Markeshia Ricks Photo
The B‑squad officers were told at line-up: Look out for a late-model blue sedan. A man driving one was wanted for pulling a gun on store clerks and making off with high-end goods like generators.
Officer Steve Cunningham (at right in above photo) looked at the photo of the sedan. And he noticed a fairly common sight in a pothole ridden city — the car was missing a front hubcap.
It was the Sunday before last. The eagle-eyed Cunningham, who usually works the Hill South neighborhood, is serving as the field training officer in the Dwight neighborhood for rookie cop Timothy Janus (at left in photo).
After line-up, the two were making their way west on Columbus Avenue for another call, with Janus at the wheel of the squad car, when Cunningham spotted a late-model, blue sedan heading in the opposite direction.
Sure enough, “there was no front plate, and it was missing a hubcap,” Cunningham said.
The officers made a quick turnaround and followed the car to be certain that was their guy.
They called the back plate of the car in to dispatch, and it came back as a match. So Cunningham told Janus to keep following the car.
For a minute Janus lost sight of the car. When they saw it again, Cunningham instructed him to hit his lights and attempt to pull the driver over.
The driver refused to stop. They kept pursuing him, but they were cautious. “It’s a Sunday afternoon at just before 3:45 p.m.,” Cunningham said. “There are lots of people around.”
Janus kept his eye on the car, but his primary focus was on making sure no innocent bystanders got hurt.
The sedan driver headed toward the intersection of Columbus Avenue and Ella T. Grasso Boulevard. The officers continued to follow the man, and radioed ahead to Officer Chris Cameron, who is serving as the field training officer for rookie Robert Ferraro.
Ferraro (pictured in the photo at left) was at the wheel listening as Cameron simultaneously spoke with Cunningham,and the shift supervisor on the radio while instructing Ferraro on what to do.
At one point Cameron told him at a stoplight to wait.
“In about three seconds the car passes right in front of us,” Ferraro said.
The pursuit was on. The man headed back toward West Haven, Cameron said, and driving fast. Both sets of officers followed in their squad cars.
An officer for seven years, Cameron said he knew what was going to happen next: “It was going to end in a crash.”
It did, right on Forest Road, when the driver attempted to make a right when he was supposed to make a left. “Thank god no one got hurt,” Cameron said.
“I hate to use the word exciting,” Ferraro said of the chase. “But it was because it ended well and no one got hurt. It’s also nice to make your field training officer happy.”
Janus said he never expected to be put in such an intense situation so soon in his career, but he knew being an officer in a large city that he would experience things like a high speed chase. “It was a good experience,” he said.
And both Cunningham and Cameron were impressed with the way the rookies handled themselves in a tense situation.
“He did an amazing job,” Cunningham, an officer for about five and a half years, said of rookie Janus. “He exercised self control, timing and discipline. He wasn’t reckless. He did a perfect job — better than some others who have been doing this a lot longer.”
Cameron said it is not uncommon that in a high-stress situation like a chase for an officer to develop tunnel vision. He said Ferraro managed his own emotions and stress, while continuing to listen to instructions and maintain awareness.
Both Ferraro and Janus graduated from the police academy in March. Janus, originally from Wallingford, said he always wanted to be a police officer. His academy classmate Ferraro, who grew up in Fair Haven, said a recruiter, and the experience of another officer he knows, sold him on the job.
Cameron and Cunningham weren’t the only ones impressed with the rookies. Sgt. Stephan Torquati, district manager for Dwight, praised all the officers’ work.
“This guy apparently was suffering from chemical dependency and a danger to businesses and residents in New Haven and surrounding towns,” Torquati said. “Someone with that kind of deep dependency will do things that are extremely dangerous, and I’m happy that they were able to spot him and get him off the street before someone got hurt.”
The man has been charged with a long list of crimes including having a weapon in a motor vehicle, first degree reckless endangerment, reckless driving and engaging police in a pursuit.
Torquati said he’s been impressed with the recent group of academy graduates. “I think they’ve got the right combination of street intelligence and book intelligence,” he said. “They’re early in their careers, but quite a few members of the new class have made their presence felt in the department and it’s just a question of retaining them.”
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