Markeshia Ricks Photo
Partners Bengtson and Valente.
From the car parked in the shadow of West Rock on one-way Stone Street, the smell of marijuana drew the attention of Officers Mike Valente and Pat Bengtson.
The two have been patrolling Westville for almost three years. They’ve learned where the hot spots are.
“I don’t know why cars sit there,” Bengtson said as he recalled the incident. “It’s a one-way; they can see the cops coming I guess. The cops have to come up Blake and then go around the block to come from behind. But it seems like a lot of people sit there and do drugs, up to no good, deal drugs and have guns in their car.”
It might have been the weed they were smoking, but the occupants of the car didn’t make any moves to leave when Valente pulled in behind them.
“My windows were down, and their windows were down,” Valente said. “I could smell the weed coming from the car. I called it in and he came right away.”
When Bengtson arrived, Valente had the man and the woman step out of their car. The officers noticed that the man was shaking really badly.
“I do remember asking him like, ‘Dude are you OK?’” Valente said. “It was not just like a little shaking. He couldn’t even give me his ID.”
“He just asked them to step back and hang out with me,” Bengtson said. “They weren’t even in cuffs at this point. We hadn’t even found anything yet. It was just the smell of weed. They obviously had been smoking weed, and the first place he checked was under the seat.”
Turns out the man had a reason to be scared.
Valente found a nine millimeter handgun with the serial number scratched off under the driver seat, and then the weed. That was tremendously bad news, particularly for the man.
Not only was he arrested for criminal possession of a firearm without a permit, but the whole incident likely hurt his chances of getting a second date with the woman.
The two officers found out during the course of the arrest that the man and the woman were on their first date.
“He was trying win her over,” Bengtson said with a chuckle. “He was like, ‘Hey, you like to smoke. She said, ‘Yeah, I like to smoke.’ And he was like, ‘Ok, I’ll take you out.’”
Foiling the fun of illegally armed men is all in a day’s work for Valente and Bengtson, who have been working the streets of Westville together since they got out of the academy. Bengtson traded a desk job in the insurance industry for a New Haven police badge; Valente wanted to be a cop since he was kid.
They started out walking a beat together and were partnered in a single patrol car after that first year.
Though they now patrol in two separate police cruisers, “we kind of do everything together,” Valente said.
Hot Spots Are Pot Spots
In fact, during the same week that they picked up the trembling man with the hidden gun, the pair also managed to confiscate more than eight ounces of marijuana from a couple of recreational smokers hanging out in a car on Mountain Road.
“So we came up on this one street and there are some kids in the car,” Valente said. “We could smell the weed. So we stop them and find this huge bag of weed.”
Bengtson said there is a park area up the hill on Mountain Road that like the one near Stone Street that also is a hot spot where people tend to sit. “Immediately as we both passed the car, it hit its brake lights. It was parked and it was like they’d seen two cops and now they want to leave.”
They smelled the marijuana as they both passed the car, which prompted them to back up and see what was going on. The occupants assured the officers that there was nothing to worry about and nothing in the car.
“Nothing except that huge, pillow-sized sack of marijuana,” Bengtson said. Valente said that despite the amount of marijuana the two people were charged with possession and not intent to distribute, because“there was no money, no cellphones, no little baggies.”
“It was literally just a huge bag of weed,” Valente said.
“His personal half pound,” Bengtson said.
When they turned it into evidence, the marijuana weighed in at 8.2 ounces.
Their boss, Westville/West Hills District Manager Sgt. Renee Dominguez, said the two back-to-back incidents are the kind of police work that she likes to see. In the case of both arrests, Valente and Bengtson were riding around checking hot spots instead of waiting for calls to come in.
Dominguez said neighbors often complain of people coming into the area to engage in drug activity in those hot spots where the duo made the arrests. She said recently she’s been able to put a walking beat in that area, but Valente and Bengtson being present in the area when they’re not on other calls is making a difference.
“They were being proactive,” she said. “We always love to see that as supervisors, especially as district managers. They did a fabulous job.”
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