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07/18/2024 11:41 AMNORTH HAVEN
The North Haven Police Department has reported an overall downward trend in crime in town after comparing the figures from the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2023.
“There's been a lot more proactivity as far as traffic stops and suspicious activity stops,” Chief Kevin Glenn informed The Courier.
In a Board of Police Commissioners meeting on June 25, Glenn reported that the department saw a decrease in counts of larceny during May of this year, totaling 178. This marks a decrease of 43 counts from May 2023. Included in this year’s count were four stolen cars, two of which have been recovered. A total of 26 stolen cars were reported from January to June of this year, compared to 35 during the same time period last year.
While three instances of commercial burglaries were reported, Glenn also reported no residential burglaries to the board for May of this year.
Vehicle burglaries have seen a slight decrease this year, with a reported 71 instances during the first half of 2024, compared to 78 in the same time frame last year.
Glenn credits the decrease in larceny to higher levels of training which have occurred “across the board in the last year or two” among officers of multiple department divisions. This includes going above and beyond the required training necessary to be certified as an officer and becoming “expert level” public safety personnel who are more informed and able to educate other officers in the state.
The decrease also comes on the heels a public safety forum held in January of this year. Larceny was a main topic among local and state officials, as well as members of the public, from whom a concerning uptick in vehicle burglaries and unlawful entries into vehicles, stolen cars, and residential burglaries was noticed.
“We’ve been making a great effort to train our people to become trainers themselves, so they become expert levels in different categories, and then they can provide training not only to our officers, but to other officers throughout the state,” said Glenn.
Increases in certain areas of policing activities and services have also been seen adjacent to the decreases in larceny.
Calls for service in May of this year totaled 2,614, marking an increase from approximately 2,300 last year. The total number of calls for service from the beginning of this year to the end of May was tallied by the department at 11,545, compared to around 10,000 from January to May 2023.
While most of these calls are to report criminal or suspicious activities, Glenn said that some represent support for “different services that people need from the police,” such as security and extra traffic directories for events like those held at the North Haven Fairgrounds. Glenn also connected North Haven’s economic development to the increase in calls, as more businesses in town, including its larger ones like the Amazon fulfillment center and Medtronic, may require assistance from the department, especially during the daytime.
There was also an increase in motor vehicle stops throughout most of this spring, with a total of 679 motor vehicle stops in May and June. This is 375 more than the reported 304 spots during the same months last year. According to Glenn, the department broadly “had 1,865 traffic stops compared to 1,069 last year” during the first-year halves of 2024 and 2023, respectively.
Glenn said the “biggest driver” for the increase is due to the increase in staffing, as the six officers added to the force in the last four years have given the department the ability to expand its coverage across North Haven.
“If you have X amount of staff to answer calls for service, once you increase that staff per shift, it gets spread out more evenly, so they have more time in the day during their shift to be proactive. That's what we really wanted to accomplish,” said Glenn. “The activity has increased, the crime has come down.”
This proactivity mirrors the work of the South Central Regional Traffic Enforcement Unit (SCRTEU), of which North Haven is a member, and marks “another great effort” to keep streets safer, said Glenn. The unit has reported higher motor vehicle stops since its formation two years ago, while fostering greater interaction and education with motorists.
“I definitely think there's a correlation between proactivity with traffic stops and interacting with people in the public and a decrease in crime,” said Glenn.
Aside from cooperation between departments and increases in staff, grant money totalling $209,000 awarded to the department in the last two years has played a major role in crime reduction. Glenn said that adding a full-time officer to the New Haven County Violent Crime Task Force, something achieved through $102,000 in ARPA funds, has been a “tremendous asset” which “allows us to share intelligence in real time.”
Others grants have gone to support the SCRTEU, efforts to reduce distracted driving, and to identifying, “deterring, and also investigating stolen vehicles,” said Glenn.
To keep residents and their properties safe for the rest of the summer, Glenn advises them to keep cars and doors locked and, importantly, to not leave car keys inside cars, something which is “very common, unfortunately,” he said.
While crimes tend start to ramp up during the hottest days of the year, Glenn said “the good thing about that is the more outside activity, the more opportunity is for people to see suspicious activity.”
“Everybody knows their neighborhoods well, so they are the best, really, crime-fighters that they can be,” he said.