As Crime Ranking Rises, Cops Rev Up Hogs

Seven shootings. Forty-eight hours. Then the release of a statistically specious, but nevertheless disturbing, list claiming New Haven is now suddenly the country’s ​“fourth” most violent city. Two questions emerged: How meaningful are all those numbers? And, in either case, will a phalanx of fired-up police motorcycles provide some relief?

That mix of mind-numbing data and human bloodletting took place over the last 24 hours.

First city officials (minus the police chief, who’s out of town) announced their response to a renewed wave of gun violence around town amid the hovering specter of summer. At a press conference at the Whalley Avenue substation, police said they police plan to fire up their motorcycles and head out to crime ​“hot spots,” using routine traffic stops to ferret out more dangerous troublemakers.

Mayor John DeStefano, facing an electorate fed up with crime in an election year, struck a nuanced message: These periodic waves of shootings have happened before. They don’t necessarily mean a crisis, but they reflect an ongoing reality of too much violence that requires a stepped-up and proactive response.

Meanwhile, the FBI released its annual report detailing crime in American cities. Here, too, a mixed message was delivered. It showed that although New Haven reported less crime in 2010 than in 2009, it rose from 18th to fourth in an annual ranking of most dangerous cities.

Such rankings rely on so many weak variables that even the FBI doesn’t prepare them. It just releases the hard data. But instantly a site called 24/7wallstreet crunched the data and released a top-ten ranking of sizable cities. That led to instant local stories around the nation, and around the web, most not citing the website as the source. By Thursday morning the New Haven Register had a top-of-the-front-page headline declaring: ​“FBI: 4TH MOST DANGEROUS U.S. CITY.” The list showed New Haven climbing to number four with 15.4 violent crimes per 100,000 citizens.

Flint did worse. See the website’s ranking and breakdown here.

Read the FBI’s full report here and the city-by-city breakdown here.

It showed New Haven’s murders doubling, from 11 to 22, in 2010. But it showed reported violent crime incidents dropping from 2,195 to 1,978.

The stats come with caveats. The FBI notes that some ​“cities” are part of larger regions elsewhere in the country; in areas like Connecticut, lower-crime suburbs that would be part of city limits elsewhere are instead separate stand-alone legal entities not counted in the urban stats. (That same phenomenon led to New Haven being ranked the country’s seventh ​“poorest” city in 1980 based on U.S. Census numbers — prompting a similar debate over whether Connecticut’s small-town home-rule tradition made the numbers meaningless or whether such parsing glossed over a serious challenge the city was ducking.)

The FBI issued this warning along with the statistics: ​“Each year when Crime in the United States is published, some entities use reported figures to compile rankings of cities and counties. These rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state, or region. Consequently, they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents. Valid assessments are possible only with careful study and analysis of the range of unique conditions affecting each local law enforcement jurisdiction.”

Also complicating any ranking based on FBI numbers: Much crime goes unreported.

New Haven didn’t even used to report its crime stats to the FBI, until then-Police Chief James Lewis completed a years-long effort to wipe out a backlog of data entry and improve the reporting process.

One explanation: New Haven didn’t have the staff to compile the stats in the past.

Another possible explanation: how news like the latest ranking looks.

As with yesterday’s press conference about the recent shootings, the DeStefano administration had to navigate a line between avoiding an overreaction to isolated data and avoiding downplaying the very real pain that high crime is causing in New Haven.

Asked if the FBI rankings are meaningful, mayoral spokesman Adam Joseph responded:

“Regardless of where we end up on the list, there is too much violence in New Haven and places like New Haven. We have to fix this problem. No family in any neighborhood should be frightened or forced to live in fear. It is the mayor’s job, the police department’s job and everyone’s job to do better.

“The New Haven Police Department focus will remain on: narcotics, both at the street level and longer-term investigations; getting guns off the street; creating a highly visible police presence by targeting hot spots areas and motor vehicle enforcement; engaging the population on individuals recently released from incarceration; and talking, talking, talking with the community.”

Clifton Graves, who’s mounting a campaign to challenge DeStefano in a Sept. 13 Democratic mayoral primary, said the FBI stats and the recent shootings ​“speak to the need for change from the top.”

“Those numbers are always subject to interpretation,” Graves acknowledged. ​“That being said, the FBI numbers coupled with the harsh realities that far too many of our citizens face on a daily basis add up to a major concern. A seventh-grader from the Hill is telling me, ​‘Mr. Graves, I’m afraid to come out and play.’ It speaks to the need for change from the top.”

“In my travels around the city, the perception can become a reality in the minds of so many. The shootings and the killings, and the perception that certain segments of our community are engulfed in a culture of violence, is a reality. These numbers underscore harsh reality for so many of our citizens.”

Another Democratic mayoral candidate, Tony Dawson, issued a statement proposing calling in the ​“state police gang task force and the FBI gang task force to come in to assist us in resolving what appears to be gang activity in many instances.”

Will Motorcycles Do The Trick?

Meanwhile, DeStefano convened the police-response press conference Wednesday afternoon at the Whalley Avenue police substation at the corner of Whalley and Norton. With a score of cops and eight police motorcycles at his back and a bank of TV cameras in front, DeStefano outlined a fourfold response to the recent shootings. He highlighted a new police focus on using motorcycles to make traffic stops in high-crime areas.

The mayor’s comments came on the heels of a rash of gun violence, including five people shot in four incidents on Monday and three more hit overnight Tuesday (see below for details). All of the shooting were non-fatal, except for one — a ​“suspicious death” in Edgewood Park (which police say could turn out to be a suicide, not a homicide).

In another recent death, a man who was shot at 2 a.m. on Saturday died of his injuries Tuesday morning. His is one of 14 homicides so far this year, police said.

The recent incidents are not tied together, said Assistant Police Chief John Velleca. ​“None of them are connected.”

“It’s been a frustrating and frightening 48 hours for a lot of our neighbors,” said DeStefano. No one should have to come home to a shooting on their street, he said. ​“We get these periods from time to time.”

The city’s response has four components, the mayor said. Police will continue short and long-term investigations into narcotics activity, which is a factor in many of the incidents. Cops will also continue working to get guns off the street through efforts like the ongoing cooperation with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. The city needs to ​“engage the prison re-entry population.” All of the recent shooting victims, with the exception of a convenience store clerk, are felons, DeStefano said.

Finally, the police force needs to be a visible presence patrolling the city, he said. That includes a new effort to target high-crime areas with increased traffic enforcement.

As of two weeks ago, police are doing just that, said Assistant Chief Pat Redding, who oversees patrol. Redding said he has been speaking with the local district managers daily and weekly to determine the latest high-crime areas. Redding said he then deploys motorcycle cops to those area for targeted traffic enforcement. Since May 8, those cops have processed over 600 motor vehicle violations.

“That creates avenues for other investigations,” Redding said. Pulling cars over can lead to drug and gun arrests.

“We’re not going away,” Redding said. People in the city ​“love seeing” the increased police presence in high-crime spots, he said. ​“We’re not going to give an inch to the violence” that’s recently flared up.

The goal is not just to move the problem behavior but to fundamentally change it, DeStefano said. No single strategy will eradicate violence, he said.

As he spoke, 23-year-old passerby Laura Perez murmured her agreement. She had paused to listen while on her way to Edgewood Park with her 4‑year-old son Diego, she said later, as the press event broke up.

“I think it’s great that he had this press conference,” Perez said. ​“But he has to just be more persistent.”

Things are fine during the daytime, but once the sun sets ​“all you hear is shootings,” said Perez, who lives on Winthrop.

She said she often brings Diego to the Edgewood Park pond near where a body was recently found. ​“I take my son down there every day to feed the ducks.” She said she’ll be steering clear of the area for now. (It has by no means been determined that the man found dead this week near the pond had been the victim of a homicide rather than a suicide.)

Prison re-entry and narcotics sales will always be with us, DeStefano said later. The variable is ​“how smart we are about intercepting it.”

“It’s exactly this. It’s pulling this guy over, engaging him,” he said, pointing to a car being pulled over by a cop across the street.

3 Shot Overnight

Three people were shot overnight. All injuries were non-life-threatening.

Here’s what happened, according to police spokesman Officer Joe Avery:

At 9:15 p.m. Tuesday, cops responded to 249 West Ivy St., between Dixwell Ave. and Sherman Parkway, on a report of a person shot in the leg. The victim, a 24-year-old man who lives at the address, told cops he was shot at from a car. ShotSpotter recorded one shot fired in the area.

At 11:21 p.m., a 25-year-old man was shot in the right arm at 24 Harding Place in Newhallville. Police found a single .32-caliber shell casing.

At 12:37 a.m. Wednesday, a 21-year-old was shot in the left hand by someone in a car. Cops found 10 shell casings from at least two different guns. A gold Acura with a sunroof may have been involved.

In other crime news, according to Avery:

Gunfire was reported at 8:55 p.m. Tuesday on Goffe Street at County Street. Witnesses told cops three shots were fired and teens fled from the basketball court in Goffe Street Park. Police found no ballistic evidence. The shooting came an hour and a half after an unconfirmed report of a fight at the court.

Gunshots were reported at 10:32 p.m. at 614 Ferry St. Two parked cars were hit by gunfire. Police found six 9mm shell casings at the scene.

Crime Map

Click here for a list of major crimes for May 24. Click on the image below to see those incidents placed on a citywide map.

For block-by-block year-to-date crime information, plus daily crime maps, check out the Independent’s Crime Log.