Maya McFadden Photo
Abdussabur at press conference: “Help the people who elected you.”
Hours after New Haven already matched its 2020 homicide rate for 2021, alder candidate and retired police Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur called on the governor to declare a state of emergency related to gun violence in the city.
Abdussabur, who is running unopposed as the Democratic candidate for the Beaver Hills 28th Ward seat on the Board of Alders, issued the call during a Sunday afternoon press conference on the steps of City Hall. He called on state legislators, Congress members and senators to help bring the city together to curb the gun violence and start making a dent in unsolved shootings.
“I’m calling on the governor, I’m asking you to come down to New Haven and meet with state officials” and others to craft immediate solutions, Abdussabur said.
“You come to New Haven to get votes from Black and brown people when you want to get into office. Black and brown people are dying in my city of New Haven, and I need your help. Help the people who elected you. …
“Declare in New Haven a state of emergency.”
New Haven ended 2020 with 20 homicides and 121 non fatal shootings. This was the highest number of homicides and non-fatal shooting victims since 2012. On Sunday, New Haven hit the 20-homicide mark already for 2021, with more than three months remaining, when Zaire Luciano was shot to death in the Annex neighborhood.
“We’re basically 100 percent up from 2019,” he said. “We cannot use the excuse of, ‘Well, Hartford has more homicides.” This is not a race. This is not a candy drive. This is about lives.”
In addition to a 10-point Stop the Violence Plan he pitched in June, Abdussabur Sunday offered three more suggestions to curb the violence. First: host a citywide public meeting or meetings to hear the community’s ideas. Second; create a city gun violence prevention task force made up of community members who advise city staff on how to deal with neighborhood-based crimes. Third: Create a gun violence shooting investigation team that is different from the police department’s shooting task force. The latter task force includes officers from area police departments as well as state law enforcement investigators. He called for an additional fully local team that brings together the city, Yale, and Southern Connecticut State University forces.
“No one from the city has asked to sit with me” to discuss the 10-point plan he issued in June, he said. That plan included working with landlords to offer reduced rents to police officers willing to live in the city; expanding the detective bureau to include more Black and Latino officers on 90-day temporary assignments; hiring more Black cops and assigning more to supervisory positions; installing video cameras in parks and more areas where shootings have occurred or might occurred.
Abdussabur said there is no safe place in New Haven for anyone. “How do you come outside and volunteer in a city where you may get your head blown off at 11 or 12 o clock in the afternoon?” he said. A daylight shooting occurred in Abdussabur’s ward, on Norton Street, on Aug. 31.
Abdussabur urged his former colleagues still on the beat, who have faced pressures related to understaffing, to “do the loops around the neighborhood with your cruise lights on. At least park in high physical hot spot areas. And just hold on until we can get you more support.”
“This department does not feel supported,” he added.
Abdussabur reported that since 2015, 524 nonfatal shootings have occurred in New Haven, with less than 10 percent of those cases being solved. Ninety-six people have been shot and killed during that time. Of those 620 total shootings resulting in death or injury, over 80 percent of the victims have been Black or brown, Abdussabur said.
He added that city leaders have attributed the uptick in violence to the Covid-19 pandemic. He argued that more of the city’s federal Covid funds should be put toward a plan to fight gun violence. “We’re dying of gun violence in New Haven,” he said. The city’s close to $100 million in federal emergency pandemic relief is “not finding its way into the neighborhoods of the people that are dying. What’s finding its way into the neighborhoods are excuses,” he said.
Abdussabur demanded that the city bring community members to table to help come up with a solution.
“City government’s job is not to have all the answers. It’s to have the ability and the will to put the right people in the room to create the resources and to create the talent so that we can get down to the bottom of this,” he said.
Watch the full press conference in this video.