Crime-sense And Sensibility
Let’s start out with the fact, statistically, that Norwalk is a very safe city. And let’s also concede that perception is reality for most. And then let’s take a trip to the Marvel Universe and the history of spidey-sense.
Fans of Spiderman know that much of the plot, once stripped bare of the evil doers, was about whether Spiderman was vigilantism gone awry with J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of the Daily Bugle, representing that p.o.v. or Spiderman being the people’s hero, with Peter Parker representing that view. In reading today’s Hour I kind of get that comic book style positioning:
Sellers, who served as a City Council member and represented District 140 in the state House of Representatives during the mid-1990s, was convicted of taking a bribe from a man who turned out to be an undercover officer in exchange for recommending him for a pistol permit in December 1996. The felony bribery charge does not prohibit Sellers from being a chapter head under Guardian Angels guidelines. Sellers retired from office and from the police department after pleading guilty.
Monday night, however, Sellers, who has served in recent years on the Mayor’s Advisory Committee, agreed that his new position as head of the Guardian Angels in Norwalk could be interpreted as a re-entry point for him and that being a chapter head would afford him greater visibility within the community. His energy carried the meeting. His flamboyant optimism was tempered by occasional bouts of anxiety over the resistance the idea of starting a chapter caused on the part of Mayor Richard A. Moccia and Police Chief Harry Rilling.
“As I see it, the kind of policing the department is doing in Norwalk is reactive policing, not pro-active, community policing,” Sellers said. “The officers are responding to one 911 call after another. They can’t even catch their breath. They are not assigned to certain areas regularly and don’t have time to work a beat. When I was a patrolman, I had a chief once who said that he did not want air conditioning in cars because he wanted us to keep the windows down to be aware and to hear people calling for help.”
The Guardian Angels have visited Norwalk three times since Geake extended his invitation. The important thing for Norwalk, Sliwa said, was that interested community leaders continue to build “a template of consistency,” by making the Guardian Angels visible as an option here. “This is something you do on your own time,” Sliwa said, advising them to set up a patrol schedule based on the needs of the community.
Recent patrols in South Norwalk and around Main Street generated some positive feedback from residents and even one police officer, according to Arnaldo Salinas, the senior director of the organization.
Further patrols would be called for, Sellers said, to stir up recruitment and get citizens familiar with the Angels. The suggestion that the Angels set up a table at this fall’s Oysterfest was enthusiastically embraced.
Referring to the two stabbings and one drive-by shooting, which took place in June, as well as to what she perceives as heightened drug trafficking in Norwalk, Witkowsky asked, “It’s not only a South Norwalk thing, it’s everywhere, and it’s great that we have plans for the fall, but what do we do until then because the problem is just getting worse?”
Sellers responded with zeal.
“So that the boys at City Hall don’t make a mockery of this, we are going to answer that question, but we are going to answer it with solidarity and with some strategy,” Sellers said. “I would like to have a plan in place by the fall involving patrols at all of the housing complexes, and I would like to talk to as many people as possible, EMTs and schoolteachers to find out what Norwalk needs.”
When contacted by The Hour, Moccia continued to express disdain for the chapter. “I have talked to many members of the business community and the chamber of commerce and they say they don’t think it is a good idea because it creates the wrong kind of impression on people, the image of Norwalk as having a really bad crime problem,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea to have them walking up and down our main business district.”
Rilling took exception to the idea that the police department was primarily “reactive” and cited liability concerns related to the Guardian Angels’ use of citizen’s arrests to detain suspects.
“I think the city has to be very, very careful not to engage in a formal partnership with the Guardian Angels because they only train people for three months, and I think it very likely that someone could bring a suit against them for violation of their rights or use of excessive force,” Rilling said.
The type of crime we see in Norwalk is not the kind that is limited to an area. Crimes are happening everywhere. The perpetrators of those crimes are not necessarily from Norwalk. Banks get robbed because that’s where the money is, the paraphrase a famous bank robber. Assaults happen between people who know each other, often family members. And while its easy to spot the streetside drug deals happening in the neighborhoods around Roodner Court, drug deals are just as likely to happen in the back room of a restaurant … in Westport.
Drama and flamboyance make for a good cop show on tv. I’m not sold on the idea that it will make crime happen any less often.
