Crime & Safety

Chief: City Will Revisit Community Policing in North End

In 2003, Middletown's common council endorsed a 10-point plan for community/police partnership — but it was never implemented. Here's why.

Editor's Note: This is the second of a two-part story on loitering in the North End of Middletown. was published on Aug. 22. The original piece, ran on Aug. 2.

The many facets of the loitering debate in the city's North End could be ameliorated with community policing.

It’s a term not unfamiliar to Middletown, championed most recently by former Acting Chief of Police , who had a specific outfit he wore in his off-hours volunteering at the Green Street Arts Center or the — a polo shirt and shorts.

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But a formalized community policing policy has never been put into effect.

The , the the Middlesex County Substance Abuse Action Council and representatives were among people who, NEAT Executive Director Izzi Greenberg says, “lovingly crafted the document,” a 10-point plan.

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Adopted by the Common Council in July 2003, it was never fully implemented, Greenberg says. J. Edward Brymer was police chief at the time and Domenique Thorton was mayor.

"The most important part of community policing is active participation from the top down in the police department, the city and the neighborhood," Greenberg is quoted as saying at the July 7, 2003, common council meeting.

She and then Officer Gary Wallace attended at conference in Washington, D.C., on community policing and told those gathered at the common council meeting that the U.S. Department of Justice was pushing such programs and Middletown was considered to be at the cutting-edge by addressing the issue so energetically.

Police Chief William McKenna says the only thing preventing such a plan from being implemented is an understaffed police force.

“The book definition of community policing is great if you have 500 officers,” McKenna says. “We need to come up with a more realistic approach.”

Right now, the Middletown Police Department has 105 officers. It is funded at 111 officers, McKenna says, and by the spring, the Common Council has promised three additional officers.

“That’s when we can seriously put more officers in parts of town we really need it,” he explains. "I wish I had 150 cops. But that's unrealistic."

"What we have is 75 residents telling us that this is happening," Greenberg says, referencing the Aug. 1 NEAT meeting where the room was packed with people who live in the North End, wanting to talk about the loitering issue.

"We have been partners with the police department for the 15 years of our existance," Greenberg says. "We represent the voice of the neighborhood. They feel they are being targeted and we need to address that."

"This is not an us versus them," Greenberg says. The chief agrees. "I made it loud and clear to NEAT that I want us to get on the same page," McKenna says.

In fact, next week, the mayor will meet with NEAT and the police department to address this very issue of loitering — and community policing.

Capt. Shawn Moriarty, who recently returned to work four hours a day after a motorcycle accident, McKenna says, “his main assignment is to put an approach down on paper and to really get the ball rolling” on community policing.

McKenna hopes to soon appoint a supervisor of community policing officers who would go to NEAT and other meetings as a liason. The idea would be to get the officers out on walking beats, on bicycles and “talk to the neighbors, talk to the business owners, get a rapport going so they actually want to talk to police,” he says.

Then when there is an issue when police assistance is needed, residents won’t be worried about their credibility or being harassed and officers will be more understanding.

Already, he says, “half of our force is working in the North End on any given shift. But we’re not out there to harass someone standing in line, someone enjoying a cigarette before enjoying their meal.”

McKenna says knows the area very well. “For six years, I walked the beat up there.”

That experience taught him the nuances of residents doing various things in the North End — the difference between loitering and waiting for a bus.

That’s something Greenberg says is an important distinction but one that can’t be made by an officer who’s never worked in the North End.

“There are no benches allowed in the North End,” she says, which means some people, like one handicapped gentleman who waits for the bus in front of the Buttonwood Tree, where there are no Middletown Area Transit bus signs, again, because the city doesn’t allow them in the North End, appear to be loitering, or worse, intoxicated, because he sits in a planter. “He’s handicapped. He sits where it’s available,” Greenberg says.

Folks driving by from out of town or the suburban area of Middletown may look at a group of people standing around on a street corner and think they’re loitering or hanging around, she says. “It’s a perception problem.”

Executive Director of the Buttonwood Tree, Anne-Marie Cannata explains her dilemma, running a non-profit where people who live upstairs use the window ledge to rest upon.

“The landlord requested that no people sit on the building,” she says. “We try to police it with some success and have people that respect that. But some sit in front of the posters,” which advertise community or Buttonwood Tree upcoming events that passersby need to see.

“Everybody for the most part is pretty good about moving,” Cannata says. Still, “the landlord is going to be installing flower boxes along the window ledge.”

McKenna anticipates a day when all these groups of people will work out their differences.

“Our North End is so vibrant. I hope the North End becomes what currently the South End is — you can’t find a parking space there on most nights,” McKenna says. "There's the Vietnamese soup place, Iguanas Ranas.

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