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Moving Violations
During the 1990s in Connecticut, major crimes began to migrate from shrinking cities
like New Haven to growing suburban communities under stress
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Business New Haven
7/8/2002
By: Melissa Nicefaro
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New Haven Police Officer Robert Fumiatti was shot in the face on the evening of June 13 as he exited a van, preparing for a drug bust at the intersection of Washington Avenue and West Street. According to published reports, he was shot before his feet even hit the ground.
Five hours later, as the 31-year-old police officer was in surgery at Yale-New Haven Hospital, police had their man in custody. Fumiatti escaped with his life, but the man who shot him may not be so lucky.
The incident placed New Haven that much higher on the list of high-crime municipalities in Connecticut. The Elm City actually does place first in the number of offenses investigated in 2000. On the flip side, New Haven also rates high among the municipalities with improving crime rates.
New Haven Police Chief Melvin Wearing said Officer Fumiatti is on the road to recovery. “He's doing marvelous,” Wearing said. “It's remarkable how quickly he's recovering from this. We are all so pleased.”
Wearing said the shooting has made his department emotionally more resilient: “It made us stronger and more focused and even more committed to making New Haven a safe place.”
Statistically speaking, New Haven has become a safer place to live, work, shop and even pass through. According to the state Department of Public Safety, Division of State Police annual study Uniform Crime Reports, New Haven was 35.6-percent safer in 2000 than it was in 1995. And in 2000, the city was 53.5-percent safer than it was in 1990. Seven offenses were chosen by the state to serve as an index for gauging fluctuations in the overall volume and rate of crime. Drug offenses are not included in the index.
In 2000, police investigated 9,769 offenses falling under the categories of homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor-vehicle theft. In 1995 there were 15,174 such offenses and in 1990, 21,012. Meanwhile, population is increasing.
“It's about our community policing efforts, and it's about forming partnerships within the community with our citizens and other law-enforcement agencies to bring down the crime rate in the community,” Wearing said.
New Haven has partnered with federal authorities, a gang task force, Project One and the Time's Up program that deals with individuals on parole.
Wearing won't take all the credit, though. “It's about our presence in the neighborhoods and our street teams,” he said. “It is a community effort and we are seeing some results with that.“
Among Bridgeport, New Haven and Waterbury, New Haven ranks top in the number of offenses - but also the percentage of decrease in number of offenses over ten years. Bridgeport, with a population of 139,529 in 2000, reported an even 8,900 offenses. Waterbury (2000 population 107,271) had 6,984 offenses. Most other towns and cities in southern Connecticut followed suit.
(The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program results, released June 24, chart major crime trends between 2000 and 2001 and in some cases reflect slight differences in 2000 statistics compared to the state police report. See accompanying story.)
Statistics from some suburban communities tell and different - and more alarming - story. Branford, for example, reported a huge increase - 44.9 percent - in the number of offenses from 1995 to 2000.
Branford reported 807 total offenses in 2000. Of those, 79 percent (638) were larcenies, defined as taking property or possessions from another. In 1995, there were 453 larcenies in Branford, while in 1997, that number jumped to 742. Wal-Mart opened its doors in the town on August 13, 1997.
Offenses in Shelton were up in 2000, too. Larceny accounted for 69.5 percent of the town's 627 offenses in 2000. Other offenses included one rape, six robberies, 91 burglaries and 66 auto thefts. Shelton's total incidents dropped 12.6 percent from 1990 to 2000, but increased 18.8 percent between 1995 and 2000. The jump was between 1997 and 1998, when larcenies skyrocketed from 177 to 478. (Coincidentally, Shelton also has a Wal-Mart, although it opened before 1997.)
New Haven does not have a Wal-Mart, but larcenies in the Elm City nevertheless account for 53.8 percent of all offenses. The 2000 total, 5,256, was down almost 30 percent from 1995 and down 42 percent since 1990.
On the other end of the spectrum are sleepy rural communities such as Bethany, Essex, Deep River, Bethlehem, Wolcott and Woodbridge. Bethany, at the very bottom of the list, had a mere 34 offenses in 2000, and that was down 41 percent from the 58 reported in 1995. In Bethany, nearly 56 percent of all crimes were larcenies in 2000.
Essex, with a population of 6,505 in 2000, was also at the bottom of the list with 52 offenses in 2000. That number, too, was below the totals of 1990 and 1995.
Aside from the larger cities, crime in towns is determined mainly by retail base and population.
New Haven is still a very poor city and 24 percent of its residents live below the poverty line, according to Wearing. An even larger percentage of residents under age 18 likewise fall below the poverty line.
“We have done a lot of good things in terms of crime-fighting and resources that the mayor provides to keep more officers on our street, but there are other things,” Wearing says.
He says the picture is beginning to look brighter: “There's school construction and all these nice things happening. There are more businesses in New Haven. Our downtown is alive and the vitality is there.”
Improvements are gradual and occur over time. But, as Wearing says, it will take more than good policing. It all starts on the front end.
“If we put all our monies in the front end in terms of families and kids and hiring the best teachers, I think our future is very bright in this community,” says Wearing. “We have a strong mayor who has set the standard in terms of being what a mayor should be. He has provided the resources for us and I think we at the police department take advantage of the resources that he has provided.”
All these factors make for a healthy community. Over the past ten years, crime has certainly shrunk - but the struggle never ends. “We need to keep those efforts up and the serious offenders off the street,” Wearing says. “And not allow the drug dealing that's going on in our community.”
With 466 sworn officers as of May, the New Haven Department of Police Service attempts to reflect the racial composition of the city and meet an affirmative action goal of academy classes with 30 percent female representation.
Currently, 17 percent of New Haven police officers are women, and 39 percent are from a minority background. Union Avenue is in the process of hiring new police officers. Background investigations are being done on applicants for a class that will start this October.
Looking ahead another decade, where can cities such as New Haven go? What about suburban communities feeling the strains of residential and commercial growth?
Wearing says in ten years, he hopes to be able to cut crime in significant ways and reduce the number of violent crimes in the city.
The key, he says, lies in “trying to break the cycle of violence. We have partnered with the child-development and community-policing programs for children who have been traumatized with violence, trying to make families stronger, keep kids in school.”
All these factors have the potential to transfer into a safer community.
“We will always do the police/law-enforcement side and while there will always be bad guys on our streets, we can keep up the efforts there,” says Wearing.
Taking it one year at a time, Wearing says his department's main goal this year is about bettering the quality of life and, of course, lowering crime, targeting speeding cars, excessive noise, prostitution and, “those kinds of [so-called quality-of-life] crimes that change the ambiance of the neighborhood and foster larger crimes.”
Wearing adds that “You will see more traffic enforcement, traffic stops, DUI stops, drug-addiction teams and narcotic-enforcement teams and those kinds of efforts to change the perception of the city and make you feel safe.”
And how? “We do that with more walking beats, bicycle patrols and working to keep our fingers on the pulse of community and what their concerns are and how we can aggressively control them.”
Changes are coming slowly, and will not happen overnight.
According to Wearing: “It's about hard work and being consistent and going out every day and keeping officers on the street and having them do their work. Community policing has evolved and continues to evolve - and the revolution is not over.”
Defining Crimes
Homicide: The willful killing of one human being by another. This offense category includes any death stemming from a fight, argument, quarrel, assault or commission of a crime. Attempted murder and assaults with the intent to kill are not counted as homicides, but are included in the UCR statistics as aggravated assaults. Suicides, accidental deaths and justifiable homicides are also excluded from the homicide classification.
Rape: As defined in the UCR program, rape is the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will. Statistics reported in this crime category include attempts to commit forcible rape. However, statutory rape (rape against a female under the age of consent), sexual assaults on males and other sex offenses are excluded.
Robbery: The taking or attempting to take anything of value from the care, custody, or control of a person or persons by force, threat of force or violence, or by placing the victim in fear. Robbery is a violent crime that frequently results in injury to the victim. Included in this category are assaults to commit robbery and attempted robberies.
Aggravated assault: Aggravated Assault is defined as an unlawful attack by one person upon another for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury. This type of assault is usually accompanied by the use of a weapon or by means likely to produce death or great bodily harm. Statistics for aggravated assault include attempts to commit aggravated assault.
Burglary: Burglary is divided into three subcategories: the forcible entry of a structure; unlawful entry where no force is used; and attempted forcible entries to commit burglary.
Larceny: Defined as the unlawful taking, carrying, leading or riding away of property from the possession or constructive possession of another.
Motor vehicle theft: As defined by the UCR program, includes both actual theft and attempted theft of a motor vehicle.
Source: New Haven Department of Police Service
FBI: 'Major' Crimes Up in NH, Down in Bridgeport
For the first time in a decade, police departments nationwide have reported an overall increase in major crimes, according to a report released June 24 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) comparing 2000 and 2001 crime totals.
Regionally, only the Northeast experienced an overall drop in major crime - excluding the more than 3,000 deaths from the September 11 terrorist attacks, which the FBI did not include as homicides in its report. Regionally the largest increase was reported in the West, followed by the South and Midwest, according to the report.
Connecticut cities reported mixed results. In New Haven major crimes - including homicide, robbery, burglary, larceny, auto theft, aggravated assault, arson and rape - rose from 9,828 in 2000 to 9,865 the following year.
Stamford likewise posted a small overall increase, from 3,076 to 3,092. The largest increase in major crimes was reported by Norwalk, from 3,115 to 3,677.
Other cities reported mostly modest decreases in the incidence of major crimes. In Hartford these fell from 11,359 in 2000 to 10, 931 the next year, while Waterbury reported a decrease to 6,888 from 7,000 over the same period.
Bucking the overall trend was Bridgeport, which reported a 9.1-percent decline in major crimes, from 9,157 to 8,323 between 2000 and 2001. With the exception of robberies, whose number increased from 589 to 608, all other major crimes declined in the Park City during the reporting period, including homicides, which dropped from 19 to 16.
Nationwide, the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program charts an overall rise in major crimes of 2.0 percent. Crimes in suburban areas also rose by 2.2 percent during the same period.
Generally, criminologists attribute the rise in criminal behavior in part to the surge in the populations of teenagers and released prisoners, as well as recent declines in the country's economic well-being.
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