Paul Bass Photo
Vazuquez (at left): We tried hard.
Despite an energetic effort to recruit more New Haveners as cops, 87 percent of the newest batch of certified police recruits come from outside the city.
The Civil Service Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to certify the list of applicants who passed the oral and written exams to qualify to become officers.
Only 72 of the 545 people on the list live in New Haven, according to city human resources chief Stephen Librandi. He said the majority of the people live in towns surrounding New Haven. The original list of 1,410 applicants included 272 New Haveners, or 19 percent.
Through advertising, social media, community meetings, visits to schools, and other outreach tactics, the department worked overtime to try to recruit more New Haveners, more women and more African-Americans and Latinos.
“It’s amazing the number is that low,” Librandi observed after Tuesday’s commission meeting, held at 200 Orange St. “They worked hard” to recruit more.
The certified list does include more people of color: 102 African-Americans, 120 Latinos, and 24 “other” (Pacific Islanders, Asian-Americans, or mixed-race individuals) out of the 545 total. Two hundred ninety-nine of those on the list are white. The department succeeded in upping the percentage of blacks and Latinos in its more recent cadet class. And even the percentage of New Haveners making the cut has risen over past years’ lists, according to Librandi.
The department has about 34 openings and expects more due to retirements over the next year, said Assistant Chief Al Vazquez. The commission certified the list for a year; often the lists get extended for a second year.
“We tried hard. We were at schools, local colleges, public events, mom and pop schools. We had billboards on buses,” Vazquez said.
Unlike with promotional exams, officials must hire entry-level officers in order of their ranking on the tests. (A “rule of three” allows officials to skip over two finalists for a third in promotional hires.)
The department will send a letter with conditional offers to the top 120 scores, Vazquez said. That’s because the applicants must still pass psychological, polygraph, medical, and background checks before they can be admitted to the training academy.
Hill activist Miguel Pittman coached dozens of local young men seeking to become cops. He was pleased to find many of their names as he perused the list (above) upon its release at the commission meeting. Pittman’s son Miguel III came in at number 47.
The top ten scorers on the list were Kevin H. Boulier, John F. Henao, Daniel J. McDuffie (all at 100), Stafford Green (99), William W. Barbour IV (98.57), Jason T. Thigpen (97.94), Brandon T. Cain (97.85), Rubiel M. Rodriguez (97.45), Anttwan S. Brown (97.39), and Tyler J. Zajac (97.28).