Paul Bass Photo
Officers Kyle Listro and Joseph Perrotti.
Tinted windows? Looked suspicious.
Wafting weed smell? Not necessarily a problem.
The driver’s hands start trembling? Now this looked like more than a run-of-the-mill traffic stop.
New Haven patrol officers Joseph Perrotti and Kyle Listro went through that analytical progression while conducting a traffic stop last week.
They didn’t know at first that the stop would turn into a foot chase and a major arrest that might save lives. They had reasons to stop the car, and it took off from there.
As they later recounted what happened, they detailed the steps cops take in order to prevent encounters like these from getting out of control, in order to keep both themselves and the public safe. And they reflected on the sudden turn any stop can take.
“It’s the nature of the job,” Listro reflected. “It’s always unexpected. You never know if you’re going to come home.”
Sign #1: The Tints
The stop occurred the Thursday before last shortly after 5 p.m.
Listro, 31, and Perrotti, 26, patrol officers based in the tight-knit Dwight/West River district (“We eat dinner together; we hang out outside of work”), were an hour into a “crime suppression” assignment. That means spending their shift looking for “proactive” opportunities, possible small problems that could get bigger, rather than waiting to be dispatched in response to calls.
At B squad line-up an hour earlier, they had heard about a crime that took place earlier in the day. They were told to keep an eye out for a silver sedan, possibly a Honda, believed to be connected to the crime.
Perrotti was behind the wheel of the cruiser near Norton and George streets when he spotted a silver Honda Accord. He did a U‑turn and started following the car as the driver headed north on Winthrop toward Chapel.
Listro, in the passenger seat of the cruiser, ran the plate. No problem turned up. But the officers noticed that the car’s windows were tinted, dark enough that they couldn’t see inside. That’s illegal, a justification for a stop.
The Accord’s driver turned left onto Edgewood. The officers pulled the car over near the intersection of Ellsworth.
Approaching the car, they couldn’t see inside, except to notice four silhouettes. So they didn’t approach the driver’s window at first; they didn’t want to have their backs to people they couldn’t see in the rear seats. What if someone inside, say, doesn’t want to go to jail, so he bursts out and runs? That happens sometimes. The officers wanted to have a clear view just in case. And they certainly didn’t want to have a gun pointed to their backs. In case someone had a gun.
Perrotti approached on the driver’s side of the vehicle, Listro on the passenger side. They stopped at the “C pillar,” behind the back-seat window.
“Roll down the windows,” Perrotti called. The occupants did. The officers saw four young men inside. (They would turn out to be 19, 20, 22, and 22.)
Signs #2 & #3: Vapors, & A Lie
Marijuana smoke wafted out of the car. Which by itself didn’t sound alarm bells. It just heightened suspicions.
The weed itself was “no big deal. It’s going to be legal soon. I’m not going to judge that you’re a terrible person” for using it, Listro said. But he did ask himself: With tinted windows and marijuana, “what’s next?”
“Have you been smoking in here?” Listro asked the car’s occupants.
“Nope. You must be smelling a different car. We just got Chinese food,” one responded.
Yes, Chinese food containers were visible. But the smell was unmistakable. The lie, more than the weed, made the officers more suspicious.
Signs #4 & #5: Nerves & Baggies
But it wasn’t until the fourth suspicion sign that they realized: This isn’t a typical call. This could well involve a more serious crime.
Perrotti saw the sign when he asked the occupants to show IDs, and for the driver to show license and registration. They complied. But “the driver’s hands were trembling giving them to me,” Perrotti said.
“He wouldn’t have been shaking like that if he just had a little bit of weed.”
“‘It’s a big clue: He was obviously trying to hide something,’” Listro recalled thinking. “‘We’re going to find it.’”
But not right away.
“There were two of us,” Listro noted. “There’s four of them.”
Listro kept watch from the back of the car as Perrotti stepped aside and radioed for back-up. Perrotti wanted to stand far enough not to be overheard: “I’d rather they don’t find out more units are coming until they” arrive.
When more officers arrived, Perrotti asked the driver to step out first, since he was shaking most visibly. Perrotti patted him down, found a small bag of marijuana. He asked the driver to sit on the curb besides an other officer.
Meanwhile, Listro noticed a rear passenger “shifting stuff” into the long sleeve of a windbreaker he was wearing. So the officer had him come out of the car next.
Perrotti told the man to stop putting his hands in and out of pockets; the man kept doing it. “Check his sleeves,” Listro advised. Perrotti did, and found a fold of heroin and several baggies of crack packaged for sale. So now the officers realized they were dealing with people possibly involved in drug sales.
Sign #6: The Bolt
Back-up officers at the scene on Edgewood Avenue
They found more weed in the car, then went to pat down the front seat passenger — who bolted.
The man ran south across the Edgewood Avenue median. The officers followed. Listro, who’s faster, stayed closer behind as the man ran into a back yard; Perrotti turned toward the corner to block an alternate route.
Why is he running? Listro wondered? Does he have a gun? “A crazy amount” of drugs?
Mostly, though, his mind focused on the task at hand: catching up. He radioed in his location so other officers could set up along a perimeter. He followed the runner into one yard, then into a second yard, where the runner came to a four-to-five-foot fence.
Now the runner faced a split-second decision: Try to jump and keep running? Fight? Or give up?
“He looked back and saw me,” Listro recalled. “I was close enough to tackle him.”
The runner stayed put. Listro did tackle him, got him on the ground, put on handcuffs. Chase over.
“You all right?” Listro recalled asking first.
“I’m fine.”
“I got him,” Listro then radioed in.
Then Listro asked the man, “What are you running for?” As Listro spoke, he noted the butt of a black revolver tucked into the man’s jeans. So that’s why he’d been running.
The man had a “Damn, I messed up” look on his face.
“I have a kid coming,” the man explained.
“Why are you running around with a gun if you have a kid coming?” Listro asked.
The man showed a tattoo on his arm of a cross and “RIP” with the name of someone close to him who “just got killed.”
Perrotti arrived on the scene. The officers took the man’s Taurus .38 special and led him back to the sedan to wait with the other officers and detainees.
When they returned, another of the passengers took off running, into Edgewood Park. This chase took longer; the officers lost the man at first.
Soon officers were spreading out throughout the park area. Luckily Perrotti had the man’s ID, a former school card with his picture. Perrotti snapped a photo of it on his iPhone and sent the image around; Officer Paul Mandell searched a database and found an address for the man around Fitch Street.
So the search expanded across Whalley. Two officers, Diamond Dickerson and Chris Landucci, spotted the fleeing man hiding behind a headstone in a Jewish cemetery on Jewell Street. As they walked toward him, the man bolted again. The officers caught him, brought him back to the scene at Edgewood and Ellsworth.
The Aftermath
Lt. Healy at the scene.
A subsequent search of the car revealed a second revolver, a Smith & Wesson .38, plus more bags of crack and a bottle of oxycodone with the prescription scratched off.
It turned out that the Honda was not the one associated with the crime reported earlier in the day. But the traffic stop had still made a difference, possibly preventing another crime.
“They did a great job,” said Perrotti’s and Listro’s supervisor, top Dwight cop Lt. John Healy. Healy said the way they conducted the stop “exemplified” the “professional and proactive” approach the department trains officers to take.
After the arrests, Perrotti and Listro spent the rest of the shift doing paperwork — and processing what had happened.
Now it hit Perrotti: “This man could easily have turned and taken a shot at us.”
The arrestees face a variety of felony charges including illegal weapon and drug possession. They do not face heavier charges that could have arisen had they used their now-confiscated weapons.
Listro did some math, based on the maxim that every “gun you take off the street” saves two people’s lives: “Someone who could have been shot and killed; and someone would have spent the rest of his life in jail” on a murder charge.
Listro and Perrotti had taken two guns off the street. That adds up to four lives.
Not a bad outcome, Listro figured. And no one got hurt.
Read other installments in the Independent’s “Cop of the Week” series:
• Shafiq Abdussabur
• Yessennia Agosto
• Craig Alston & Billy White Jr.
• Joseph Aurora
• James Baker
• Lloyd Barrett
• Pat Bengston & Mike Valente
• Elsa Berrios
• Manmeet Bhagtana (Colon)
• Paul Bicki
• Paul Bicki (2)
• Sheree Biros
• Bitang
• Scott Branfuhr
• Bridget Brosnahan
• Craig Burnett & Orlando Crespo
• Keron Bryce and Steve McMorris
• Keron Bryce and Osvaldo Garcia
• Keron Bryce and Osvaldo Garcia (2)
• Dennis Burgh
• Anthony Campbell
• Darryl Cargill & Matt Wynne
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• Rob Clark & Joe Roberts
• Sydney Collier
• Carlos Conceicao
• Carlos Conceicao (2)
• Carlos Conceicao and Josh Kyle
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• Natalie Crosby
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• Chad Curry
• Gregory Dash
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• Milton DeJesus
• Milton DeJesus (2)
• Rose Dell
• Brian Donnelly
• Renee Dominguez, Leonardo Soto, & Mary Helland
• Anthony Duff
• Robert DuPont
• Robert DuPont and Rose Dell
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• Jeremie Elliott (2)
• Jose Escobar Sr.
• Bertram Ettienne
• Bertram Ettienne (2)
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• Michael Fumiatti (2)
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• William Gargone (2)
• William Gargone & Mike Torre
• Derek Gartner
• Derek Gartner & Ryan Macuirzynski
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• Michael Haines & Brendan Borer
• Michael Haines & Brendan Borer (2)
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• Derek Huelsman
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• Doug Pearse and Brian Jackson
• Chris Perrone
• Joseph Perrotti
• Joseph Perrotti & Gregory Dash
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• Joe Pettola
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• Ryan Przybylski
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• Luis Rivera (2)
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• Gene Trotman Jr.
* Elisa Tuozzoli
• Kelly Turner
• Lars Vallin (& Xander)
• Dave Vega & Rafael Ramirez
• Earl Reed
• Daophet Sangxayarath & Jessee Buccaro
• Herb Sharp
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• Jessica Stone
• Jessica Stone & Mike DeFonzo
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