Before $1M Flows, Distrust Flows In Newhallville

If a two-hour neighborhood meeting is any indication, the cops might be winning more of the daily crime battles in Newhallville than the larger challenge of convincing people that ​“community policing” is different from the kick-in-the-door, military-style practices of the past.

Violent crime has dropped significantly in Newhallville the past two years, as it has all over the city. Yet, at the two-hour Newhallville meeting, held at Lincoln Bassett School last Wednesday night, neighbors weighed in on a broken relationship with the cops.

The meeting’s attendees included retirees, grandparents and a new generation of homeowners. They shared their frustrations with a professor from the University of New Haven who is providing research support for a $1 million Department of Justice grant New Haven won to enlist people like them to help make Newhallville safer over the long term.

Those frustrations were not just about community policing in Newhallville but about a city government at large that they believe treats their community like the proverbial red-headed stepchild; about a neighborhood that city officials, over the years have talked to, talked about, but rarely, truly in their opinion, listened to.

“They talk to us like we are children,” a man who gave his name as Jerome said at Wednesday night’s meeting. ​“We’re not children.”

The federal government announced in October that New Haven had won the $1 million competitive grant. The Harp administration applied for the money to help the police, street outreach workers, schools, youth and health-care workers, anti-blight officials, small businesses, and grassroots activists collaborate on ways to stem violence.

But the road to accepting the grant and spending it has been a rocky one. The program doesn’t have an executive director yet; alders and City Hall have been fighting about the process of hiring one.

Meeting attendees like Mark Barros (pictured) recalled a time when relationships with the police were not strained. A time when police officers not only knew the neighbors by name and showed them respect, but knew the criminals by name too, and lived in the community that they policed. A time when neighbors saw someone doing something wrong in the community, and had the guts to say something.

Barros told a story about a recent interaction with police that he said typifies the relationship in Newhallville.

Police officers were out in Newhallville in force trying to find someone who was shooting in daylight. Barros said he approached an officer on his street, Butler Street, with hopes of introducing himself.

“I said to the officer, ​‘I know you’re busy, but when you get done, can I just talk to you for a second?’” Barros recounted. ​“I stayed out there, waited and watched. As soon as he got done, and wrapped up what he was doing, he looked over at me, got in his car and took off. I just wanted to meet him and introduce myself, and let him know where I lived because I hadn’t seen him around before. The guy didn’t even want to talk to me.”

Barros said in the past cops built relationships, even with neighborhood criminals, because they seemed to have a hope that by getting to know them and taking an interest in their lives they could open the door to help them. ​“They knew that once they got to talking to them that they could let them know, ​‘I see you out here, and if I catch you, I’m going to have to lock you up,’” he said. ​“But these guys today, if they see the cops coming and they’re dealing drugs, or just hanging out, they just go the other way.”

Neighbor Ken Joyner said far too often when he does see cops walking the beat in the neighborhood they are talking to each other instead of interacting with people on the street.

“I, for one, am not sure what community policing is beyond the name,” Joyner said.

May Mitchell said to her it looks like many of the new officers in the neighborhood are more interested in unevenly enforcing traffic and loitering laws that they might let go in other communities instead of getting to know the neighbors. At the very least the officers should be able to engage children beyond the occasional ​“hello”, she said.

“My little granddaughter loves police officers,” she said. ​“She will say, ​‘Hi police officer.’ If they speak to her at all, it’s just ​‘Hi’ and they keep walking. If you can’t talk to a child, how do you expect to talk to grown ups?

Underlying the complaints is a tension in how to battle crime both in the short term and in the long term. Newhallville has seen the most shootings of any neighborhood in recent years. Neighbors demanded help. The cops flooded the neighborhood with extra-duty patrols and late-night interdiction teams — the kind of short-term patrols that don’t lend themselves to getting to know neighbors long-term while walking a beat.

And often, in the midst of chasing suspects or facing high-pressure situations, cops and neighbors in the path don’t get to know each other. Also, part of the philosophy of community policing — addressing small quality-of-life problems like speeding— can lead to both applause from some neighbors and charges of selective enforcement from others.

Finally, some neighbors, including State Sen. Gary Winfield, have been saying for some time that even the walking beats don’t get to know many of them. One potential moment of bringing the neighborhood together—when dozens of people showed up at a community management team meeting to get to know a new batch of rookies — was lost when a supervisor canceled it at the last minute for fears that events in Ferguson were still too fresh to make the encounter safe.

Community Policing For All?

Cynthia Spears (pictured) wasn’t at Wednesday’s meeting. If she had attended, she could have talked about her experience a few weeks ago of calling the cops on her neighbors two doors down on Huntington Street in a classic community-policing-style issue.

Spears lives on a block of Huntington Street that isn’t over run with criminal activity. Many of the block’s inhabitants are like Spears, homeowners who have lived on the street for decades.

But like so many blocks in Newhallville, the block near Albertus Magnus College is changing. Former homeowners are dying off. Some people sell their houses, or leave them to family members. But many houses have fallen into the hands of absentee landlords, with no connections to the neighborhood, and often with seemingly no concern for what their tenants do to their property.

Spears said she called the cops on her neighbors after they threw a raucous party that started at about 10 p.m. on a Saturday and lasted until Sunday morning. ​“I mean they were out there with a keg, singing at the top of their lungs,” she said. Earlier that evening she’d had to tell the guests of the party not to park in her yard, and later had to run off one guy urinating in the bushes in front of her house.

She had called the police around 2 a.m.. An officer finally showed up at 3 a.m. When she saw the cop arrive she stuck her head out of her front screen door and called out her thanks to him for coming to do something about the party. ​“The cop just gave me this blank look and didn’t say a thing,” she said. By the time she made it upstairs, the cop was driving away. He didn’t shut the party down, she said; it raged on until around 7:30 a.m. Post-party her yard was littered with Samuel Adam’s beer bottles and other trash.

“I hate to think of it this way, but the only thing I can come up with is that the kids in that house are white, and this is a black neighborhood,” she said. ​“If it were our kids doing that in this neighborhood, or a white neighborhood, it would have been a totally different story.”

Cultural Miscues

Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn spends much of her time knocking on doors and talking to neighbors, hunting down absentee landlords and helping community members organize cleanups. She said many of the issues with crime and even blight aren’t created by the people who have long lived in the neighborhood, or have deep ties to the community.

She said often times the problems come from those who have no roots in the community, and perceive it as a place where people can do whatever they want and get away with it whether it’s selling drugs, throwing all-night parties, or allowing people to live in substandard conditions.

Spears said her block of Huntington Street is the type of place where neighbors not only respect each other, but know each other. They’re also the type of neighbors who if they’re going to throw a party, or move into a neighborhood full of people who don’t look like them, they’d at least try to introduce themselves.

After a reporter knocked on the door and visited with one of the tenants of the house in question, who declined to be interviewed, Spears said she finally got a visit from the offending neighbor. The neighbor said there had been more than one visit from the police. ​“I only called the police once,” she said. ​“Clearly, I’m not the only one who was disturbed.”

While the incident with the neighbors was upsetting, Spears said she was more disappointed with the lack of action from the police. ​“There is all this talk about community policing,” she said, ​“but you would think they would be responsive to a neighbor interested in keeping things quiet.”

Longtime residents like Spears and those who attended the meeting see the street-level drug deals and call the cops. By the time the cops arrive four hours later, the dealer is gone. They walk by the houses where the trash overflows daily. They live next to the house where the backyard is filled with refuse to such an extent that aggressive raccoons have come calling in the neighborhood during the day.

They live on the tree-lined streets that make even the most blighted area look beautiful. But come night fall those same trees blot out the new LED-lights installed by the city to light up the neighborhood streets for safety. Their children are becoming desensitized to the sound of gunshots, not just because of the gun-violence that happens in the neighborhood, but because it is home to the police department’s gun range (soon to move to West Rock; though Joyner pointed out Wednesday that the move has been in the works for two years). Clyburn has been pushing the city for more than a year to cut back more of the trees.

While they see these issues as problems that the city needs to address, they also see them as opportunities that might provide something that people in the community need desperately: jobs.

A New Generation

Lt. Herb Sharp is the type of police officer who welcomes contact with the public — the type of officer who would wade into a group of protestors blocking Union Avenue while demanding that police leaders meet with them to get them to stop obstructing traffic. He did just that a few months ago when people marched on police headquarters at 1 Union Ave. over the alleged use of excessive force in the arrest of a 15-year-old girl near the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

On that day, Sharp let the protestors bombard him with questions that were posed through the end of a bullhorn, and he calmly answered every question asked. He attributed that approach to his many years of experience as a cop and to his upbringing. Though he feels comfortable walking up to anyone on the street in Newhallville and striking up a conversation, he said, many young officers under his command, the majority of which have six years or less on the force under their belt, simply don’t.

As the district manager for Newhallville, Sharp said he knows his officers aren’t seasoned enough to have the same level of confidence that he has interacting with the public. He said he wants them to reach a comfort level with the community that allows them to approach people on the street and build relationships.

“I very much came up in that generation of people with those kinds of relationships and feel confident walking up and talking with anyone in the community,” he said. ​“But this is a different generation of police officers with different values.”

He welcomed the influx of new officers in the neighborhood. At the same time the influx has created a challenge for the department in that the pool of new officers is growing at a faster rate than the pool of seasoned officers who can teach them the department’s values and show them, by example, how to interact with the community.

“They’re not wrong,” he said of the upset neighbors the morning after last week’s community meeting. ​“We need to get our officers on the same page.” For Sharp that means teaching new officers through constant mentoring, leading by example and instilling the idea that one of the key elements of community policing is customer service.

“Follow-up is so key,” he said. Making sure that officers know that they are expected to introduce themselves and engage the community also is key he said.

Sharp has personally been in touch with Spears by phone, though he had hoped to visit her in person, something he tries to do, particularly when it is requested of him, he said. He said he plans to have the officers who generally patrol that part of the neighborhood stop in to meet Spears because he recognizes that she’s a customer, but also an ally in the fight against crime.

Thanks to the addition of five new officers this past week, neighbors will see more cops walking the beat in the neighborhood.

“What I can tell you is that the new officers are eager,” Sharp said. ​“I’ve spoken and met with all of my new officers, and they’re eager work with community.” He said he recently had a talk with a rookie during the C‑squad line up who was excited about a positive interaction and connection made with a member of the community. ​“They’re looking forward to going out there and completing the mission of the PD, and that is community-based policing,” Sharp said.

But they have to participate in the discussion. Though there was a lot of talk about policing in the meeting Wednesday, no police officers, including Sharp, were present at the meeting. Sharp said he was unaware that such a meeting was taking place. He said it was the kind of meeting he would have been at had he known about it.

Clyburn hinted Wednesday night that the community perhaps still feels a bit slighted over something that happened in November. Sharp and 37 cops-to-be were supposed to join the Newhallville Community Management Team for a potluck, and meet-and-greet.

The night of the event, a Ferguson, Missouri, grand jury returned a decision not to indict the white police officer who shot unarmed, black teenager Michael Brown. The announcement was made after protestors had waited all day to hear the decision. The Ferguson community erupted in anger and some violence. Sharp, concerned for the recruits’ safety, called the event off. He and two officers who regularly patrol the community attended the event instead.

While Clyburn said the Newhallville community appreciated the conversation that ultimately took place with just Sharp and the two other officers, she said Wednesday that not having the event in its original format was a missed opportunity for those recruits, who are now police officers in the city. She said they could have met with the community and talked about what happened in Ferguson and how it might translate in New Haven.

Sharp said, in hindsight, he still likely would have made the same call to cancel the larger meeting. He said the decision was not based on an imminent threat from the community, nor was his decision a critical reflection on the neighborhood he lives in.

“I’m sure they were looking forward to it,” he said. ​“I was looking forward to it as well.” Sharp said the fact that the rookies weren’t certified officers yet weighed heavily on his decision.

The other factor was that he was concerned that the officers would be faced with questions that they might not be able to answer at such a volatile time in the country. That said, the police academy and Chief Dean Esserman were in support of the event, and Sharp said he still hopes to reschedule a get-together. Sharp has been able to work with community members in the past year to make sure officers have been present for luncheons (like this one and this one), even though that often means that officers might not always get a lot of rest before going back to work.

“This was the first time we would have had something like this, especially in Newhallville where people would have had the opportunity to meet 30 to 40 new officers prior to them getting on the street,” he said. ​“It has never been done before, and we would love to try to do it again.”

If the Wednesday night’s Lincoln-Bassett meeting is an indicator, Newhallville neighbors are ready for such an event. Daphine Shepard (pictured) summed it up best when she spoke of a now defunct basketball league where cops and firefighters used to play with young people in the neighborhood. She said the league helped the community develop strong bonds, and planted seeds of trust.

“They used to know that not all police officers were bad,” she said. ​“Police officers used to know that not all kids in Newhallville were bad either.”

Read previous coverage of this issue:
Feds Send $1M To Make Newhallville Safer
We’ll Take The Million, But …
Plans For Newhallville Grant Rile Neighbors
City Hall Tells Newhallville Its Plans For That $1M
Yes, You Can Give Us $1M, As Long As …