Caitlin Emma Photo
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Officer John Barbetti dodged bullets and rescued people in boats. At New Haven’s Fountain Street and Whalley Avenue the other night, Officer Barbetti encountered a woman who parked too close to the corner.
“You might not want to park there,” Officer Barbetti (pictured) told her. “I’m not ticketing yet, but we will be later.”
Not everyone got off so lucky.
“See like this guy, he’s getting a ticket,” Barbetti said, pulling out his pad to write up a Nissan van parked too close to the street corner near Westville Pizza.
A flat tire that will pose a problem later.
That’s about as contentious as it got Thursday night as Barbetti and Officer Yelena Borisova walked their beat in Westville Village.
The two officers were keeping the peace on foot, and running into little interference.
It was a big change for a police officer who saw the worst of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and an officer who came to America from Eastern Europe 13 years ago.
They’re part of a greater effort to bring back community policing in New Haven’s ten police districts. Each district has new regularly assigned walking beats. The idea is that cops can keep streets safe not just through TV-like heroics, but through routine, visible, person-to-person contact.
The two officers on Westville’s and West Hills’ beat said they always check up on Village bars like Westside Bar & Grille, the Owl’s Nest and Soco’s, establishments that sometimes generate neighborhood complaints for rowdiness.
“We don’t go into the bars unless we’re called, though,” Barbetti said while walking past Westside. “They’re too loud and we can’t hear each other, which just leads to problems with dispatch.”
Most of the village businesses close at 9 p.m.; the pair usually stop in before to say hello and make sure everything’s okay. They stopped in Thursday evening to Westville Pizza and chatted with the owners, who said they feel more secure just seeing the cops outside. They stopped at Subway, where Barbetti picked up a chicken sandwich and some apple slices while checking in with the employees.
Barbetti and Borisova also police Westville Manor, a public housing complex on Valley Street. The two officers used a squad car to bounce back and forth from their two walking assignments throughout the night.
Barbetti stops at Westville Pizza to chat.
Their beat tends to be a little quieter than in some of New Haven’s other neighborhoods.
That suits Barbetti just fine. He has worked in New Haven as a cop for about three years. Before that, he spent 10 years on the beat in New Orleans. The policing was aggressive; he was there for the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Sometimes the Westville Village bar scene is a nice change of pace, he said.
His two sons, in second and fourth grade, have noticed the change in him.
“They’re used to dad being super SWAT guy. Now it’s like, he’s a regular policeman,” Barbetti said.
The New Orleans job drained him. He said he had moved away from the city two weeks before the storm hit in August 2005, but half the guys he worked with lost everything.
“I’ve never seen so many grown men cry,” Barbetti said. “The city was falling apart and the PD was one of the only things keeping it together.”
He said he would work 22-hour days, sleeping in cars or schools when possible. He was shot at while helping with rescue missions in boats.
“People wanted to steal the boats,” he said. A round of bullets came close — hitting his rifle and radio on his body.
“Being a first responder, we saw a lot,” Barbetti said. “I miss that team, those guys.”
Barbetti had grown up on the Connecticut shoreline. He returned home three years ago so his parents could see more of his sons.
He joined up around the same time Borisova was finishing the academy. He said he can remember telling Borisova to keep her head up when the academy got tough.
Borisova joined the force two years ago. Already, she said, she feels a little nostalgic for her old beat.
“I used to work on the Hill,” she said. “I miss it there.”
Before November, Borisova worked nights on the Hill in a squad car. She sometimes misses the work when she’s patrolling the bars in Westville Village, but she still loves her job, she said.
“I’ve always wanted to be a cop,” said Borisova, who came to the U.S. when she was 18. She’s from Belarus, an Eastern European country bordered by Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania.
“I always just tell people I’m from Russia because they know where that is,” she said.
Borisova, now 31, fulfilled her dream two years ago when she joined the academy to become a police officer. “Up until then, something always kept getting in the way,” she said.
In Belarus, she had planned on entering law enforcement. Her parents decided to move to the U.S. for a better life. When she arrived in the U.S., she realized she had to be over 18 and needed citizenship before becoming a police officer. That meant living in the U.S. for five years before applying for citizenship.
Then she got married and had a daughter.
With just two years on the job and time spent policing the Hill, Barbetti said, it’s natural for her to feel nostalgic.
“She’s still got police work fresh in her blood,” he said.
But police work hasn’t always felt like the right decision. The academy really tested her, Borisova said.
“I almost quit the first week,” she said. She spent that year training for the physical part, but she didn’t feel prepared for the mental part. When you’re getting screamed at, you can’t take it personally, she said.
Yelena Borisova surveys an empty unit at Westville Manor.
Sometimes being female brings added challenges to the job. While the bars were quiet Thursday night, Borisova said closing time on some nights requires her to contend with unwanted comments.
“There are certain cultures that don’t respect woman authority,” she said. “I’ve had people ask me for a male cop before. You can’t let it get to you. You have to show you’re in control.”
And the bar scene often forces her to prove herself, to show that she’s in control.
“Drunks will test you as a female,” she said. “Some guys will call you ‘baby’ or ‘honey’ and think that’s OK. I will say, ‘I’m not your baby, I’m an officer. I have someone to call me honey at home.’”
Borisova has more than proved herself. With a 5‑year-old at home, she went through the academy and served as one of the class leaders. She now works full-time and is in the middle of getting a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from the University of New Haven.
And for Barbetti, he said the job has given him a chance to calm down and spend more time with family. He explained how he has been coaching his son’s football and soccer teams as he walked through the dead silent apartments at Westville Manor.
But despite the quiet Thursday night, they showed that their beat isn’t all parking and bar crowds.
Barbetti pointed to the ground, littered with empty miniature plastic bags used for drug sales, not 20 feet away from a playground. He pointed up at some broken flood lights, meant to light up the area at night to deter crime, that had been shot out.
“A lot of this goes on right near the kids,” he said.
Related stories:
• Fair Haven’s Walking Cops Follow Drug Trail
• Dear Abby — Er, Officer Mark (The Hill)
• Walking Cops Check In On The Champ (Dixwell)
• The People Talk, The Cops Walk
• Wynne & Benedetto Start Walking The Beat (Downtown)