The reconstituted police narcotics division will hit the streets in January, and officers throughout the department may soon be losing their pant-leg stripes — maybe even their tattoos.
Detectives on the 12-member team, now entitled “Vice/Narcotics,” will begin working in the middle of the month, moving up after a new class of recruits has had time to get used to patrolling, Chief James Lewis said. Ten of the detectives will focus on narcotics, two on a newly created vice division concentrating on quality-of-life crimes like prostitution.
Vice/Narcotics is being put together and will be run by Lt. John Velleca (pictured at left), an 18-year member of the force.
Around the same time, a committee of cops will come forward with ideas for better “grooming” on the job. On the agenda, among other items: Whether cops should get tattoos. And if anybody even notices that the city’s paying $7 extra per pair of pants for a stripe down one leg.
All that news emerged Tuesday afternoon at a progress review of an outside group of experts’ plan to shake up the city’s formerly scandal-plagued police department.
The plan was called the “PERF” report, named after the Police Executive Research Forum. The city hired PERF for $130,000 to chart a department shake-up after the FBI arrested two narcotics cops on bribery and theft charges. The department disbanded the narcotics unit in the wake of the FBI sting.
Fifteen months after PERF’s 97-page report came out, the group’s executive director returned to a press conference at City Hall with Chief Lewis to discuss how the department has fared in carrying out the 57 recommendations.
Topping the list of changes so far: The city in June hired a new chief from outside the city, Lewis, to spend 18 months here instituting new policies, which he has been doing.
And Lewis has hired four assistant chiefs to oversee administration, professional standards and training, operations, and investigations. Two of the assistants are old Lewis friends who came east from California. Two came from within the department (including Pete Reichard, pictured).
Overall, said PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler (pictured), roughly half of the group’s recommendations have been put into place. Most of the rest are “in progress.”
He’s satisfied.
“New Haven is a better, stronger department today because” of the reform process of the past year, he said.
A progress “matrix” handed out at the conference showed two recommendations on hold. “Establish[ing] a performance appraisal system” is tied up “pending contract negotiations.” And “provid[ing] civilian support in key positions” has to wait on “budget issues” — i.e. the current city financial crisis — as well as civil service testing.
Professionalizing Narcotics
The main focus at the moment is the new narcotics unit. As PERF’s Wexler pointed out, problems in that unit “brought us here” in the first place. And the uptick in shootings around town is being traced largely to rampant drug trafficking. However, Chief Lewis (pictured) stressed, he didn’t want to rush into relaunching the narcotics unit. New Haveners lost faith in the unit because of the scandal. So he wanted to take enough time to rebuild it right.
That involved vetting the new director, Velleca, with other law enforcement agencies; carefully choosing detectives to serve on it; sending the detectives to a two-week training school. Equally important, the department has been working on new rules to seek to avoid problems like those that developed in the past. It has studied “best practices” at law-enforcement agencies from around the country to craft new guidelines on, for instance, handling informants and informant funds. Members of the unit will rotate every four years.
“Rather that throw together another unit, we took our time,” Lewis said. “We cannot afford to have the drug unit make another mistake.”
“Grooming Committee”
Lewis said it’ll be another month at least before he receives recommendations from a rank-and-file grooming committee he formed.
At one of his previous chief’s posts, in Pomona, Cal., he raised concerns about the number of tattoos some officers had. He assigned nine officers to a committee to hash out rules. To his surprise, four of the members wanted to force officers to remove existing tattoos. The majority settled on a grandfather clause, allowing previous tattoos but banning them moving forward.
In New Haven, Lewis has taken notice of the stripes on the sides of uniform pants. His point: Not too many other people notice them. But when you multiply $7 a stripe by 500 officers, “we’re spending thousands of dollars” for a feature few even see.
He predicts there may be “less wearing of hats” in 2009, too.
IA
The department has also worked on strengthening internal affairs procedures on the recommendation of PERF. Lewis said he’s pleased with the quality of reports he’s been seeing. Assistant Chief Roy Brown is also working on a pamphlet to encourage citizens to come forward with more complaints.
Shirley Wayne-Washington (pictured with Brown at the top of this story), co-chair of the local oversight committee for the PERF process, praised those changes. But, she added, the public hasn’t gotten the message. Washington [formerly] chaired the Civilian Review Board.
“We’re still getting the community feeling not so comfortable,” she said, “coming into the police and filing complaints.”
“It takes time,” Brown said.
Tune In
As the department continues implementing the PERF report, the public can follow along. Starting next week, the city plans to post the status “matrix” — listing all 57 recommendations and where implementation stands — on the police department’s website. It is to be updated regularly.