newhavenpolice.org
If you’re looking for your top neighborhood cop on the city’s police website, there’s an eight out of ten chance you’ll find the wrong person.
Which is better than if you check the website listed on city police cruisers. There you’ll find an ad in Japanese for single-family homes.
Progress is coming slowly, it appears, in an effort to upgrade the department’s community-policing image in the wake of some serious blows in recent months.
Take the website address that the department advertises on its cruisers. It leads to this page, all in Japanese.
That’s because the city no longer owns the domain name. An outfit selling homes bought it.
Melissa Bailey File Photo
The department has gradually been introducing new patrol cars to the fleet, ones that don’t have the defunct domain name on it. The old cars still do.
The city decided last year to close down the police department’s independent site and incorporate it into the city’s general website. So now the police have a section on the city site. The site includes contact information for leaders of the city’s neighborhood districts, the bedrock of community policing.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the site listed Lt. Martin Tchakirides as the downtown district manager. It had a photo of Lt. Rebecca Sweeney-Burns — who’s the real downtown district manager.
You can find her name listed as top cop in the Newhallville/East Rock district. That’s her old beat. Lt. Thaddeus Reddish runs it now.
Tchakirides, meanwhile, is now heading the Westville/West Hills district. His photo does appear on that page on the site — while the page names retired Lt. Bernie Somers as the manager.
Similar outdated contact information is listed for precincts in the Hill, Beaver Hills, Dixwell, and Fair Haven.
Want to complain to internal affairs? The site refers you to Lt. Joanne Peterson — even though Peterson, who’s now Capt. Peterson, last year moved over to the patrol division.
The site is riddled with other contacts for retired or transferred high-ranking cops; see how many you can find.
The site does identify the current police chief properly.
In that respect, the site’s better than a “Community Resource Program” (pictured) that was distributed to police substations this week. It includes a page of “helpful numbers” to call in the department. This list appears to be at least two years old. It lists the acting chief as Stephanie Redding, and Kay Codish as the head of the police academy, for instance, among a host of other outdated data. It lists Pete Reichard as a captain heading investigative services; he became an assistant chief in 2008, then left the department altogether more than 11 months ago.
Once the Independent alerted the city, those booklets were removed from the substations. It turns out a New Jersey-based company called Encore Enterprises publishes the booklet (through its “CIA” or Crime In America division). It consists mostly of generic crime-prevention info. The outfit goes to different cities and teams up with the local police; the outfit prints up the booklets and distributes them at its own cost, incorporates the local page of contacts and a message from the chief. Then it makes money by selling advertising. Police spokesman Joe Avery said the company had erred by printing and distributing the booklets with the old information without waiting for the city to give it the new info; he said it agreed to take the booklets back and reprint them with the correct info. A phone message left with the company was not returned.
Meanwhile, New Haven plans to update its website’s police section soon, according to mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga.
“We know that needs to be updated. There’s a committee working on that. Thank you for the reminder,” she said Tuesday. “Other things recently” diverted the committee’s attention, she said.
The committee last met under the direction of then-Acting Chief Stephanie Redding.
Better information days may be ahead. At least if a new city consultant comes up with good ideas. The city has hired J. Flagg Consulting of Medford, Mass., to come up with a “strategic plan” for how to improve the police department’s approach to “public information and media strategy.” The firm started work a few weeks ago and is still in the initial assessment phase, according to city Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts. According to the contract the firm will get paid up to $18,112 and finish its work by June 30 at the latest. The department planned to use existing grant money to cover the cost.
Some local media-savvy folks offered their own views, for free, on how to improve the department’s communications and media strategy, in this article.