Just when their agitation succeeded in cutting crime, Whalley neighbors landed in a new battle: to save their police substation.
Members of the fiery Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills (WEB) management team organized a last-minute “emergency” meeting Tuesday night to oppose a City Hall plan to close the substation at Whalley and Norton and possibly move operations to Hillhouse High School. The substation’s current landlord offered to cut the rent.
“Our management team is one of the best in the city, and we’re very upset with the fact we’re going to lose that substation,” WEB member Lori Hilson (pictured) said at the meeting.
“I will do everything I can to keep it on Whalley Avenue,” Edgewood Alderwoman Liz McCormack said Tuesday afternoon.
“We desperately need a police presence on Whalley.”
She and neighbors said the substation, at the crossroads of their policing district and the epicenter of much area crime, has been crucial to efforts to keep streets safe and neighbors united. The management team meets there. Lots of citizens walk in the storefront and engage the cops. A reading group for young children takes place there Saturday morning. Other neighborhood groups use the space. Walking beat cops — which WEB has fought to reinstate — can leave the storefront and be on targeted streets immediately.
Neighbors and the district’s top cop say all that will be less likely to happen under the plan to move the substation inside Hillhouse High School four blocks away. Some also say a school’s not a place for a police substation.
The DeStefano administration disagrees. It also says it has little choice: After failing to gain more state money to plug a $14 million hole, the mayor last week announced a series of drastic cuts to the proposed budget that takes effect July 1, cuts that include cutting back homeless shelters, ending a successful early reading readiness program, closing three police subtations, and laying off 102 city workers. (Click here to read about that.) WEB’s is the only substation in the city on which the government pays rent.
The administration’s proposed cuts come before an aldermanic committee Wednesday evening, and again on May 22, then before the full Board of Aldermen for a vote June 2.
A Continual Struggle
The creation of free-standing substations and neighborhood management teams was a hallmark of community policing when New Haven launched it in the early ’90s.
WEB is perhaps the city’s most active, and at times confrontational, management team. Last year some of its members were involved in an armed citizens patrol that pushed City Hall to undertake a departmental shake-up in an effort to revive community policing. Neighbors demanded revived bicycle and foot patrols, and have sporadically received them. Overall, crime dropped faster in the WEB district than in any other part of New Haven over the past year.
Now neighbors said they fear the substation closing could jeopardize that progress.
WEB President Bob Caplan took exception to City Hall making the decision without consulting the neighborhood. He and others learned about the decision in a Tuesday Register story. The city has known for months that it faces a tough budget, he and others noted.
“It would be nice if we had some community investment in the decision, not ‘Here’s what we’ve done to you, for you,’” Caplan said.
Eli Greer (pictured in file photo), who organized the armed Edgewood Park Defense Patrol, called the decision a “retaliatory strike.”
“[The mayor]‘s going to leave kids on the street without a reading group. He’s basically going to disband WEB,” Greer said. “They haven’t even informed the landlord or the community that they’re closing it.”
The landlord in question is Edgewood Corners, a group run by the Yeshiva of New Haven, which Greer and his family in turn run. Greer said the group is willing to lower the $1,400 monthly rent to keep the substation there. The group offered the space to the cops for free between 198 and 2002, then started charging.
Lt. Kevin Costin, the new top cop in the WEB district, agreed with neighbors’ assessment that a move to Hillhouse would hurt.
“I believe we need a substation on Whalley Avenue,” Costin said. “Visibility is number one. Whalley beats that are in the area — it’s easier for them there [at the Whalley substation] rather than walking four to five blocks down the street.”
And nearby Winthrop and Whalley is where “much of our activity takes place,” he said. “I just had six to seven people knock on the door this afternoon. The substation would be out of the way” at Hillhouse.
Neighbors also said that they liked seeing officers doing paperwork and detaining suspects inside the substation, where they remained in public view. They expressed doubts about the wisdom, or viability, of suspects being detained in a school.
The Other Side
“I certainly appreciate people grew attached to where they’re having meetings,” City Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts responded Tuesday. “People can grow attached to other locations.”
Smuts disagreed with the neighbors’ arguments. He said cops don’t usually detain suspects in substations anymore. Nor do they do paperwork there. Now that all cop cars have computer terminals, officers can park right on the street in high-crime areas and do their paperwork there, Smuts noted. He said that’s even better than having them do it in the substation.
“A school can be the right kind of place for community meetings. Look at the focus on youth violence, “ Smuts said. “Using the schools can be a positive thing.”
Bottom line, the city needs to save the $2,200 a month it spends on rent and utilities, Smuts said; it doesn’t rent space anywhere else. And the city is planning to close two other neighborhoods’ substations in order to save money on utilities. Smuts wouldn’t identify the other two Tuesday. He said officials are looking at where nearby schools or libraries could reasonably double as substation space.
Mayor DeStefano last week emphasized that he’s not happy about the proposed cuts. His budget doesn’t “move the city forward,” he said. Rather, he said, the city needs to do the best it can — and avoid further tax hikes — with the money available.
Sandman, Goldfield Back Move
The city’s two Beaver Hills aldermen stood by the mayor’s plan when asked about it at Tuesday night’s meeting.
“This is the only substation that the city actually lays out cash to keep, and the money’s just not there,” reasoned one of them, Moti Sandman (pictured). “We’re going to look for alternative spaces within the district. We’re not losing our police presence within the district. We’re going to fight to make sure we keep what we deserve and we’re not going to let them dismantle our district in any way, shape or form.”
The other Beaver Hills alderman, Carl Goldfield, called it a “misnomer” to describe the substation move as a “closing.”
“We’re just moving it and we’re going to achieve some budgetary efficiencies by moving it,” he said. “That’s what we need to do throughout the city to deal with the fact that we didn’t get what we expected in funding from the state.” He said if someone wants to donate space for free on Whalley Avenue, that would be ideal, but he said that doesn’t seem likely.
Melinda Tuhus contributed reporting to this story.