New London neighborhood group calls for more police
Councilors agree with the sentiment but cite budget limitations
New London — The chants of “We want more cops now” started outside City Hall an hour before Monday night’s City Council meeting even started.
Flanked by news crews from three television stations, supporters of an increased police force made a statement Monday to councilors.
Led by the Neighborhood Alliance of New London, people filled City Hall and called for the reallocation of city funds to hire more officers and adhere to a 2014 ordinance that called for a department with a minimum of 80 officers and four K9 units.
“There’s no proactive policing in New London now. That’s problematic,” said Jay Wheeler, chairman of the neighborhood alliance. “The mayor and the council need to do a better job allocating money. We can have good schools, but we need safe streets.”
Wheeler said the upsurge in public discontent was the result of longer wait times for police to respond to quality-of-life calls. Meanwhile, the police union is negotiating a new contract.
Union President Todd Lynch said officers are being called in for mandatory overtime at an alarming rate and the department as a whole has become reactive rather than proactive.
“New London is a safe city, but we are not as safe as we could be,” Lynch said.
The department has 68 officers now and a patrol force of just 38. The council budgeted $700,000 in overtime in the current budget. As an example of the number of hours being worked by patrol officers, Lynch said there were 15 patrol overtime shifts last weekend, and eight officers were ordered to work those shifts.
Several people, including Lynch, called for school district money now being used to pay for two officers at the schools to be put back into the police budget rather than deposited in the general fund. Lynch also asked that the “hundreds of thousands of dollars” the city earns from police working on road construction or other private duty be funneled back into the department budget.
The council mostly agreed with the need for more officers but said the reality of the city's budget, and the lack of a state budget, limited any kind of immediate actions.
“I wish you were all here three or four months ago when we were in the middle of our budget negotiations,” Councilor Don Venditto said. “I never heard anything in any way shape or form … that we were putting the streets in peril, we were putting the people of New London in peril because we weren't funding enough in the way of police officers.
Venditto said, “It's clear that we need to ramp up the numbers,” but the increase will come with continued discussion of how to replace overtime with new officers.
Councilor Erica Richardson, in her last meeting before she moves to Florida, said the city should be looking to hire one or two officers a year and scolded some speakers for pitting education against public safety.
Decorum disintegrated at times on Monday as speakers refused to abide by a three-minute time limit, or in the case of Wheeler, tossing the microphone after addressing the council. The move was applauded by onlookers.