NEW HAVEN, CT — New Haven Police Chief David Zannelli says the city's policing approach rests on two ideas: compassion and accountability. He laid out that formula Tuesday, Oct. 6, in a conversation on WNHH FM's "Dateline New Haven," which the New Haven Independent published the same day, after months of meeting with residents across the city since he took over the department in January.
What Community Policing Means in New Haven
The Independent frames community policing as partnering with residents to deal with minor problems before they get bigger. New Haven helped pioneer a version of it decades ago. The city's "broken windows" approach, as the Independent describes it, deemphasized arrests for minor quality-of-life offenses about 35 years ago. Later, the department tried to revive that model in the mid-2000s, before the pandemic-era police accountability movement changed the debate. The Independent reported that the tone shifted five or six years ago, following the murder of George Floyd.
Zannelli's view is that residents want both sides of that equation. Across conversations with neighborhood management teams, activist groups, religious communities and everyday residents, he heard a clear call for more visible police. He also heard that people expect officers to act on minor offenses. Those offenses run from noise and street takeovers to the case of people who smeared feces on a church's walls on the Green.
How the Strategy Works on the Street
Zannelli said the approach starts with referrals in place of mass arrests for small offenses. Officers would send people to partners including outreach workers on the street, school-based officers, mental health workers, and programs such as COMPASS, CTVIP and Project Longevity. The chief added, though, that small crimes should not be allowed to continue. Anyone who keeps committing them can be arrested, and can still be referred to services.
He put the idea simply in terms of people who are unhoused or struggling with addiction. Those conditions are not crimes by themselves, he said, but residents want officers to respond to criminal acts. In his words, the community wants "compassion with accountability."
The department has also moved on several fronts. Zannelli arranged Integrated Communications Assessment and Tactics (ICAT) training, a program for handling people in emotional crisis, for 80 officers who had not yet completed it. He credited that training with helping cut use-of-force incidents by half. The department trained 24 officers to patrol on bicycles, a choice he described as a way for officers to know residents while still reaching emergencies quickly.