Allan Appel Photo
The new neighborhood top cop Thursday evening with Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith.
Fifteen-year NHPD veteran Sgt. Chris Alvarado has already seen the estimated 5 percent or so percent of Fair Haven that is troubled by drug dealing and serious crime. As the newly arrived district manager, he’s excited to be discovering the rest.
Alvarado got to know that 5 percent through his previous assignments, often in plain clothes, driving in an unmarked cruiser down Grand Avenue as a supervisor of investigations for the NHPD detective bureau.
Now he’s returning to the uniform as the new district manager for Fair Haven, along with the East Shore.
Alvarado said he’s excited to get to know the other 95 percent, which is engaged neighbors working together, raising families and taking care of each other.
Alvarado offered that mesage Thursday at his first Fair Haven Community Management Team meeting.
Twenty people attended the meeting in the community room of the Fair Haven Branch Library, with a dozen more online. Departing District Manager Lt. Michael Fumiatti introduced Alvarado, and said his goodbyes.
“I used to be the ‘fire department,’” quipped Alvarado. “They call me when bad things happen. This is very different. It is good to be on the other side of investigations.”
Alvarado has been on the job for about a month. Fumiatti reported the transition has been good.
“I’m incredibly busy,” Fumiatti said of his new assignment as the police department’s first-ever mental health and wellness coordinator, “but not as busy as Sgt. Alvarado.”
The two policing districts Fumiatti handed to Alvarado covers not just Fair Haven but Bishop Woods and Fair Haven Heights and The Annex and Morris Cove — from the North Haven border down to the harbor. Or, as Fumiatti, put it, “everything the light touches east of I‑91.”
In a chronically short-staffed department, that means that Alvarado at this point has focused his patrol officers on “hot spots” like the open drug dealing around Ferry and Chatham. Neighborhood Alders Frank Redente, Jr. (Ward 15) and Sarah Miller (Ward 14) said they’ve seen results.
Redente said an upcoming new focus on his list is to eliminate the public drinking occurring near the liquor store on Clinton Avenue across from the school. The site has already quieted in the past month, he said, as if locals knew “a new sheriff is in town.”
“He’s got a strong track record,” said Alder Miller. “He’s very smart and knows the scene.”
Alvarado said that another focus during the month of transition has been cleaning up the public drinking violations occurring around Fort Hale Park.
He knows the Annex. The 41-year old sergeant said he enlisted in the Marine Corps after high school and served for ten years, mainly in the U.S. Marine motor transport unit housed in facilities on Woodward Avenue.
Alvarado said his unit was deployed for three tours in Iraq, in 2003, 2005, and 2007. He began his application process to join the NHPD during his last tour.
“I always want to do different things,” he said.
East side Baton passed: Fumiatti with successor Alvarado.