The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Protesters show up at Elicker’s door
NEW HAVEN — A group of some 30 young people went to Mayor Justin Elicker’s house Friday as they continue to lobby for cuts to the Police Department as part of an agenda supported by the Citywide Youth Coalition.
Remsen Welsh, a member of the group, said the event was one of several planned this summer that will come out of an intensive six-week organizational training session sponsored by the coalition.
One of the demands continues to be to reduce the New Haven Police Department budget from $43 million to $10 million and shift the funds to social services that Welsh argued can better handle certain issues such as homelessness.
Welsh said the department is funded at an “exorbitant” amount of money that could be put to better use. She said social services can better deal with the homeless.
Prior to the national movement to defund police budgets that came out of the death of George Floyd while being restrained by a police officer in Minnesota, Elicker made the largest cuts in his budget to the Police Department given the city’s shrinking resources.
He said while this group wants to see less police funding, when he met with residents on the East Shore this week they asked for more funding for police and for action to stop dirt bike riders from swarming city streets. Elicker is recommending a policy that would fine illegal riders, rather than charge them criminally.
The city also is experiencing a period of violence with an increase in shootings and killings.
The mayor said there was a dialogue with the protesters that was lacking in another confrontation at his home and he agreed with some of their sentiments, but not necessarily their solutions on how to get there.
He said he is always available to talk, but he does not want them coming to his home, where he lives with his wife and two young daughters, to protest.
One demand asks that $20 million be invested in affordable housing, something Elicker said he supports and suggested the group might organize to change exclusionary zoning laws in the suburbs that keep out affordable housing, concentrating it in the cities.
A new demand is to reduce the police and fire retirement fund by $20 million. The mayor told them that would be illegal and the fund, which is less than 40 percent funded, needs more support rather than cuts.
Welsh said the coalition, based on what they are hearing from students, wants school resource officers out of schools and replaced with counselors, while the mayor said he has been approached by people who want to keep them.
He said if something does happen in a school, it is better to have someone who knows the students to deal with it.
Elicker said he endorses the end to all police brutality within the city, state and country.