New Haven’s last police chief had timely advice: Now that you’re laying off cops, help them cope — and let the community know what you’re not going to be able to do anymore.
James Lewis gave that advice to a city official who just carried out controversial police layoffs: not New Haven, but Camden, N.J.
Lewis said he doesn’t want to speak publicly about New Haven’s decision to lay off 16 cops last week or about the protests that ensued. Lewis ran New Haven’s department for 20 months, until a year ago this week. “I’ve tried to stay away. They have a new chief,” Lewis said this week. “I haven’t been back.”
But he has been to Camden. The police chief there, John Thomson, recently invited Lewis and some other experts to advise him on handling that city’s round of police layoffs.
Anyone who fears the impact of New Haven’s 16 layoffs (out of a force of 450) should check out what just happened in Camden: that city laid off 137 members of a force of just under 290 cops.
The night before Lewis met with Chief Thomson, Camden had four separate shootings, five victims. The city has around 79,000 residents.
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Lewis.
“They laid off everybody with less than 13 years on. All of their homicide detectives were laid off. Everyone working active homicide cases was laid off. It was the most massive layoff I have had experience with,” Lewis said.
“Some of his lieutenants were demoted all the way down to patrolman. They wiped out all of their captains. Their captains became lieutenants. Some lieutenants became sergeants; some went all the way down to patrolman.”
Lewis’s group ended up chatting with Chief Thomson for four hours. They talked about motivation. A lieutenant returning in some cases to a beat he walked a decade or more ago will need some help adjusting, Lewis said.
Those lieutenants-turned-patrol officers had to switch from white shirts back to blue shirts. And they had to pay for the blue shirts.
“That was a demotivator,” Lewis said. “Every time they look in that closet, that shirt will remind them of that day.”
Lewis urged the chief to “do whatever you can” to help the laid-off cops find jobs. “Do fundraising in the community and do barbecues to help them so they don’t lose their homes right away. Even though those cops are gone, you can’t forget them,” Lewis advised.
(In New Haven, Chief Frank Limon said he started collecting information about openings in Connecticut departments the day of the 16 layoffs. The Courant reports that all 16 have applied to the Middletown police department, which has five openings.)
Communication is also crucial during layoffs, Lewis advised.
A police chief has to resist talking like a politician, he said. “Some politicians were saying nothing really is going to change [in Camden]. You can’t lay off half your people and not have anything change. … It’s one thing for politicians to over-promise and under-produce. But the chief cannot be dishonest. You have two audiences. You have the community. You also have the cops. If you’re not being truthful, they’re not going to follow you.”
Lewis said he subsequently caught a clip of Chief Thomson on the national news. “He seemed to take in what we said. He talked about the impact on the employees, how they need not to be forgotten. He talked about what they can’t do anymore: responding to most shoplifting, traffic accidents.”
New Haven isn’t Camden. Even with the layoffs, it has the largest police force in Connecticut. Officials said they see no need to cut street patrols, though Chief Limon said he may be moving people out of in-house jobs or school security posts. And Camden has reported the highest or second-highest per-capita crime among U.S. cities for years now.
But Lewis noted some traits Camden shares with New Haven and another community whose police force he once led, Pomona, Calif. All have high crime. And all have high dropout rates. “Any place I’ve seen that kind of crime there’s always that kind of [dropout] rate,” he said. By contrast, Green Bay, Wis., whose department he also once led, has both low crime and a dropout rate below 10 percent.
Lewis recently finished a stint as interim chief of Yale’s police force. He still visits the city each month as he winds down a security consultancy with the university.
He said he has fond memories of his tenure as New Haven’s chief.
“I love the cops. Cops are a fun group of people to work with. They all have their different personalities,” he said. “My only frustration in New Haven was that I was never able to get the churches and community as involved with the youth as I would have liked.”