Thomas Breen photo
Abdussabur on Wednesday: Check out the stats.
A retired police sergeant-turned-mayoral candidate has a plan for beefing up the city’s walking beats: hiring back fellow retired cops to pound the pavement, without a gun or the power to arrest — and with a civilian “ambassador” by their side.
Shafiq Abdussabur described that proposal Wednesday afternoon during a mayoral campaign press conference about his new public safety plan for New Haven.
A retired police sergeant who spent 21 years working for the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) and who served on a state Police Accountability & Transparency Taskforce, Abdussabur is one of three Democratic challengers to two-term incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker vying for the nomination in this year’s Sept. 12 party primary.
At Wednesday's campaign press conference.
Abdussabur campaign interns and a few onlookers and passerby watch.
On Wednesday, he stood alongside fellow retired top New Haven cops John Velleca and Rebecca Goddard — as well as former police commissioner Greg Smith, clergy supporters Rev. Boise Kimber and Pastor John Lewis, and Westville budget watchdog Dennis Serfilippi — outside of his campaign headquarters at 347 Whalley Ave. to release his campaign proposal for how to make New Haven safer and improve police-community relations.
The plan includes renaming and reshuffling the responsibilities of the city chief administrative officer to focus solely on public safety departments; to assign a full-time nurse and provide showers and toiletries at the police department’s detention center; and to incentivize more officers to join the ranks “through competitive salaries and housing vouchers.” Click here to read Abdussabur’s public safety plan in full.
A cornerstone of that plan as described at Wednesday’s presser is the creation of a new “Unarmed Auxiliary Constable Division.”
Translation: Retired police officers and trusted community members paid by city government to undertake non-cop “walking beats” to proactively identify everything from broken sidewalks to “clogged drains” to “dog barking complaints” to illegal dumping hotspots.
These teams would also connect with community management teams and neighborhood block watches to clearly communicate public safety concerns between civilians and the police force, and stay in touch with the Livable City Initiative’s anti-blight division. They would also relieve some of the pressures currently felt by a police department that, as of the end of May, has 73 vacancies among sworn police officer positions.
Rev. Kimber: "'Shafiq is the ideal person to deal with crime in this city."
Abdussabur said on Wednesday that he picked up on such a proposal after visiting San Francisco last year for a Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) conference. He learned from San Francisco’s police chief, William Scott, about an “ambassador” program they have that is a “volunteer retired non-armed police force.” A similar police auxiliary program exists in New York City.
“What we’re looking to do is bring the same program here,” he said. “Where we can take retired officers, put them in an unarmed position, have them work as walking beats in our communities to give us a presence” of more cops on the beat.
Except these retired officers would not respond to 911 calls or be able make arrests. They wouldn’t carry any weapons with them. Instead, they’d be equipped with “a radio, a flashlight, a cellphone, a pen and pad, a resource book, a smile, a lot of love, and a bunch of handshakes.”
They would be similar to the downtown ambassador program that the Town Green District runs today and that Abdussabur helped put in place during the DeStefano administration, he said.
“Imagine this: Imagine a retired officer coming back to New Haven for a lesser salary, four hours a day,” Abdussabur explained. “That officer would work with a civilian ‘officer’ ” who could be, say, a mom or grandma or teenager in need of a job.
“This creates opportunities in our community,” he said. “It also creates a pathway” for people to become police officers.
Former Asst. Police Chief John Velleca ...
... and former Lt. Rebecca Goddard.
Velleca, a retired New Haven assistant police chief who teaches criminal justice at Albertus Magnus College, said that walking beats as they exist today are “not cost effective.” What an officer does on a walking beat, he said, is link people to resources and “interface with the community.” Such a program pitched by Abdussabur would “essentially supplement” existing walking beats with civilians capable of doing the same.
“The best part of a walking beat is you don’t need to be a fully certified, able-to-use-force, making-arrest police officer” for much of the work of walking a beat now, he said.
Abdussabur agreed. He said many retired New Haven police officers he talks to are now working jobs at, say, Yale New Haven Hospital that pay $30 an hour. “For that same amount of money, we could be competitive” with bringing them back on the beat and boosting walking beats in all 10 of the city’s policing districts.
“They can use one of the most powerful things a police officer has,” Abdussabur said about these to-be-rehired retired cops. “Which is their ability to care.”
Click on the video below to watch Monday’s press conference in full.