Lucy Gellman Photo
WEB Chair Nadine Horton questions District Manager Steve Torquati.
Beaver Hill neighbors pressed their new top cop for quicker action on a recent spate of gun shots — while the top cop pleaded for patience as he gets to know a new neighborhood.
That confrontation took place Tuesday night at the monthly meeting of the Whalley/Edgewood/Beaver Hills (WEB) community management team held at the new Whalley Avenue substation next to Minore’s.
The new top cop, Lt. Stephan Torquati, moved from district manager of Dwight/Chapel (District 4) to to district manager of WEB (District 10, also called WEB) earlier this summer after scoring seventh on the city’s lieutenant exam, part of a shake-up of top cop spots across town. He replaced Sgt. John Wolcheski, who served as the district’s top cop from June 2016 until this July.
Because Torquati was out of town for WEB’s August meeting, Tuesday night was his first chance to meet the group and address concerns that reach back to the shooting of Norman Boone on Dickerman Street in May.
The concerns rolled in as Torquati finished a report on the “good news”: Overall crime is down in the district, and he is instituting a new walking beat to address residents’ outstanding concerns on Whalley. From 7 p.m. to 3 a.m., the new beat will patrol Whalley between Howe and Dwight streets to Whalley and Sherman Avenue.
Torquati also mentioned a greater WEB presence of officers in the motorcycle unit, now led by Sgt. Sean Maher. (Maher was the district manager for Downtown-Wooster Square (District 1) until recently; he has been replaced with Lt. Mark O’Neill, who used to lead the motorcycle unit.)
In response to reports of prostitution on Maple Street, Torquati reported, he is also zeroing in on the area. He encouraged neighbors to report prostitution activity as “trespassing,” which is generally easier to prove in a court of law. For a charge of prostitution, both parties must acknowledge that there was a monetary transaction.
Torquati.
Before Torquati finished his report, New Haven Rising community organizer Scott Marks asked about the gunshots he’d been hearing in his neck of the woods. He said he has heard nine or so in six weeks, including one on his block, from a bullet that grazed his daughter’s friend’s arm about four weeks ago.
“They come into our quiet ward to do their drug deals,” Marks said. “It got so bad I was thinking about putting on a uniform.”
The data suggests otherwise, Torquati said. According to his most recent police stats report, there has only been one firearm discharged in the past month — on Aug. 14, at Ellsworth Avenue and Dyer Street. He suggested that perhaps group members are hearing shots from the police academy. He encouraged them to call 911 if they believe an emergency exists. He added that the noise of those shots will dissipate when the firing range heads to Wintergreen Avenue.
Marks pressed the point.
“Whatever the new stats say, what we hear and what we’re ducking from is different,” he said. His wife, Alder Jill Marks, noted that she recently met with New Haven Police Chief Anthony Campbell, who she said promised more walking beats in Beaver Hills.
Management team chair Nadine Horton suggested a follow-up management team meeting with Campbell. Nods abounded around the table.
“I want people to live in Ward 28 to feel safe,” Scott Marks said.
Torquati had already defended not participating in the Whatsapp chat group, as Sgt. Wolcheski did during his tenure. He’d called another cop into the substation to help an older woman find her car outside. And he’d presented crime stats that showed improvement.
“I’ve been here for what — two and a half months,” he now responded. “I would at least expect some ... I think I’m entitled to more time than two and a half months” to acclimate.
“We want more contact,” Marks retorted. “If anything happened to my kids, my family ... Two and a half months and my kid is dead? It’s too long.”
Scott Marks: “We want Ward 28 to be safe.”
“We are out here!” added Francine Caplan from across the table. “We are the taxpayers.”
She added that she wanted to go “on the record” for the group.
In her time attending community management team meetings and serving as the head of the Firing Range Committee, Caplan said, “I’ve had many district managers” and never had she heard one say that two and a half months had been too little time to get to know the neighborhood.