Thomas Breen photo
Ordained minister and Police Chief Anthony Campbell preaches to neighbors Wednesday night.
Hands pressed together just below his chest, a starched white collar buttoned snug around his neck, the minister offered a prayer for a police department in great peril.
But prayer alone won’t save this ailing body, he cautioned the rapt congregation. That miracle can only be pulled off by better pay, competitive medical benefits, a stable union contract, and a community committed to working with its sworn officers.
Ordained minister Anthony Campbell offered that prayer on Wednesday night as he took stock of a city police department toiling amid days of both agony and triumph.
Campbell delivered his sermon on Wednesday night to a congregation made up of roughly 40 members of the Hill South Community Management Team during the team’s regular monthly meeting in the Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School cafeteria at 150 Kimberly Ave.
“My prayer, and I pray this every night,” Campbell intoned, pausing just long enough to let the gravity of the subject sink in, “not just for the safety of the men and women who put that uniform on and go out and do this work, my prayer is that God will allow this city not to be broken by these changes that are happening to the police.”
For the force is truly at a moment of crisis, he confessed. And the route to salvation looks like a rocky one indeed.
The Hill South Community Management Team.
Even as the department enters its third year without a union contract, even as it continues to hemorrhage senior officers to retirements and better paying jobs in the suburbs, it’s also celebrating a record low year in violent crime.
An ordained minister and a 2009 graduate of the Yale Divinity School, Campbell is uniquely qualified to preach on the material and spiritual health of the New Haven Police Department.
He has served as the department’s chief for nearly two years, and has worked for the local police force for over two decades.
“The Harvest Is Due”
Campbell.
The picture that Campbell painted of the department, both from a staffing and an experiential perspective, was borderline apocalyptic.
Last year alone, he said, he lost 49 officers to retirement and resignation. In the first 16 days of the new year, he has already lost another seven. Many of those officers are the ones with the most experience on the force, including recently retired 20-year vet and Hill top cop Lt. Jason Minardi.
Overall, the department is currently at 404 full-time employees. That’s nearly 150 less than the 552 positions included in the department’s budget. Suburban departments have poached promising cops, while others retire or simply resign and seek other employment because of uncertainty over the future contract, among other concerns.
Campbell cited the snares at work as officers’ relatively low pay, the allure of more stable and lucrative jobs at Yale and in the suburbs. and three years without a union contract.
“Certain seeds have been planted,” he said, his voice steady but foreboding. “The harvest is due.”
City police officers, he said, earn $44,400 a year during their first two years on the force. After pension contributions and taxes, he said, the most junior officers make as little as $600 per week.
He told the parable of a recent family trip to the Cheesecake Factory restaurant, where he spoke with a waitress about how much she earns from her 25-hour-per-week, part-time server job. She told him she brought home $1,000 in cash each week.
“And she’s slinging cheesecake,” he said, the shock of injustice felt on behalf of his officers punctuating his voice.
And so, he said with an almost tender resignation, he cannot begrudge any of his officers who choose to leave the city police force for law enforcement jobs in the suburbs or at Yale University, where an officer’s starting salary is nearly $80,000 and can rise to nearly $100,000 after three years.
“Their officers make more than my captains,” he said about Yale’s police force. “I can’t compete with that.”
And 2019 marks the third year without a police contract, he noted, with officers facing the prospect of having to contribute a greater percentage of their salary to their medical benefits once a deal with the city is finally reached. Negotiations over a new contract is currently in arbitration.
His voice rising as he rapped his fists twice against his bulletproof vest, Campell said he cannot tell men and women who don a police uniform and risk their lives every day that they should not prioritize higher pay, better benefits, and a stable contract so that they can provide for themselves and their families.
“I have no control over contract negotiations,” he said. “I have no control over what the officers get paid. I have no control over medical benefits. None, whatsoever.”
That relative powerlessness is frustrating, he admitted. With even more retirements and resignations on the horizon, he predicted, major structural changes to the police department may be necessary if the department must continue to work with less and less staff.
Johnny Dye.
Longtime neighborhood activist and former Hill South management team chair Johnny Dye asked Campbell how the city could have allowed the police department to end up with over 100 officers less than called for in the budget.
Campbell said that prior police chiefs, particularly in the wake of the Great Recession, simply didn’t take seriously the prospect that low pay would inevitably lead to a flood of departures.
He praised Mayor Toni Harp for pushing for a new hiring rule that would allow the department to bring in “laterals,” or retired officers or supervisors from other departments who would not need to retrain with New Haven’s department in order to land a job with the city. But even implementing that process, he said, will involve months of union negotiations and conversations with many different city departments.
With no end to city budget woes in sight, he said, every department is now working with fewer dollars and fewer employees to provide the best municipal services they can.
“They Can’t Even Light A Candle To Us”
Amidst this darkness, Campbell proclaimed, shines a very, very bright light. For parallel to this vision of structural decay is a reality of record low violent crime.
Previewing a public 2018 crime statistics presentation scheduled for Thursday, he said that last year saw only 50 non-fatal shootings.
“To me, that’s 50 too many,” he said, “but it’s the lowest number we’ve had since we’ve been keeping records.”
Likewise, 10 people were killed in the city last year, he said, with two of those cases coming in self-defense. That’s in comparison to a peak of 34 homicides in the city in 2011.
“Phenomenal numbers,” he marveled. He said New Haven’s homicide numbers stack up exceptionally well to those of comparably-sized cities.
“They can’t even light a candle to us,” he said, his voice swelling with pride. Those numbers, he said, are testament to the integrity of city officers working who have to work harder now than in times of financial and staffing stability.
New Haven Urban Design League President Anstress Farwell asked to what Campbell attributes the drop in crime in the city despite such staffing woes.
“I attribute it to the dedication of the men and women on the street,” he said. He praised the Harp administration for its YouthStat initiative, which targets resources at youth most vulnerable to drop out of school and become involved in violent street life. And he praised the foundation of community policing laid down by former Chief Nick Pastore and former detective and current federal Project Longevity Director Stacy Spell.
As he ended his sermon, Campbell beseeched those present to prepare themselves for major structural changes in the department in the not too distant future. He also asked them to go out of their way to work collaboratively with city police, and to offer praise and encouragement in equal measure to any criticism and frustration.
“I ask that you support these officers,” he entreated in his closing benediction, “now more than ever.”