun … Does a citizen want them to adequately respond to that danger, or do they not? I’m not sure that that’s a military response” as much as a “professional” response.” Lewis called “pretty slim” the odds of a cop hitting a target from 75 – 100 yards away with a handgun. The odds increase of hitting an innocent person.
Not Nick
On that question, and others, Lewis sounded in the interview like the polar opposite of the last New Haven police chief who shook up the department and made great news copy with his plainspoken, opinionated remarks: Nick Pastore, who ushered in community policing in the 1990s.
Like Pastore, Lewis came to the job with a change mandate. Pastore’s mission was to bring community policing to a force known for brutality, insensitivity, and an inability to get a handle on drug gangs. Lewis — who’s here temporarily from his home in Wisconsin — has been charged with implementing suggestions by an expert panel to bring order, supervision, and accountability to a system wracked by corruption arrests and mismanagement.
The 58-year-old Lewis is enjoying a honeymoon period in New Haven since his arrival last month. Cops on the beat welcome his “straightforward” style. (That word has become appended to him almost like a middle name.) He’s been riding neighborhoods with district managers and generally reassuring the rank-and-file that while he’s implementing structural changes, he’s on their side. He has also won raves at meetings with neighbors on management teams; even citizens who have disagreed with some of his points have found him open, direct, and reasonable. Projecting an image of being able to take charge, he has benefited from a sense that the department and some city streets have spun out of control and required a firm leader.
Pastore, who served from 1990 to 1997, sparked controversy within the department for taking on cops accused of misconduct and criticizing police culture as too macho and reactive. (Tellingly, a new display of photos of past chiefs in the department’s third-floor administrative suite is missing Pastore’s picture.) In his first month on the job, by contrast, Lewis has already cemented a reputation as a “cop’s cop.”
Pastore worked his way up through the department. That meant he knew whom he needed to push out to make the changes he wanted, and he benefited from a lifelong network of contacts. It also meant he had inevitably been involved in the department’s historical intramural feuds, especially in 1977 after he blew the whistle on the department’s decades-running illegal wiretapping operation. Lewis has come in with the disadvantages (not knowing the lay of the land) and advantages (no baggage) of an outsider. He previously ran departments in Bakersfield and Pomona, Cal., and Appleton and Grand Chute, Wisc.
The two chiefs’ differences extend to firearms and the drug war. (Click on the play arrow to watch Lewis discuss the drug war.)
Pastore didn’t carry a gun, even when he confronted drug dealers in the middle of the night or responded to riots. He said guns scared him; he said he didn’t want his cops to look like soldiers. Any time an officer fired a gun, he met with him or her to discuss what alternatives might have been available.
Pastore eschewed street-level drug sweeps. He argued that street-level dealers merely ended up back on the street, while police failed to use intelligence and the trust of neighbors to put away higher-lever operatives. Pastore deemphasized arrests, calling them a sign of failure in solving problems. Lewis said both tactics need to be used: longer-term investigations, and occasional sweeps to relieve neighborhoods, even temporarily of danger and out-of-control behavior.
When Pastore became chief, the magazine High Times featured him in an article calling for the decriminalization of marijuana. Lewis said he believes marijuana must remain illegal because it’s a “gateway” to harder drugs. Pastore said law enforcement’s drug war was a failure that produced more violence and crime; he called for viewing drugs as a medical, not criminal-justice, problem. Lewis said they’re both.
Watch Out, Johns
In Monday’s interview, Lewis expanded on new initiatives he’s been unveiling in meetings with neighborhood groups around town. He’s embracing the city’s budding “safe streets” movement. He has posted the job of supervisor for a new traffic division which will keep on top of accidents and complaints, and set up daily operations at intersections where people have been driving too fast or recklessly, or ignoring pedestrians, or hassling cyclists.
He also spoke about a plan he unveiled last week to start publicizing the names of people who patronize prostitutes. He said he’s done that in previous jobs. He’ll release the names of people arrested in stings run by undercover female cops. If the news media won’t publish the names, he’ll take out ads with their names.
He said he’ll release the names when the people are arrested, not wait to see whether they’re found guilty. (Click on the play arrow to watch him address the issue.)
“It’s a public record at that point [of arrest],” Lewis said. “Remember, these are not cases where we may have witnesses recant their statements later. These are all cases made by undercover police officers.”
What if it turned out an arrested alleged john was asking for directions, and there was a misunderstanding?
“It would be one of my police officers who had the misunderstanding. I’m going to be confident that they’re trained and they know what they’re looking for.”
Don’t cops sometimes make honest mistakes?
“These are going to be trained police officers that know what questions … to ask … and what the law is,” Lewis responded. “I’m very, very confident that convictions will follow.”