Policing

Woman Takes LEAD On Familiar Turf

LEAD’s Minardi and Murphy at Hill North meeting.

LEAD’s Minardi and Murphy at Hill North meeting.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017 - Rasheen Murphy grew up in the Hill in the early 1990s. She saw friends and family struggle with drug addiction and fall victim to violent crime and incarceration. She had her first child at age 15, while still a student at Wilbur Cross High School.

Twenty years later, Murphy still lives in the Hill and is about to start working with the city and the police department to help keep low-level, non-violent criminals in her neighborhood out of jail and away from some of the challenges that she and her peers faced while growing up on those same city blocks.

On Tuesday night at the Hill North Community Management Team’s monthly meeting at Career High School, Murphy introduced herself as the neighborhood’s community liaison for the city’s new grant-funded Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, which is slated to begin in the Hill North, Hill South, and downtown neighborhoods in November.

Youth Center Mired In Delays, Overruns

DANIELA BRIGHENTI PHOTO

DANIELA BRIGHENTI PHOTO

Thursday, March 30, 2017 - A year after expecting to open a new center for disengaged and homeless youth, city officials offered explanations for a series of mishaps and delays — and asked for another $200,000 to complete the job.

The center is question is “the Escape, a drop-in center for New Haven teens that will also provide 15 beds for homeless young men between the ages of 17 and 24.

It was supposed to open by January 2016. Then March 2016. It still needs lots of work.

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Substation Xanadu Revealed On Whalley

December 19, 2016 - Standing alongside a dozen framed black-and-white photographs from the New Haven police department’s past and present, Sgt. John Wolcheski paused with a smile as he recalled the story behind each picture.

“This is from 2012, when a flash flood raised the water level of the West River by four or five feet,” he explained, pointing to a picture of himself dressed in department-issued scuba diving gear, bobbing just above the surface of a swollen river. “And here’s a picture from when JFK visited the Yale Law School, and a New Haven police officer blocked an excited student from rushing the motorcade.

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Debate Grows Over Cop-Pig Art Decision

Gordon Skinner (Thomas Breen photo)

Gordon Skinner (Thomas Breen photo)

October 21, 2016 - After bothering at least one correctional worker and one police officer, Gordon Skinner’s depiction of a pig cop provoked a different kind of complaint at a Ninth Square gathering Thursday night:  Why was the work moved from its original perch?

That led to a broader set of questions: Whose voices matter, how much, and why?

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Westville Tops Dixwell For “Ballers” Crown

Tyrone Wells takes a jump shot for the the Beaver Hills. (Thomas Breen photo)

Tyrone Wells takes a jump shot for the the Beaver Hills. (Thomas Breen photo)

October 6, 2016 - As Gregory Daniels leaned forward to sink yet another long-distance jump shot, an incredulous bystander shouted towards the police officers on the sidelines:  “All these cops on the court, and they still can’t stop this man from shooting!”

Frequent shots fired and moves so quick they seemed illegal erupted on the hoop courts at Edgewood Park late Wednesday afternoon — and the cops not only didn’t try to stop the action, but took part.

The shots had nothing to do with criminal activity, and everything to do with basketball. Specifically, with basketball played between police officers and members of the community.

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Cops, East Rockers Connect Over Koffee

Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur and Zora Kim (Thomas Breen photo)

Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur and Zora Kim (Thomas Breen photo)

September 18, 2016 - Christine Kim rounded the corner of Humphrey and Orange Streets to find seven cops standing outside of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

She didn’t know it, but they’d come to talk with her — and other East Rock neighbors.

“Is there an emergency?” Kim asked the first uniformed officer she approached.

“Yes there is,” Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur replied with a smile. “The emergency is that you have to attend this party right now.”

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