He hasn’t taken a day off in three months, but Mayor John DeStefano got right back to work after the end of his three-year quest for the governor’s office. He vowed Thursday that the city is “ready to move” on a new policing policy toward immigrants and hinted that the cops’ round-‘em-up “ID-Net” program may have reached its end.
The eight-term incumbent made the comments during an interview at his gubernatorial campaign office doors down from City Hall. He and the staff were clearing out.
Immigration poses one of the fresh new challenges that he didn’t encounter when he first took the mayor’s office, DeStefano said.
Months ago, the mayor announced support for a new written policy in the police department instructing cops not to question immigrants about whether they’re in the country legally. The issue arose earlier in the year when police came to the site of a housing inspection of a rundown apartment on Elm Street where immigrants lived; the cop ended up asking to see the papers of the immigrant tenants, who fled out the door.
Immigrants in town have become prey for thieves who know their victims are loathe to call the cops. Last month an employee of Chabaso Bakery in Fair Haven was stabbed to death after he refused to give his paycheck to one such would-be robber.
Despite DeStefano’s embrace of a new policy, it hasn’t moved forward. The police union has been blocking it.
DeStefano said Thursday he’s confident the policy will now move forward. He also raised questions about whether it makes sense to continue much longer with ID-NET, under which cops saturate a crime-ridden neighborhood and make massive arrests. Some critics have questioned whether that approach, while delivering short-term relief to people living amid street crime, runs counter to the philosophy of community-based policing, which relies on building ties over time with neighbors to work with people in trouble and build the more difficult, intelligence-driven cases against high-level dealers and other figures more responsible for crime in town. Past experience in New Haven, before the last time community policing was instituted, showed that high numbers of arrests of street criminals failed to make a long-term dent in crime statistics.
ID-NET served a purpose but has “distracted us from our district-based patrol, which is the guts of community policing,” the mayor said.
Click on the play arrow to hear DeStefano discuss both questions.
Although DeStefano lost handily to Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell in the gubernatorial race, the campaign ended remarkably free of acrimony — and with DeStefano generally regarded as having performed well in debates and called attention to issues like health care, property tax reform and smart growth. It just wasn’t the year, it seemed, that voters were going to turn out a non-controversial, personally popular incumbent governor.
Click on the play arrow to watch DeStefano describe his attitude upon returning to day-to-day work in New Haven City Hall.