Mark Griffin helped some Yalies in his neighborhood thwart what he called a “home invasion.”
Griffin is a safety-minded guy. He, for example, is still a supporter of the curfew proposed but passed over last year. On Thursday, issues became as non-theoretical and debatable as can be when Griffin, the Ward Two Democratic Party co-chair, came upon the latter stages of a burglary.
Griffin lives at 288 Dwight St. He said he just happened to be home on Thursday when he saw several Yale students, who live at 278 Dwight, struggling with a man they were pulling down the stairs.
“These were Yale students,” Griffin told a reporter at the corner of Howe and Edgewood, as he waited for the beginning of rally and press event called by Gina Calder and Greg Morehead, alders wanting to call attention to public safety issues in the neighborhood. “The students came home and found a man in their living room. Somehow they got hold of him, and were, you know, subduing him. I just happened to be in front then checking my mailbox. I went over and helped them, and we sat on this guy. I called the police, and we held him until the cops arrived and he was arrested.”
Griffin said nobody was hurt, fortunately, but the incident highlighted the need for more coordinated safety procedures to serve the entire community. “Lots of Yale kids live over on Dwight and on Edgewood,” Griffin said, and we need more of the beat cops that have been promised. I haven’t seen any of them.”
Regarding the incident that Griffin called a “home invasion,” Dixwell District Manager Lt. Ray Hassett, said he wouldn’t characterize it that way. He added some detail to Griffin’s story. He said the perpetrator had indeed burglarized the students’ apartment, and left. The apprehension occurred when he came back for his hat!
Hassett said police suspected the individual had some mental health issues. After detaining him, police brought the suspect to the hospital. “He was evaluated as competent,” said Hassett, and he was arrested for burglary.”
Larger Picture
Griffin participated in a press conference called by Gina Calder and Greg Morehead that focused on Yale’s police department and the NHPD working in more coordination precisely because so many Yale students and non-Yalies share the same streets in the second and twenty-second wards.
Griffin agreed with many of the proposals put forward by his alderwoman and Morehead, such as an expansion of Yale’s system of blue safety phones onto the nearby streets, but he still differed with them on the curfew. Morehead said, “What good will a curfew do if kids are forced off the streets and go into homes at, say, nine or ten o’clock, and still have maybe inattentive parents or no parents around, and nothing useful or educational to do?
“I mean I’m young enough to see things through my own eyes on these matters. That’s what I might think.”
That’s why he had at the centerpiece of his proposals the opening a full-fledged, open-all-hours-that-are-needed community center in the Dixwell neighborhood.
Griffin was skeptical. While everyone calls for more parental involvement in the lives of their kids, Griffin put it simply. “I know that Gina and others might not think the same way, but anyone younger than 18 or so just shouldn’t be out on the street after eleven.”
Lt. Hassett offered the opinion that he thought an idea such as the expansion of Yale’s blue safety phones from campus out onto the nearby city streets a good idea. And the current state of coordination between the New Haven Police Department and Yale’s police? “I think it’s actually pretty good.”
Griffin, who shares the ward leadership with Greg Smith, said further discussion of public safety and other issues would take place on Saturday, March 29 at the Dwight School, where Calder is scheduled to hold a first-ever “state of the neighborhood” meeting.