Nora Grace-Flood photos
“This is a very community oriented police department,” Chief Sullivan tells the new officers upon their hiring.
Hamden Police Department’s patrol division has grown by three members after the Police Commission approved a series of promotions and hirings Monday night.
The department’s patrol division — which is governed by a minimum manning requirement outlined in the town’s collective bargaining agreement with the police union — has been down by 15 members for weeks, according to Hamden Police Chief John Sullivan.
The division is split into nine squads, which include 40 patrol officers who are supervised by one captain, three lieutenants, and nine sergeants.
Now, three new officers — two of whom are Hamden natives — are leaving their jobs in New Haven’s and Bridgeport’s police departments to fill empty entry level officer positions in Hamden. Sgt. Mark Katz will become a lieutenant, and Officer Angela Vey will move up from her role as a patrol officer to a sergeant who will supervise the patrol division.
Those promotions come one week after the commission oversaw three other promotions to fill vacancies in the department that were created by the retirements of two deputy police chiefs.
Both Lt. Katz and Sgt. Vey have worked in Hamden’s Police Department for 14 years. Lt. Katz has an additional seven years of experience in Cheshire. Vey worked as a patrol officer in Guilford for five years before transferring to Hamden.
Chief Sullivan stands with Angela Vey, the first woman to obtain the rank of sergeant within Hamden since 2006.
“It’s a bigger department,” Vey reflected, comparing Hamden to Guilford. “There’s more opportunity.”
Meanwhile, Officers Joseph Mortali and Vincent DeStefanis are returning to their hometown of Hamden after three and five years, respectively, serving in New Haven’s police department.
They said they believed their experience going to school and growing up in Hamden will inform their ability to engage with the town as patrol officers.
Karen Estronzato is the third officer to join the patrol division, leaving her job in Bridgeport after three years. Though she wasn’t raised in Hamden, her decision to come to Hamden was also catalyzed by a desire to pursue more community-oriented policing practices.
She said left Bridgeport in search of work in a smaller town: “It will give me more time to know the community,” she stated.
Deputy Police Chief Police Kevin Samperi, Lt. Mark Katz, Sgt. Angela Vey, Chief John Sullivan, and Patrol Officers Joseph Mortali, Vincent DeStefanis, and Karen Estronzato.
In an early November Legislative Council meeting, Sullivan was granted a $350,000 intradepartmental transfer to account for unexpected overtime costs that he attributed to a lack of available patrol officers. He told the council that the department had “depleted our street interdiction division, there’s no one in community policing… one of our SROs is out… our traffic division has been reduced to three officers,” because individuals have been pulled from their positions to fill the minimum patrolling requirements.
Chief Sullivan said that the trio will be sworn in on Dec. 8 and hit the streets by the first of the year. As more patrol officers are hired, he said, the department will redirect those currently filling in for vacant patrolling positions back to their specific divisions.