Jabez Choi photo
Homelessness, policing on the agenda for Hill CMT.
Hill South neighbors pressed the mayor, the police chief, and their district’s top cop to do more to build up the ranks of the city’s police department — and to work harder to address homelessness in the neighborhood.
They issued that dual call for help during the latest meeting of the Hill South Community Management Team, which was held last Wednesday, Oct. 16, at the Parish Hall on the Kimberly Avenue campus of Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School.
The meeting focused primarily on neighbors’ grievances with too many homeless people and too few cops. Neighbors were joined at the meeting by Mayor Justin Elicker, Police Chief Karl Jacobson, and Sgt. Jasmine Sanders, who is the district manager for the Hill.
At the top of the discussion, Sanders shared crime statistics in the area for 2023 and 2024. She noted that there have been decreases in robberies, confirmed shots fired, motor vehicle thefts, and drug- and narcotic-related crimes. Meanwhile, burglaries, larceny from motor vehicles, and motor vehicle stops all increased in the area. Sanders acknowledged the efforts of the police force, despite its fallen numbers.
“I know we complain that we don’t do enough,” Sanders said. “But with the little that we have, they are out there doing work.”
According to the city’s latest CompStat crime data report, which goes through Oct. 6, the Hill South neighborhood had seen 17 confirmed shots fired so far this year, compared to 23 at that same time last year; 36 car thefts, compared to 71 at that time last year; 26 burglaries, compared to 23 at that time last year; and 40 larcenies from vehicles, compared to 27 at that time last year.
Quickly, Wednesday’s management team conversation turned to homelessness in the Hill. Some of the 30 community members present shared their experiences seeing unhoused people on their streets, outside their businesses and homes. For one woman named Alex, who did not want to provide her last name, witnessing unhoused people near her home has been distressing for her two children, aged 8 and 6, both of whom were seated next to her at the meeting, playing on their iPads.
She advocated for not having half-way houses in residential areas and getting rid of liquor stores in the neighborhood.
“I believe in second chances,” Alex said, in reference to offering services to unhoused and formerly incarcerated individuals, “but not at the price of our kids’ futures. At this point, my children are so accustomed to these drug addicts.”
Community members wondered if there was a significant presence of non-New Haven unhoused individuals in the area. City homelessness services director Velma George confirmed that there has been an “uptick” of people from out of town. On the day of the meeting, George had visited select sites in the neighborhood and in Fair Haven and found that most of the unhoused people were not from New Haven.
Elicker emphasized that he is pushing for leadership in other cities to provide more resources to the unhoused. George shared that West Haven will have its own warming center this year, with another one opening in Ansonia. Additionally, Elicker highlighted the city’s other efforts to address homelessness, including the opening of another shelter on 645 Grand Ave., efforts of the non-cop crisis response team COMPASS, and the conversion of a 55-room hotel on Foxon Boulevard into a homeless shelter.
“What my view is, is that if people are offered support and an option and they refuse to take it, and they keep disrupting the neighborhood in a way that is dangerous to people … it is just not OK, and it’s not fair to the community,” Elicker said at the meeting.
Despite these efforts, community members said they were ultimately worried about the lack of police presence in the neighborhood. Jacobson shared that currently, the police department has 67 vacancies. He noted that the force has decreased from last year and that he was struggling to recruit new officers.
He said that he hopes the authorization of a new contract — which would raise starting salaries by $20,000 with annual pay increases, healthcare benefits, new disciplinary procedures for officers charged with felonies, and reworked schedules to allow better work-life balance for officers — would attract more officers to join the city’s police department. Jacobson pointed to Bridgeport’s police department, which received a new contract in June and attracted 400 applicants, therefore adding 40 police officers into the force, according to Jacobson.
“In the last year, I thought we’d be able to recruit better and do better, and we haven’t and that’s my fault as the chief. But now we have a contract…I hope and pray that the alders vote for it,” Jacobson said. “This new contract is going to allow us to get back to the numbers that we need and be able to do what we want to do.”
The police union overwhelmingly ratified the new contract. The Elicker administration has now submitted the proposed six-year deal to the Board of Alders, which has 30 days to take a final vote.
Jacobson and Elicker went over police arrest procedures for unhoused people who are causing disturbances in the area. The two repeated that arrests are not a first-level defense and that instead, COMPASS workers, alongside other social workers and navigators, work alongside police to ensure that other options are given to unhoused individuals first. It is after these attempts are bypassed in which an arrest will be made.
“I want to measure expectations, because we can do what we have power over,” Elicker said, following up this explanation.
What Elicker meant was that the city only has power over the police, but not necessarily over the courts. Arrestees could cycle out from the courts in no time, and back to the communities that had found them to be disturbances.
“I don’t think any of us in this room want to arrest people,” Elicker said. “But I think all of us in this room have an expectation that people who are a part of this community are ones that respect the community.”
Jacobson urged community members to be in constant contact with neighborhood police officers about the goings on of problematic individuals in the area. He also encouraged residents to take pictures of individuals for the police to keep an internal list and track the individuals.
“What we do is we try to engage the people that are there to make sure that we connect them to services,” Sanders said. “At no time do we go out and just throw people out. We want to be able to connect them to services and we also notify them when the camp will be cleared,” going on to explain that encampments are given three business days (or 72 hours) before being cleared.
Later on in the night, unhoused activists through Unhoused Activists Community Team (U‑ACT) and other affiliate groups set up an encampment of 25 tents on the Green. The next morning, the police department, with the help of social workers, convinced the group to take those tents down. After the tents went down, the encampment turned into an occupation, with unhoused people sleeping in a group on the Green where the tents once stood.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the new police union contract includes more “lenient” disciplinary procedures for officers charged with felonies. The procedures are actually stricter, as the proposed labor deal states that officers charged with felonies may now be placed on unpaid leave, as opposed to paid leave.