Paul Bass Photo
Karen DuBois-Walton, at right, before Wednesday’s press conference with Celeste Fulcher, who has become active in a homicide survivors’ group since a stray bullet killed her daughter.
New Haven knows how to get violence back under control — even as it rises as well in other cities.
Mayoral candidate Karen DuBois-Walton made that case as she rolled out a 21-point public-safety policy plan.
“New Haven does not feel safe right now,” DuBois-Walton declared at a press conference held Wednesday afternoon at the pocket park at George and Orchard Streets.
She picked that location because a homicide took place there two weeks ago, and then a shooting the following night.
She pointed the finger at the mayor she hopes to unseat in a Democratic primary, one-term incumbent Justin Elicker, for failing to provide the leadership to help police and the community tackle rising crime.
Chart presented by the mayor at a recent Compstat meeting.
“We need … real leadership. We need a mayor who knows how the police department works” and pushes proactive community policing, DuBois-Walton said.
Wednesday’s event was the second in what is expected to be a series of DuBois-Walton campaign roll-outs of detailed policy positions with a focus on criticizing Elicker for a lack of leadership. (Click here to read about an education plan released last week.)
In her new 21-point “community safety” plan, she accused the incumbent of allowing community policing to deteriorate under his watch: “Over the last two years, trust between the New Haven community and the police department has cratered. The successes of community policing in the past were rooted in mutual understanding and accountability between the community and the police, and effectively building community safety will require rebuilding that trust.” (Read the full plan here.)
New Haven had 20 homicides in 2020, almost double the number from 2019 and the highest number since 2011. It had 121 nonfatal shootings, also the highest since 2011.
This year the city recorded 13 homicides and 42 shootings through May 27, compared to 4 and 31, respectively, in the same period in 2020.
Mayor Elicker last week appealed to the public to view that increase in the context of similar increases hitting cities throughout the nation during the Covid-19 pandemic.
He and top appointees laid out steps under way to tackle that spike. They included stepping up “Project Longevity” call-ins and home “check-ins” for young people involved in violence, tactics put on hold during the height of the pandemic; resuming walking beats; hiring more street outreach workers and “youth navigators” to connect to citizens; and the creation of a pilot “community crisis team” to refer up to 10 percent of 911 calls to mental-health professionals. (Read more about his plans here.)
At Wednesday’s press conference, DuBois-Walton argued that Elicker should have seen tackling the violence increase as part of tackling the Covid pandemic, as soon as it started. The parole officers and other violence-prevention partners from other agencies were still working, and direction and “urgency” from the top could have kept those collaborative efforts going, she argued. She called his responses too little, too late.
In response Wednesday afternoon, Elicker said he had “multiple conversations with the governor” to get state-controlled parole and probation officers to resume those custom visits.
He dismissed DuBois-Walton’s criticisms as “Monday morning quarterbacking.”
“It’s important that we don’t politicize these incredible challenges that we’re facing as a city. We should be coming together as a community to address them rather than pointing fingers,” Elicker argued. “It’s easy when you’re not sitting in the chair to criticize. We’re doing the work.”
DuBois-Walton addresses media Wednesday.
More broadly, DuBois-Walton pointed to New Haven’s success with community policing in the 1990s and early 2000s, when she served as, first, a Yale Child Study psychologist accompanying cops on visits to children witnessing trauma, the chief administrative officer overseeing public safety, then mayoral chief of staff. The community trust built in those years — crucial to helping cops solve crimes — has largely evaporated, along with walking beats and “pathways” to police and fire careers for high school students.
To that end, DuBois-Walton called for, among other proposals:
• Reviving a “Public Safety Academy” that got Hillhouse High School students started on obtaining certifications to become EMTs and, in some cases, on a track to become cops and firefighters.
(Hillhouse High School Principal Glen Worthy told the Independent Wednesday that the program was on hold for a year because of Covid and because the main teacher retired. He said he plans to resume it next year; and in the meantime has started a program with University of New Haven to enable students to earn credits towards associate degrees in criminal justice.)
• Naming a permanent rather than acting police chief, and “reviewing department leadership.”
“Having an acting chief in the midst of a surge of violence in our city doesn’t allow for the long-term vision and stability necessary to solve these problems,” DuBois-Walton argued.
• In addition to the mental health-oriented crisis intervention team, creating an “Office of Neighborhood Safety.” Run out of police substations, the office would handle “vehicle break-ins, parking violations, noise complaints, welfare checks, vandalism, traffic stops” through civilian employees rather than cops. DuBois-Walton suggested using federal money coming to New Haven through the pandemic-relief American Rescue Plan to fund the new office, then devoting the money saved on the police department’s end to buttress cops’ anti-violence and intelligence-gathering efforts.
• Creating a New Haven version of a “Vision Zero Task Force” being created statewide under a new law shepherded to passage by New Haven State Rep. Roland Lemar, to craft a plan to achieve zero pedestrian and cyclist deaths a year.
• Reestablish a Board of Young Adult Police Commissioners, which during the early years of community policing connected teens with police brass.
• Boost mental health support for cops and firefighters.
Firebirds leader Lt. Ernest Jones speaks on behalf of DuBois-Walton’s candidacy.
Gary Tinney: Firefighters need more support; students need more career pathways.
Two campaign supporters on hand for the press conference, Fire Lt. Ernest Jones of the New Haven Firebirds and retired Firebirds leader Garry Tinney, spoke about that last point in particular. Firefighters in particular have faced devastating losses recently and need more encouragement and options for help in coping, they argued.
DuBois-Walton is taking on more than a century of history in New Haven by challenging a one-term incumbent. The last one-term mayor, Thomas Tully, was elected in 1929; he wasn’t on the ballot in 1931. No one-term mayor has lost a reelection campaign since 1917: His name was Samuel Campner. But Campner (New Haven’s first and only Jewish mayor) was actually a half-term mayor: As president of the Board of Aldermen (as it was then named), he ascended to the mayoralty in 1917 when the previous mayor died, and he served out the term.