Paca: Focus Needed On Roots Of Street Violence

Mayoral candidate Marcus Paca said he believes that if Norman Boone had had access to the type of economic opportunities that keep people out of the street life that he might not have been a victim of gun violence.

Boone, 27, was shot and killed on Dickerman Street the weekend before last. His funeral, which Paca attended, was Friday. Paca said he knew Boone’s mother, Jessie Garrett, and he knew Boone in passing.

Paca, who is looking to unseat Mayor Toni Harp in a Democratic mayoral primary, offered condolences to Boone’s family and vowed that if he is elected mayor that he will tackle the problems of education, workforce development, and gun violence, which he called inextricably linked.

“I knew him as a man looking to turn his life around and looking to take care of his family and his children,” Paca said of Boone Friday afternoon outside the Elk’s Lodge on Webster Street, where Boone’s friends and family had gathered after the funeral. (Paca had planned a press conference there about gun violence, then called it off at the request of Boone’s mother.) ​“He was a man who had let go of the pettiness of the past and had a very bright future ahead of him. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the type of economic opportunities he needed to keep him completely off the street.”

Paca said New Haven needs tough conversations to draw in people to address gun violence, conversations about poverty and the need for effective education and workforce initiatives. He said should he be elected he plans to create a mayoral initiative called ​“Higher One,” which would encourage New Haven businesses to hire at least one New Haven resident.

“Violence affects everyone,” he said. ​“It affects family, friends, and neighbors. It affects their community and the city as a whole when people don’t feel safe in their homes and can’t walk down the street. Gun violence in New Haven has largely been ignored by the Harp administration, as a matter of fact, they’re touting that crime is down but from 2015 to 2016 gun shots in New Haven actually rose by over 50 percent. We need to address that realistically.”

Police spokesman Officer David Hartman said the 52 percent increase in reported shots fired from 2015 to 2016 reflected the fact that New haven expanded its ​“ShotSpotter” system, which detects gunshots (as well as fireworks). He called comparisons between shots-fired statistics and overall violence ​“apples and oranges.”) In the first six months of this year, the number of shots fired has dropped 32.9 percent compared to the same period in 2016, according to the most recent statistics released by the police department. The city has seen four homicides so far, compared to 5 at this point this year; 25 shootings, compared to 23 at this point last year; and 176 aggravated assaults, compared to 257 at this point in 2016. From 2011 to 2016, homicides dropped 61.8 percent, non-fatal shootings dropped 49.6 percent, and shots fired dropped 62.4 percent.

Asked about her administration’s anti-violence strategy, Mayor Toni Harp Monday cited four key prongs: YouthStat, in which law-enforcement and school officials strategize to keep at-risk students in school and out of prison; Project Longevity, in which federal, state and local cops work together to target violence-prone gang members; ​“SAVI,” a summer program to put extra walking cops on the beat; and an upcoming ​“Family Justice Center” to centralize services for domestic-violence victims, an under-discussed but major driver of violence. Speaking on her weekly ​“Mayor Monday” program on WNHH radio, Harp criticized ​“peopl[ing] use an election to try to make it appear our town is worse of than it has been. If you look at gun violence and even shots fired, they’re down from last year. Since 2011, it’s down by almost 75 percent. … When you look at Hartford and Bridgeport, we’re about half of where they are [in terms of violence]. You don’t see their elected officials, any of them, getting on the news saying there’s an uptick inviolence.”

Harp recalled attending slain high-schoolers’ funerals her first months in office in 2014. ​“For the past two years not one person who is in a high school in New Haven has been killed. I think that’s becuase of Youth Stat, the work they’re doing” she said.

Paca noted that the statistics used as a benchmark for the five-year decline was an anomalous high point, and that efforts that helped lead to drops began before Harp became mayor in 2014.

In speaking to the press Friday, Paca accused the Harp administration of ​“juking” crime statistics and sugar coating education achievement by focusing on increased graduation rates and not what happens to students after they graduate.

“What I saw today at the funeral was a group of people extremely saddened by the loss of one of their community members,” he said. ​“This man was a father, uncle, friend, community member and he was gun downed senselessly because of street violence and what we need to do is start looking at the root causes, namely poverty and the lack of economic and workforce opportunities. “

He said the city needs to focus on aligning its education system with the existing jobs in New Haven, as well as attracting jobs in fields beyond medicine and higher eduction. He called for New Haven making better use of its deep water port to attract more international trade and leisure activity.