Allan Appel Photo
Newhallville District Manager Lt. Manmeet Colon with newly badged Briella Adantor.
Two happy little girls received badges and became junior police officers. A couple of moms took applications for the Police Athletic League summer camp, and several said the police gesture was positive yet also made pleas for more programs for young people.
Meanwhile, one longtime activist also said not a single police officer is trusted in Newhallville except the district manager. One young woman called the whole parade of police brass and other officials, after a police-involved shooting, “pathetic.”
Chief Othniel Reyes with Newhallville CMT Chair Kim Harris at the outset of the tour.
That was the range of emotional reaction heard Saturday morning as nearly all the police district managers and other brass from the New Haven police department and the Yale Police Department, accompanied by alders and other community officials, walked the streets and knocked on doors in Newhallville in an effort to listen, and help heal community anxiety.
The event was called in response to the anxiety and fear the have mounted, along with demonstrations for changes and more accountability, in the aftermath of the officer-involved shooting on April 16, at the corner of Dixwell and Argyle..
There, at 4:30 a.m. on April 16, a Hamden police officer and a Yale police officer shot at two unarmed people in an attempt to search for evidence of a first degree assault in a red Honda that was stopped by police vehicles at that location. One occupant Stephanie Washington, who was hit and went to the hospital. The other, Paul Witherspoon, survived without serious physical injury.
Yet by all accounts the incident has caused injury to the community and brought into the open of a lot of grave and fundamental questions: Who is policing us? Is there too much of it? Whose jurisdiction is whose? And how can residents begin to trust officers more?
Door-knocking down Shelton Avenue.
New Haven Acting Chief Otoniel Reyes summoned all of his district managers to join, one officer with one alder or local leader, to lend an ear to people’s concerns.
Even before they set out a single step or knocked on a single door along Argyle and Dixwell, where the shooting occured, officers got a polite but passionate earful from two prominent Newhallvillians: Stetson Branch Librarian Diane Brown and Newhallville Management Team Co-Chair Shirley Lawrence.
“It’d be upsetting for me if you’re here just for this one day,” Brown told Reyes.
Shirley Lawrence and Yale Police Asst. Chief Steven Woznyk exchange views.
“If this is successeful, yes, in theory, we will be back,” Reyes responded. But, Reyes added, he knows the community is overwhelmed by the incident and by police presence, “so we’ll re-convene and we’ll see.”
Lawrence upped the ante on the issue of trust and constancy of presence: She said the officers were many days and many shots late.
“I don’t trust you and a lot of people feel the same way. However, I know you have to start somewhere but a lot of people won’t say it to your face. You need daily activities. I watch officers pull people over, shine lights on them, search their cars, and let them go. At this point, I wouldn’t want to introduce my grandchildren to you. Except for Officer [Newhallville District Manger Lt. Manmeet] Colon. Her presence is real. Right now the kids are scared.”
“This is why we are here,” replied Reyes. “All we can do is try to bridge those gaps, one by one.”
The top cops then divided into groups, with a plan to reconvene at Shelton and Division in two hours.
Lt. Colon’s group included Addie Kimbrough, captain of the Shepard Street block watch, Board of Ed engagement staffer Daniel Hunt, Officer Scott Shumway, and others.
Denisha Morrison with Colon and Rev. Steven Cousin.
At 72 Shelton Ave. they met Latoya Bailey, arrived in Newhallville just a couple of years from New York City, along with five kids. When officers explained their presence, the Argyle/Dixwell incident and other shootings, Bailey said, “What kind of neighborhood is this!”
“A great one,” replied Colon.
Bailey said she appreciated receiving Police Athletic League applications for all her kids, including an opportunity for one of the older ones to serve as a counselor.
What appealed to her daughter Briella was the junior police badge that Lt. Colon pinned on her.
Just down the block, Denisha Morrison was engaged by Rev. Steven Cousin of the Bethel A.M. E. Church, who is a city fire commissioner.
He had his work cut out for him. “Now people feel like they can’t talk to you and trust you,” she said.
Tamika Frazier with Lt. David Zannelli on her Shelton Avenue steps.
Cousin urged her to come to the community management team to express her concerns. Colon provided the meeting time and location and gave Morrison, as she did to a dozen people on the walk, her cell number.
“Our goal is so that we can all live in peace,” said Lt. Sean Maher. Then he told to Morrison his beat officers need to hear from residents like her, as does he, so that he can help them in their training to that end.
In the end, Morrison was heartened by the visit. She termed it “a step in the right direction.”
Morrison’s neighbor Tamika Frazier said she has challenges with her 12-year-old son, who wants to go out a lot. “I don’t let my son out without me,” she said.
Colon with retired firefighter Louis Bosley.
Another resident nearby, who is raising five kids, three foster kids and two of her own, described a similar problem: Her young son went to the corner store and was jumped,his money taken. Now he refuses to go to the store and has fears about going out at all.
“This gives a chance,” said Frazier, “for the community to know the officers. It’s important.”
Halfway through the tour, around 1 p.m., Lt. Colon made the acquaintance of Louis Bosley, a 31-year retired city firefighter who lives on Shelton with one of his two sons.
“It’s a hard job,” he said of what police officers do. “But they have to know who’s who. I get stopped, but I don’t mind because I didn’t do anything! You do have thugs out here, but I’ve lived here all my life.”
As if on cue Colon’s radio crackled with a report of a stabbing incident at Dixwell and Bassett. In seconds, cruisers’ sirens were audible. She dispatched Officer Scott Shumway, who had been with the group, to the scene.
“Pass the word to the young’uns,” Colon told Bosley, that she is there to listen and to help.
“You got a card?” he asked, deeming the visit “a good idea.”
At the debriefing at the end of the tour.
As she was talking to another nearby Shelton Avenue resident, Laura Daniels, and badging her daughter Halo, yet another call came in on the radio. This time it was a shooting on upper Quinnipiac Avenue.
“What’s wrong with people?” Colon declared, as she exchanged phone numbers with Daniels, and the group moved on.
At Division and Shelton, Colon decided to knock on a few doors of the Presidential Gardens apartment complex. She sensed someone behind the first door but not answering.
Colon has an easygoing with a touch of the unflappable and serene. “I don’t care if they don’t want to say hi,” she said, as we walked away. “I’ll keep waving until they do.”
She met a challenge to that attitude at the next door, where a young woman, from the Dwight-Kensington neighborhood was visiting. “If it [the shooting] didn’t happen, you wouldn’t be here, right? Two weeks ago you weren’t knocking!” she said.
“It wasn’t the New Haven police” who did the shooting, Kimbrough noted.
Newhallville/East rock Alder Steven Winter and Asst. Chief Racheal Cain.
“That’s bullshit. You’re all the same,” persisted the young woman, who refused to be photographed or to give her name. “My brother got shot by the police. I don’t care what you say …”
“… But I care what you say,” Colon interjected.
“The police are pathetic,” concluded the young woman as she closed the door.
Afterwards, the various groups gathered for a debriefing — and some candy from management team leader Kim Harris — at the Community Baptist Church parking lot at Division and Shelton. Daniel Hunt said among his main takeaways from his listening is that people want more programs for kids.
Yale Police Department Chief Ronnell Higgins reported he heard that too. He and his officers did connect one kid, as they walked, to the Youth and Police Initiative. He said others said they were happy the police had paid them this visit.
Reyes thanked his officers for participating. He acknowledged that people are angry and the moment is a time for leadership. He promised reforms are coming.
Post-walk, Reyes looks for a candy in Harris’s bucket.
Read previous stories about the April 16 shooting below.
• Detectives: Probable Cause For Assault Charge
• Hamden Cop Shoots Woman In Newhallville
• Cop Video Released; Hamden Never Told New Haven It Was Crossing The Border
• Protesters Storm PD Seeking Answers In Officer-Involved Shooting; Officials Mum
• Cop Who Shot Was Trained In New Haven
• Shot-At Man Plans To File Suit; Clerk Describes Original Complaint
• Outrage Over Shooting Shuts Down Streets
• Elicker: Remove Griffin From Shooting Probe
• Post-Shooting, Focus On Suburban Cops
• Griffin Obtains Search Warrant For Shot-Up Honda; Harp Stands By Griffin
• Top Yale Cops Seek To Rebuild Trust
• Public Seeks Independent Probe
• Farmer Backs Independent Investigation
• New Havener Of The Week: Kerry Ellington
• Probable Assault Crime Cited For Search
• Hamden Police Launch Shooting Investigation
• Cop Who Shot Had A Clean Record