Mayor Leng Addresses Recent Crime Wave In Hamden

HAMDEN, CT — Hamden Mayor Curt Balzano Leng said officials are addressing the recent crime wave in town in a variety of different ways.

Hamden has seen several armed robberies happen in town over the past few weeks. Three armed robberies happened within 30 minutes of each other early Monday morning. Then two women were robbed at gunpoint in separate incidents on Wednesday morning.

Last week, a woman was robbed at gunpoint by two men while she was sitting in a parked car late Thursday night. Earlier that day, a 60-year-old woman was robbed at gunpoint while she was walking to a bus stop.

Leng addressed the crimes in his weekly Virtual Town Hall update on Facebook Live. Despite the recent surge in robberies, Leng said the overall crime stats in Hamden are “actually pretty stable and in some areas down.”

However, he said there has certainly been an increase in car thefts and that one act of gun violence is “too many” and there’s “always more work we can be doing to prevent and protect.”

Leng said he is working with Police Chief John Sullivan on two upcoming forums. One will be a roundtable-type forum that will include residents where they can submit questions and also participate live in the virtual meeting.

“I want you to know that the crime is not going unnoticed,” Leng said. “There are a lot of things that I can’t talk about that are happening, but are very effective strategies to try and attack this issue. It’s not just happening in Hamden, it’s happening across the state of Connecticut. It’s happening in New Haven, it’s happening in North Haven and many other towns.”

At the roundtable forum, Leng said they want to try and talk a little more about the details of the things that are happening.

“What I can tell you, is that we have been increasing presence every time that we can, every time there is a lead, every time there is a crime, especially the serious ones” Leng said. “We have additional patrols, when the weather is not freezing, we have bike beats and walking beats. Our funding this year in the police budget from the council was not as high as it was previously in certain accounts. And our police force was reduced by about a dozen positions.

“I’m not blaming anyone. It was a tough budget. The process was a difficult one and it was important for everybody to try and balance it. But policing is something that our residents count on. Public safety is a core service.”

Leng also said there’s a way to do policing and “I think we’re on the road to doing that and our police are committed to doing that.”

He said there are ways to “bring more resources” to the police, such as mental health services and addiction services.” He said the town’s efforts with helping the homeless has had the added effect of “less panhandlers and less concern when people go to the plaza and other key areas in town.”

Leng said the extra patrols have been focused on areas where there has been gun violence but the recent increase in car burglaries has also been a key focus.

“There are 240 miles of road in Hamden,” he said. “I’m not saying that as an excuse, I’m saying that to be real. On 240 miles of road, it’s impossible to add an officer on every road or every five roads. It’s also really hard to predict where those crimes are going to happen. Because they have been incredibly difficult to pinpoint, they’re all over town. North, south, east, west, and we literally have 240 miles of road, but we have these situations happening, and they pop, and they move in different areas of town.”

Leng said the recent crimes are much different from previous years, where people checked car doors to see if they were locked and left if they couldn’t get in. There weren’t many instances where car windows were broken, it was the “low-hanging fruit” where people would take advantage of situations, according to Leng.

“I want you to know that the police department is on it, in ways that I can talk about and not talk about and we’re going to have this discussion very soon,” he said.

Leng also said he is meeting with New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker and North Haven First Selectman Michael Freda to come together in a regional effort to reduce the crimes happening in each town.

And since deterring the recent crimes has worked differently than the car burglaries, Leng said he thinks a “different approach” is needed and Sullivan is “working to explore with his community staff a number of different things.”