Paul Bass Photo
Velleca: Admit error, move on.
Dean Esserman will need to meet unspecified conditions before resuming his job as New Haven’s police chief — and some current and former cops are calling for him not to return.
Those were the latest developments Tuesday, the first day Esserman went on a 15-working-day paid leave at the request of Mayor Toni Harp. Harp acted after concluding that Esserman had misbehaved in reaming out a waitress and causing a scene at Archie Moore’s restaurant and bar, the latest in a string of complaints about his personal conduct within the department and in public.
Some critics within and outside the department argued that Esserman was being given a holiday instead of real discipline.
“People are characterizing this as a vacation. This is the furthest from a vacation,” mayoral Chief of Staff Tomas Reyes responded Tuesday in an interview with the Independent.
Reyes said Esserman signed an agreement Monday that listed steps he is to take to deal with certain issues before he would return to his job. Reyes declined to detail those steps because, he said, it’s a personnel matter.
The earliest Esserman could return under the arrangement is Aug. 16. Assistant Chief Anthony Campbell is filling in as interim chief.
Esserman has declined to comment publicly on his situation.
Police Union President Craig Miller commented on the situation Tuesday. He called for Esserman to make the leave of absence permanent.
“I think he’s accomplished what he wants to accomoplish here. I think it’s got the point where he’s got to leave. The morale is [low]. We need to reorganize and restructure this department and get it going back on track and not have somebody going around treating people in the community unlike the way they want officers to treat the community,” Miller said.
John Velleca, a former New Haven assistant police chief, made a similar call during an interview on WNHH radio Tuesday.
Velleca — who sparred with Esserman and left the department soon after Esserman’s arrival almost five years ago — cited his own experience retiring from the post of chief of police in Weare, N.H.
“I can completely empathize with somebody who has a personal life that’s causing issues with them and how that can bleed over to their professional life,” Velleca stated. “Look that hapepned to me in New Hampshire I was the chief. We had body cameras.. We rooted out corruption, cut overtime. But my personal life wasn’t where it needed to be.
“I ended up spending time [having sex] with my assistant on one occasion. She tried to use that to extort me [and obtained a restraining order against him]. I had to fire her. But it became a story. And I had to step away for the best interest of the agency. At the end of the day, there was no criminal violation.There was no violation of policy or my contract. But the reality is that I knew that too much media coverage was adversely affecting my officers.
“I surely believe I made a mistake. I surely believe that affected my credibiilty. There’s no doubt about that. It would have been very difficult to discipline from that point forward. The rebuttal would be, ‘You did this. How can you discimpline me?’
“I had to step away. Resign my position. Get my personal life in order. It’s the most stable it’s been now.”
During the interview, Velleca spoke about the importance of cops admitting when they err, such as in the recent fatal shootings of African-American men in Baton Rouge and suburban St. Paul, Minnesota. “In policing, we’re afraid to say, ‘We made a mistake.’ We’re afraid we’re going to be crucified,” he observed.
He called for a reexamination of community policing puts into practice the “broken-windows theory” of addressing smaller problems before they become bigger problems. Velleca said departments are in some cases “over-policing” some communities. He said “broken windows” theory needs to be reexamined so that police are helping solve problems as active presences in neighborhoods rather than just resorting to making mass arrests for minor offenses and giving people criminal records.
“We make too many arrests. We’ve taken away autonomy form police officers” about when to arrest and not to arrest people,” Velleca argued. “That’s caused a lot of tension. We fill the jails with minority offenders.”
Click on or upload the above sound file to hear the full interview with Velleca on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven.”