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Sergeant Reginald E. Sutton is glad to walk the beat once again on the streets of Edgewood and Beaver Hill.
At the Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hill Management Team’s meeting Tuesday night in the Norton and Whalley substation, Sutton introduced himself as the new district community manager. Sutton is the fifth cop to occupy the post in two years. He replaced Lt. Stephen Shea, who retired from the police force after nearly 22 years to work as head of security at Choate Rosemary Hall, a private boarding school in Wallingford.
Sutton has been on the force for 23 years, dividing his time among investigative services, patrol, narcotics, and homicide. And he’s pretty much seen it all.
Overall, crime is down in District 10, despite several home break-ins in Beaver Hill this winter, Sutton reported. The NHPD made three arrests related to the break-ins and managed to extract confessions.
However, auto-theft remains a serious problem. Police recently obtained search warrants to investigate two houses with occupants suspected of dealing drugs on Winthrop Avenue. Meeting attendees urged the sergeant to send more cops to patrol near Hillhouse High when school gets out; they said violence among students breaks out then.
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Sutton has been head cop in District 10 for only a month now, but he is familiar with the neighborhood. He patrolled it more than 20 years ago. He said he remembers when the neighborhoods centered on lower Whalley Avenue were far more dangerous. “Whalley and Sherman used to be like a parking lot 20 years ago,” there were so many cars full of people hanging out and dealing drugs on the weekends, he said.
Crime was so out of hand, that one time when he and another officer were patrolling Winthrop Avenue, two gangs of young people opened fire on one another, as if “we weren’t even there.” In recent years, he has found that other “areas of the city are a whole lot worse off” than District 10, he said.
He looks forward to working closely with Rose Reed, the detective recently assigned to District 10. The NHPD adopted a new policy of assigning detectives their own district to investigate. In the past, detectives were assigned to crimes without regard for geography. Sutton said he favors this change since it will add “consistency in how they’re investigating” and increase the detectives’ personal interest in their areas.