Nov. 27--NEW HAVEN -- Police Chief Dean Esserman prefers strategic plans over annual reports.
One looks forward.
"We don't look backward," said Esserman, holding a two-decade old strategic plan he keeps from his first stint at the New Haven Police Department that opens with a pledge to bring the "walking beat cop" back to the Elm City.
"Twenty years later, we're bringing them back," he said.
Three days after he was sworn in as the department's new chief, after a weekend dominated by a nationally publicized fatal accident at a Yale-Harvard football tailgate and an "untimely death" Sunday in the Brookside development, he walked Newhallville, one of the city's poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhoods, with Assistant Chief Patrick Redding and District Manager Thaddeus Reddish.
"I made a promise that I would walk the beat on my first (full) day and I wanted to keep that promise to myself," Esserman said.
Last week, Esserman returned to New Haven, where he served as assistant chief in the 1990s under Nicholas Pastore and was an architect of community policing here, with two edicts from Mayor John DeStefano Jr.: To repair an at times strained relationship between the police department and community members and to reduce the persistent violent crime that plagues some city neighborhoods.
So far in 2011, the city has had 30 homicides, a level not seen in the city since violent drug gangs waged bloody battle in the early 1990s.
The way to address the former is through a reinvigorated model of neighborhood policing, with the same officers walking the beats in the same neighborhoods every day, talking with residents, engaging with the community, he believes.
In his office last week, he recalled the first incarnation of community policing in New Haven. Officers Mike Quinn and Russell See, both now retired, walked the beat in the Brookside projects, then one of the city's most dangerous.
The entire department was issued pagers. When community policing was at its peak, people didn't call New Haven police, per se, he said, but rather their neighborhood cops.
He remembered the woman who took the bus from Brookside to deliver a message.
"She said, 'You're never going to see me again -- unless you take Officer See and Officer Quinn out of our neighborhood,'" Esserman said. "That will be the face of the New Haven Police Department. With that comes trust."
As for the violence, the root cause needs to be diagnosed before it can be addressed, he said, but police can't resolve it alone.
In Providence, he credited crime reduction in part to the work of Street Outreach Workers, a group of ex-convicts who worked closely with police and responded to shootings and homicides and worked with families and youth on the street to mediate problems before people turned to violence.
When he arrived in Providence, he and members of his department met at a hotdog joint with the workers and Teny Gross, who runs the eight-year-old outreach program.
There was initial tension "until I realized that my side of the table had arrested everyone, to a man, on his side of the table," he said.
The partnership grew. Gross became a regular at police crime analysis meetings. Esserman gave him a department-issue radio to monitor and stay in contact.
It was a "pretty unusual" partnership, he said, but he believed it "saved lives."
New Haven modeled its version after Providence but, in recent years, the relationship between police and the workers here became increasingly distant. Esserman said he planned to meet soon with the New Haven Family Alliance, which runs the program.
But in his mind, the solutions to the two problems are interrelated. Community-connected cops not only serve as ambassadors, but also as intelligence gathers who, if trusted, can learn about who committed crimes and also about brewing feuds that could lead to tragedy if uninterrupted.
But change, particularly in a paramilitary policing culture that can be resistant, isn't easy or seamless. The first time community policing was introduced, some segments of the police department pushed back. To this day, some veterans view the concept as soft on crime and more smoke and mirrors than substantive.
On Sunday, when police responded to an "untimely death," Esserman scheduled a 12:30 p.m. meeting. Police had a dead man but some confusion about what led up to it.
In addition to detectives, the two officers who responded to the initial call were summoned, as was Lt. Martin Tchakirides, the supervisor in the area. Police weren't sure if his death related to a domestic dispute earlier with a relative.
The victim's sister had initially called 911 for medical assistance but didn't mention any fight.
Esserman wanted to see her, but not to arrest her. Her apartment was still cordoned off, so Tchakirides helped find her at a home in the Hill.
"She just lost her brother and her son was involved so I wanted to meet her," Esserman said. There was a chess board in the kitchen that Esserman remarked on and the woman suggested he "take a minute" for a game.
"I said, 'There's no such thing as a short game. The relative (responded), 'Now that's a man who knows chess."
The medical examiner later determined the victim died from natural causes.
"That's just a part of what we do. Sometimes what we do is visit mothers and sisters and let them cry on our shoulders. And sometimes we go to funerals," he said. "The relationship between police and the community, there's a lot more to it than crime and making arrests. When we lose a life in this city, it's important to all of us."
On Tuesday, he attended one for Andre Kelley, the city's 30th homicide of the year.
Copyright 2011 - New Haven Register, Conn.
