by Allan Appel
Fair Haven has a new neighborhood top cop, Lt. Justin Cole, and its departing, much admired and appreciated district manager, Sgt. Chris Alvarado, is stepping up to head the NHPD’s Internal Affairs (IA) division.
That news emerged Thursday night at the latest regularly scheduled meeting of the Fair Haven Community Management Team.
A 13-year veteran of the police force, Cole — a newly minted police lieutenant — made his formal debut as district manager Thursday night at the monthly meetup.
Alvarado, after a by-all-accounts highly effective two years on the Fair Haven district-manager beat, offered a heartfelt valediction.
Fifty neighbors and members of the community in attendance, both in person in the Fair Haven Library’s community room and online, listened attentively, applauded gratefully, and then decided both to embrace Cole and yet also to not let Alvarado go.
“Once a member of Team Fair Haven, always a member,” said Ward 14 Alder Sarah Miller as she, Ward 15 Alder Frank Redente, Jr. and others gathered around Alvarado to offer congratulations and goodbyes-but-not-farewells.
Cole thanked Alvarado for a “seamless transition” that included their spending hours together at the recent Fair Haven Day extravaganza where Cole said he had never met so many new people in a single day in his life!
In his introductory remarks Cole said he grew up in Seymour and his 13 years on the force have included walking beats Downtown and in Westville, where he was also a street and shift supervisor.
He currently is manger of the NHPD’s FTO, or field training officer program, which pairs rookie officers with officer mentors and guides them through four months of on-the-job experience before they’re on their own.
“I’m also the OIC of the crowd control team,” Cole said. The OIC, or officer in charge, for crowd control has a big presence on the Green, meaning that Cole has taken part in activities around, for example, removal of homeless encampments.
In 2022, Cole was involved in an office-eviction proceeding downtown that ended with him punching a suspect in the head inside the Connecticut Financial Center. After a seven-month investigation, city police investigators cleared Cole of all wrongdoing and found that his actions were appropriate and legally justified. The incident sparked a citywide debate about police head-punches, and about whether or not city officers were abiding by state use-of-force standards.
On Thursday, while sharing that Fair Haven is “new territory for me” and assuring his listeners that he expects to keep his FTO program and crowd control team responsibilities along with his new district manager assignment, “Fair Haven is my priority,” Cole said. He added that he was “super-excited to be here.”
When it was his turn to speak, Alvarado rose to say simply that “it has been a blessing and honor to have served” Fair Haven.
Redente and Alvarado.
In his prior roles with the NHPD before the Fair Haven experience — working undercover, with drug investigations, with the FBI task force team, as a detective, and as an investigator with the department’s Major Crimes Unit — Alvarado said he had seen people at their worst.
Fair Haven — in no small part because of a highly active team of local alders, nonprofit leaders, and other activists with whom the district manager regularly engages — has been the opposite.
“It’s by far been the best [experience] of my career in 17 years,” Alvarado said. “I’m dealing with people not at their worst but at their best.”
Redente credited Alvarado with having a major impact on, among other areas, cleaning up a host of undesirable activities on Ferry Street from Lombard down to Grand, but particularly around Chatham Street, where open drug dealing and vagrancy had been particularly troublesome and chronic.
Now you walk down there and it’s a different street, Redente said, praising the quality-of-life improvements that Alvardo’s work had contributed to.
Alvarado’s secret sauce?
“He doesn’t pass the buck,” Redente said. “If a call comes to him, he handles it himself” rather than delegate. “If it bothers us, it bothers him.”
Alder Miller rose to say, “We should have had a cake here tonight. You’ve been an amazing district manager. You’ve made a huge impact. We’re looking forward to your new work [as head of Internal Affairs]. But once a district manager in Fair Haven, you never leave. Zannelli’s still here.”
Miller was referring to the newly sworn in police chief’s successful stint as the Fair Haven district manager, from which job Zannelli was also promoted to be in charge of Internal Affairs, precisely where Alvarado is headed, a similar track.
Alvarado passes the Fair Haven district manager baton to Cole.
Alvarado is slated to replace Lt. Jesse Agosto who currently heads Internal Affairs. Alvarado said she’ll remain for about two months as a transition period, and he starts there in that new capacity immediately.
“It’s definitely a different challenge,” Alvarado said, but not an unfamiliar one. “It’s all investigations.”
“He’s a rising star in the department,” said Redente. “We’re lucky to have had him as long as we did.”