New Haven Register - 09/20/2006

City murder rate spikes
By William Kaempffer , Register Staff

NEW HAVEN - It might feel like a lifetime ago when in 2002 there were nine murders, and city staffers were busily searching archives to determine the last time there were so few killings in one year.

In 2003, the murder rate went down again, to eight.

But just three years later, there already have been 18 killings, with three months left in the year. During all of last year, there were 15 slayings. Non-fatal shootings are up, too, with 86 victims compared to 77 at this point last year.

Are law-abiding residents of this city, and visitors, as safe as they were three years ago?

"I tell you, you are," police Chief Francisco Ortiz Jr. said Tuesday. "The murder rate does not tell you the entire picture."

Safety can be a sensitive subject around New Haven.

City leaders and longtime business people remember when the downtown was shuttered and crime was so rampant that suburbanites feared to come to the city.

It the last 15 years, however, the downtown area has experienced a renaissance and economic rebirth of sorts, with a thriving entertainment and restaurant district, a high-end housing building boom and an influx of new businesses.

City leaders are nurturing the city's reputation as young, hip, cosmopolitan and - perhaps most importantly - safe.

That's why city leaders collectively cringed a bit when gunfire erupted on Temple Street by the churches on the Green on the first day of school this month and when two people were killed in the same day Sunday.

"I think there is always a worry about where is the crime level," said Anthony Rescigno, president of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce. "There's no question that successful cities are successful because crime is under control."

Afternoon gunfire on the first day of school obviously raised eyebrows, he said, but Rescigno viewed it as the exception rather than the rule.

"Obviously, you squirm a little (when something happens), but for those of us who are here every day, we don't think that much about it," he said. "I've been here 61 years. I've seen this city when you didn't want to come down here, when I wouldn't recommend my wife and kids to be down here. It's a whole different story today."

Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said, on balance, he doesn't view New Haven as less safe, but doesn't sugarcoat the situation.

"I think we've got some challenges right now," said DeStefano, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. "I'm not going to suggest that we don't have some challenges."

Since last year, problems with youth violence have surfaced. "That's concerned a lot of people in New Haven since then," DeStefano said.

Organized gangs like the Latin Kings are gone, but neighborhood youths still dress in their colors, are fiercely territorial, and don't like youths from other neighborhoods.

"The one thing I am absolutely certain of is that we are aware and focused and paying attention to this every day. For the most part we are a dramatically safer and stronger community than we were a decade ago," DeStefano said. "Has the department and the city lost its ability to engage these issues? I don't think so."

Ortiz said he never would minimize the loss of a life, saying every murder is a tragedy.

And the city had some innocent victims this summer, most notably two 13-year-olds killed by stray bullets.

But Ortiz added that most of the victims police are encountering aren't average citizens going about their daily lives. The vast majority, he said, are involved in some type of behavior, and in many cases, crimes that put them at risk. Drug dealers are killed in robberies. Violent youths kill each other over neighborhoods.

This increase in violence is not exclusive to New Haven. Experts say cities across the country are experiencing increases in violent crime, and particularly, in youth violence.

According to a Justice Department study released this month, Americans were robbed and victimized by gun violence at greater rates last year than the year before, even though overall violent and property crime reached a 32-year low.

"Mostly, all the large cities are seeing an increase in this kind of dangerous behavior - shootings, stabbings, fairly brutal killing, quite frankly," said University of New Haven associate professor James Monahan. "I'm not sure there's only one explanation. I think police all over the country are trying to respond."

The knee-jerk reaction is to blame police for being asleep at the switch, but it's not that simple, he said. In New Haven, despite the big jump in murders, the overall crime rate is actually down through the end of August, according to city crime statistics.

Violent crime is up by about 1 percent, driven by the increase in homicides and slight increases in rape and robbery. Assaults are down by about 1 percent. Property crime is down by about 7 percent. Burglaries are up by 7 percent; larcenies are down by 7 percent, and auto theft is down by 18 percent.

Here's some context on violent crime:

• New Haven has had 18 killings and 86 people involved in non-fatal shootings.
• Bridgeport has had 24 murders and 56 shootings.
• Hartford, through Sept. 2, the latest figures available, has had 17 homicides and 140 people shot.

Scott Healy, the executive director of the Town Green Special Services District, said New Haven has made enormous progress in the last decade, but New Haven's image has never caught up with its reality.

Despite that progress, some outsiders still have an outdated impression about how safe it is in New Haven.

"If there's even a lingering doubt, any headline that shows crime only reinforces the negative. It has a disproportionate influence on people's views," said Healy. "This national trend is almost universal. There's very few places that have escaped this uptick. We don't want to see this 'sky is falling' mentality. The statistics don't warrant that."

©New Haven Register 2006

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