by Paul Bass
Compassion + Accountability = Community Policing.
That’s how New Haven sees the formula for community policing in 2026, according to Police Chief David Zannelli.
Zannelli has traversed the city practically nonstop since suddenly assuming the chief’s job in January in the wake of a gambling-and-theft scandal that deposed his predecessor.
Zannelli already had 17 years of experience working at all levels of the police department and in all corners of the community. But he wanted to hear fresh from neighborhood-based management teams, activist groups, religious communities, and everyday citizens how they want the city policed.
The answer he received updates New Haven’s — and America’s — ongoing debate over how to keep all people safe in a fair way that involves working with the community to tackle small problems before they grow into, say, murders. New Haven pioneered a “broken windows” community policing model that deemphasized quality-of-life arrests 35 years ago, then sought to revive it with new tools in the mid-aughts, before the pandemic-era police accountability movement scrambled the equation.
“More folks, often than not, wanted more police presence. They wanted to see more officers. Five or six years ago, after the murder of George Floyd, there was kind of a different tone across the country in general, not just locally,” Zannelli, who’s 42, said of his community discussions during a wide-ranging conversation Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”
Back then, he said, police got the message: Focus on violent crimes, not minor crimes. The department has focused on gun violence in particular. It’s on track, at 90 shootings so far this year, to build on last year’s 40 percent drop in violent crime.
But the message has grown more nuanced, he said. People also want police to tackle quality-of-life offenses from noise to street takeovers to people smearing feces on the walls of a church on the Green.
“Smearing feces on a church just simply won’t be tolerated. People will be charged for that, and they will be held accountable,” Zannelli said.
“Some of these situations, like obviously homelessness, being unhoused, having an addiction, is not a crime in and of itself. But if you do things that are criminal and happen to be unhoused, or happen to have a substance abuse issue, like a burglary or breaking into cars, what I hear from the community is, yes, we have compassion. But compassion with accountability.”
In practice, that means continuing a philosophy central to the first wave of New Haven community policing in the 1990s: Start not with locking up as many people as possible for minor offenses. Start with directing people to help by drawing on community “partners,” like street outreach workers, school-based officers, mental health workers, and programs like COMPASS and CTVIP and Project Longevity.
But don’t allow small crimes to continue to occur. And yes, lock up people if they continue to commit them, while also referring them to programs that may help them.
Meanwhile, Zannelli said, he has arranged training in handling people in emotional crisis — called ICAT (Integrated Communications Assessment and Tactics) — for 80 officers who hadn’t yet undergone it. The chief credited that with helping the department cut its use of force incidents by half.
Another strategy: Building the retinue of bike cops. Zannelli heard from many New Haveners who want to see more visible cops in the neighborhood. There’s a limit to how many walking cops a department like New Haven’s can field while also having enough officers available each shift to respond to emergencies. Bike cops can interact with people and get to know them the way walking cops do, while hustling to crime scenes when needed. Under Zannelli, the NHPD trained 24 cops to patrol on bikes. (Click here and here to read about that.)
The department has managed to gradually rebuild its ranks to make possible more assignments like these. The number of officers rose by 15 (to 348 out of 415 budgeted positions) over the past year, with 34 more recruits either having completed training or about to begin it, according to Zannelli.
The chief credited city alders for upping fines to $1,000 for noise offenders. He said his officers can measure violations with their body cameras. He also credited cooperation with other law enforcement agencies as helping the department tackle street takeovers. (Read more about that here.)
The city went seven months with no homicides until a spate of killings this summer, when nine occurred. Overall, shootings and violence have continued a decline to — in some cases — the lowest rates in decades.
“We try to make collective decisions when we can” with community “partners,” Zannelli said. “That way, everybody has a voice.”
Click on the video below to watch the full conversation with New Haven Police Chief David Zannelli on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven,” including discussions about cameras (like license-plate readers), policies on ICE and immigration, and youth violence. Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of “Dateline New Haven.” Click here to download the WNHH FM app.