Cops in the Community
Many officers in Conn. choosing to live outside areas they serve
Before he became a Manchester police officer, Cory Fullana said he had come to know the town as his “second home.”
During his high school football days, Fullana, a Windsor native, often drove to train at a small gym in Manchester about 20 minutes away. Years later, as he looked for jobs in law enforcement after serving in the military, Fullana chose to apply to the Manchester Police Department and establish roots in the area, a decision he said was shaped by his fondness for the community.
“We deal with people in some of the worst moments of their lives and I firmly believe in making the community I serve in a better place,” Fullana said, adding that living locally makes him better at his job, too.
Experts and activists maintain that police officers living in the communities they serve is advantageous for several reasons.
But despite those perceived benefits, many police officers have chosen not to live within the borders they patrol, according to a new investigation from Hearst Connecticut Media, which collected residency data from 20 of the state’s 94 municipal police departments from August 2023 to January 2024.
Meriden police Lt. Hector Cardona also lives in the community he serves. Cardona said his familiarity with the city and its residents has been a “huge benefit” throughout his career, allowing him to do his job more effectively.
“You’re more likely to be trusted when you’re seen out there using the same grocery store, the same convenience store, the same gas station as them,” Cardona said. “It allows the community to see you as a human and not just as a police officer.”
As part of its investigation, Hearst Connecticut Media chose municipalities of varying sizes within the company’s major coverage areas and surveyed them to find out how many of their sworn police officers lived in the town they serve. It also examined whether municipalities offered any incentives to encourage officers to settle in the local community.
Of the 20 municipalities surveyed, the lowest officer residency rates largely were found in cities and towns with populations greater than 60,000. Areas with lower-performing school districts, as defined by the Connecticut Department of Education, also had a lower number of officers living where they work.
Some local officials and policing experts said they were unsurprised by the overall low residency rates, given the vast number of Connecticut police departments facing critical staffing shortages. Others, though, said they were “shocked” by the results, including one state lawmaker who called the numbers “abysmal” and vowed to introduce legislation that would give officers greater incentives to settle in the town or city they are charged with protecting.
Several municipal leaders noted that the number of officers living locally can fluctuate, with some towns and cities saying they had seen a slight uptick in their residency rate in the months since the data was collected.
However, many departments said they spend considerable time and effort recruiting local applicants. In Branford, potential applicants can learn about the recruitment process through the department’s “Coffee with a Cop” program or by visiting an information table set up at community events and inside a local gym, Deputy Police Chief John Alves said.
Building relationships
John DeCarlo, a former Branford police chief who now is a professor in University of New Haven’s Criminal Justice Department, said officers who live in the area they serve could have a heightened “cultural sensitivity” that allows them to become more familiar with local customs and culture, leading to greater effectiveness in policing.
Residents also could view officers who live among them as being more accountable for their actions, which could result in more responsible policing, DeCarlo said.
Barbara Fair, a criminal justice activist from New Haven, said officers who live in the community are likely to have a better relationship with residents because they would “get to know the people and see them as individuals fully as opposed to seeing them as being suspected of some kind of crime.”
“They would see people in a whole different light,” Fair said.
The hometown connection also builds trust between officers and residents, she added.
“The way things are now, people in the community don’t trust police and I don’t think the police who come into these communities trust the people, either,” Fair said. “They see (residents) through a suspicious eye. That’s what breaks down any kind of good relationship.”
The New Haven Police Department had about 14 percent of officers who lived within the city limits. Mayor Justin Elicker said the city’s makeup of resident officers has climbed steadily over the years, but “we would very much like that number to be higher.”
Local officers have a better understanding of and greater familiarity with the people they are serving, Elicker said. That intimacy, he added, can help build a sturdier sense of trust between the community and police force, while proving valuable during criminal investigations.
“A very important way to quickly solve these crimes is for community members to share information with us on the perpetrators, and community members need to feel a high level of trust in order for them to have a comfort level to share information,” Elicker said. “A personal relationship with an officer can be the difference.”
Employing police officers who are residents of the community also has some economic benefits, Elicker noted. Those officers pay taxes to the city while reinvesting portions of their salaries into local businesses and other good and services.
While larger police departments such as New Haven may benefit economically from having officers who reside within the community, the argument “doesn’t really hold a lot of water” within smaller agencies, where the economic impacts are negligible, DeCarlo said.
In Bridgeport, meanwhile, about 22 percent of officers called the Park
City home, according to the survey results.
“It is always preferable to have officers living in our city,” Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim said. “When I was 6 and grew up in the North End, there were six police officer families in the area. It was a great feeling. We always encourage our city employees, police department, fire department, and teachers to live or move to Bridgeport.”
Hartford had a relatively low officer residency rate of about 5 percent. Officials said the city Police Department had made strides increasing its number of local officers after struggling for years to recruit residents into its ranks. According to Mayor Arunan Arulampalam, about 28 percent of the department’s 2019 recruiting class consisted of city residents.
But Hartford saw a “nosedive” of local applicants following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer and subsequent mass protests against police brutality in 2020, fracturing the relationship between residents and law enforcement, Arulampalam said.
“It’s incumbent on all of us in large cities to try to rebuild that relationship of trust,” he said.
In Torrington, local officers made up about 21 percent of the police force, data shows.
Mayor Elinor Carbone said she was not concerned about the city’s lack of local officers, as even out-of-town officers “make it their mission” to familiarize themselves with the intricacies of the area. “Our police officers are so invested in the community regardless of their residency that I can’t say there’s an overwhelming positive to living and
working in the city,” she said.
In Manchester, resident officers made up about 9 percent of the town’s Police Department, according to the data.
“I respect (officers) whether they want to live in town or not; it’s their choice,” Mayor Jay Moran said. “Even if they don’t live in town, they’re doing great community service work for us.”
Indeed, living outside of the community does not prevent officers from forming similarly strong relationships with those they have sworn to protect, experts and lawmakers said.
“Oftentimes, officers spend more time in the community where they work than where they live,” said Republican state Sen. Paul Cicarella, who represents East Haven, North Haven, Wallingford, North Branford and Durham, and who sits on the legislature’s Public Safety and Security Committee.
He highlighted the many community-based volunteer opportunities available to officers, including Police Activity Leagues, police explorer programs and food drives.
“No matter where they live, officers develop close relationships with members of the communities that they serve,” he said.
East Haven declined to provide officer residency data.
“While state statute protects officer residency information, it’s important to note that many of the officers who work in East Haven have deep rooted ties to the town,” East Haven police spokesperson Capt. Joseph Murgo said. “Many of our officers grew up in town, still have family here and are strongly invested in the community in which they serve.”
Other benefits
Shelton and Stamford police had relatively high rates of local members of their forces, at 44 percent and 35.77 percent, respectively. Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti attributed that city’s percentage to its tax rate being “significantly less than everybody else.”
Lauretti said officers who live in the town they serve have a “special added interest” in the areas they serve. They also can respond to an emergency more quickly than out-oftown officers because they do not have to deal with traffic, he noted.
“When you work in a place where you grew up, where your kids go to school, where your parents and grandparents live, there’s a pride of authorship that comes with that,” Lauretti said.
While living in the community has its benefits, Lauretti said, Shelton police recruiters focus more on a candidate’s qualities and abilities. Living in Shelton is an “extra plus for them.”
The rate of resident officers in Hamden was about 9 percent — a number that Mayor Lauren Garrett said she would like to see improve.
“When you see a police officer who lives in the town at the grocery store and you are able to connect with them in the community; when your kids go to school with their kids; when they’re cheering for the same football team, I think that’s all really important,” Garrett said.
Living in the community allows officers to better understand some of the unique challenges facing Hamden residents, including the town’s high tax rate or its efforts to clean up the Newhall section, she said.
Mayor Kevin Scarpati of Meriden, where the residency rate was 16.5 percent, said living locally helps officers know more about the community.
“By just living here, you gain that knowledge that you would have a harder time adapting to if you didn’t live here,” Scarpati said. “You inherently know what goes on.”
But he said it also can be a “double-edged sword at times,” possibly threatening an officer’s personal safety and placing a target on their back.
Safety concerns
Police officers often will cite personal safety as the reason why they do not want to live in the community, fearing that they and their families will run into members of the public whom they’ve dealt with while in uniform, said Michael Lawlor, an associate professor in UNH’s Criminal Justice Department and a New Haven police commissioner.
“As someone who was in that position for a very long time ... I get the concern,” Lawlor said, referring to his nearly two-dozen years as a state lawmaker. “I just think it’s outweighed by the value of having people truly knowing and invested in the community policing in the community.”
In the early 2000s, a person trailed a Manchester police officer to their home in the community and invaded the residence with the officer’s family inside, Fullana said. Because of that, the threat of being approached in the community has been on his mind.
“It’s something I’m always cautious of,” Fullana said. “But I firmly believe that there are so many good citizens that the number of great citizens far outweigh the number of bad people who look to do us harm.”
Although an extreme example, Fullana’s anecdote underscores the type of confrontational dangers officers say they wish to avoid by living outside of the community in which they serve, according to state and local officials.
“Enforcing the law means that criminals are not going to be happy with the outcome of these duties when they’re caught,” Cicarella said. “There’s always a risk of an uncomfortable situation when an off-duty officer may run into an individual whose case they were involved in, either as an offender or victim.”
Officers who live among suspects they interact with daily could make them and their families targets for retaliation, DeCarlo said. It also could take a psychological toll on officers, as the “inability to switch off from work could lead to increased stress and burnout,” he added.
Winchester Police Chief Christopher Ciuci wrote in an email that he did not want to share officer residency information due to “officer safety issues related to doxxing,” which in
volves searching for and publishing private information about a person on the Internet.
Manchester Mayor Jay Moran said he did not have an issue with police officers living out of town, empathizing with their desire to escape the confines of work.
“The last thing I believe you need to do is to go out with your family somewhere and have someone come up to you bothering you,” Moran said. “They deal with a lot of stuff during their shift and maybe you just need to get away and have your down time.”
Cardona, the Meriden police lieutenant, acknowledged that if an officer lives in the community he works, “you’re basically a police officer 24/7.”
Other challenges
Amid a statewide shortage of police officers, many Connecticut municipalities said they are having trouble recruiting and retaining local candidates.
“Right now we have so many openings and so few applicants that we need to take the best applicant versus the local applicant,” said Carbone, Torrington’s mayor.
Local officers made up about 21 percent of the Torrington Police Department, data shows. Carbone cited the city’s relatively small population — about 35,500 — aging demographic and remote location as the biggest challenges to attracting inhouse candidates.
“Proximity to the job is nice,” Carbone said. “If there’s an emergency, you want people that live close enough to be able to respond to an emergency within a very short period of time.
“But at the end of the day, we have to look at who we are,” Carbone
added. “You have a very small pool to draw from.”
With so many understaffed police departments, the state legislature would be misguided to enact residency restrictions for officers, according to Cicarella.
“If the state enacts further residency restrictions, the officer candidate pool will become that much smaller and be yet another obstacle for those who want to serve as law enforcement,” he said. “The legislature should not step in to make more demands on cities and towns when these municipalities are already struggling to recruit officers and fill needed positions.”
Connecticut law prohibits municipalities from requiring unionized employees to live within their borders.
With the recent surge of Connecticut real estate values, some officers cannot afford to buy homes where they work, forcing them to live outside the community, some local officials said.
“You can see where the trend is pushing them out of town,” said Greenwich First Selectman Fred Camillo, whose town had an officer residency rate of 22.4 percent. “A lot of them would love to still live here but can’t. You’re battling the market.”
Also in Fairfield County,
Norwalk reported that 23 percent of its officers lived within the city’s boundaries. Mayor Harry Rilling said the city’s housing market has “exploded” in recent years, making home-buying “very challenging” for police officers and other public sector employees.
“We’re building apartments and making more affordable housing in Norwalk, but affordable housing in Norwalk is not affordable for the average person,” Rilling said.
Cromwell Mayor James Demetriades called the town’s 9 percent makeup of resident officers “shockingly low,” saying it stemmed from a shortage of housing options.
“We have a workforce housing problem, that is the crux of the issue,” Demetriades said. “At the end of the day, when you are a middle income person … it’s hard to live in the communities that you want to work if those communities don’t have housing that is workforce housing.”
The quality of a municipality’s schools also may affect an officer’s desire to live there. Lawmakers might need to give officers an incentive to settle in areas with lower-performing school systems, according to state Sen. Herron Gaston, D-Bridgeport, who chairs the Public
Safety and Security Committee.
Gaston floated the idea of giving officers a voucher or stipend to help defray the cost of enrolling their children in private or charter schools “until the school district in the town they reside is on par with some of its surrounding education systems.”
“For those officers who have families, the quality of education might be an impediment for them wanting to live here,” Gaston said. “We should create incentives for those parents who may want to consider other education options for those kids.”
‘Sweeten the pot’
Competitive wages and stable retirement benefits have been strong bargaining chips for municipal police departments as they look to fill vacancies and prevent existing officers from transferring, including those who live locally.
DeCarlo said police residency trends began to shift when many cities and towns switched from providing defined benefits plans to 401(k)s.
“The cops wanted the security of a pension, so they very often upped and moved to departments that had pensions instead of 401s, which weren’t subject to the vagaries of the market,” DeCarlo said.
Middletown Mayor Ben Florsheim attributed the city’s 21 percent residency rate in part, to the city’s “very generous” benefits package, which includes a pension plan.
“A lot of officers want to come to Middletown … because of the type of community we are but also the type of benefits and wages and support we provide for our employees, and I think we’re going to continue pursuing that because that’s how you get the best talent,” Florsheim said.
The level of certainty that comes with a pension,
Florsheim added, is “really significant to people who are planning out their lives in a way that is almost more important than the salary they’re taking home.”
Branford First Selectman James Cosgrove said the town reverted back to a pension plan to help recruit new officers and retain existing ones. Branford had an officer residency rate of 38 percent, according to the survey data.
Beyond drawing officers across the board, officials said police departments or the state can offer incentives to entice officers to live in the communities they serve.
Gaston said these perks could include a property tax credit, financial assistance for first-time home buyers, a reduced motor vehicle tax and “robust” salaries.
During the state legislature’s current session, Gaston said he planned to discuss conducting a feasibility study on some of these incentives, which would “sweeten the pot” for officers looking to live in the town they work.
“I think we have to start small, but we have to incentivize people and let’s see where that takes us, and if we notice that we’re hitting a brick wall, then we go back to the drawing board and figure out how to do it better,” Gaston said. “But if we figure out that it’s working … then we continue in that direction.”
Coming up with incentives will not be a “one size fits all approach,” Gaston noted, as cities and towns face unique challenges that factor into an officer’s decision whether to live there.
“That means we have to be very creative in the way that we try to attract officers to those respective neighborhoods,” he said.
Some municipalities offer residents an extra five to 10 points on their civil service exams when they apply to the police department.
New Haven police said they have an “officer-inresidence” program that provides free housing at select locations to officers who apply. The city also has an initiative that lends homebuyer support to all of its employees, Elicker, the city’s mayor, said.
“In the last few years, we’ve really increased our push through outreach efforts to increase residents applying and we’ll continue to do so,” he said.
Lawlor said he gives more weight to local applicants during the hiring process.
“We interview all of the new officers and if they were born and raised and live in New Haven, that’s a big plus for me,” Lawlor said. “That’s something I’m very happy to see and it’s going to factor into my decision.”
In Danbury, where the rate of local officers was 19 percent, officials are looking at ways to both incentivize more city residents to apply to the force and entice existing officers who live out of town to move into the area, Mayor Roberto Alves said, adding they have been discussing ideas and might announce some soon.
“It’s something that has been top of mind,” Alves said.
Both Wallingford and West Haven boasted officer residency rates of 27.8 percent and 25.4 percent, respectively. Wallingford police spokesperson Sgt. Stephen Jacques said incentives for local residents to join the force “could be explored” during upcoming contract negotiations between the town and police union.
“We hope in the future to explore a new way to address testing and recruiting by turning to a more in-house model to attract more town of Wallingford candidates,” Jacques said.