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| O'Leary -- Waterbury Observer |
Waterbury’s Neil O’Leary has announced he will not be running for Mayor again.
I ran into him briefly when my wife Andrée
and I were returning home from a trip to Tennessee. Why Tennessee, the reader
may ask? The answer is: Tennessee is the picture perfect postcard of Connecticut
in the post-World War II War period, say around 1965 – and it has horse farms.
Andrée is addicted to horses. We stayed at a horse farm, and she went riding as
often as possible.
O’Leary was hunkered down in his airplane seat staring
vacantly out the window.
I leaned over and said, “You know, people who do that always
think they know where they are.”
He laughed, a rich unabashed laugh, and leaned over to
affectionately stroke Andrée’s Fidelco guide dog, who was named by Fidelco,
providentially, Dublin.
“Ah! Dublin!” said O’Leary, pleased as punch to have
encountered an Irish German Shepard in Connecticut.
We did not talk business, but I did mention that crime stats
in large Connecticut cities were driven by about a couple of dozen people in
each city well known to police. If it were possible to rid the cities of
persistent criminals, most of whom had long rap sheets, the stats would be
considerably reduced. O’Leary agreed. But it was not until I stumbled upon his “State of the City” address that I realized how passionately he
agreed.
For 29 years, before assuming his mayoral responsibilities,
O’Leary served in the Waterbury police department. He was
chief of police for 5 years and mayor of Waterbury for 12 years.
Like good wine, retirement loosens the tongue, and O’Leary
has made it plain that while he is out, he is not down.
Law enforcement, we all know, does not begin and end with police
apprehensions. Suspected criminals must be presented in court to answer charges
against them, plead guilty or not, and, if tried and convicted of charges,
yield to some sort of punishment. Justice is a corporate endeavor involving
many moving parts—all of them tailored by legislatures. Nearly all the parts
agree that justice, upon a finding of guilt, involves force, the root of the
word “enforcement.” When the parts have all been engaged justly,
justice has been rendered to the accused, victims and the larger society. But
politics, on occasion, proves to be the worm in the justice apple.
That spoiling worm is not often noticed by officiating
police chiefs or officers, because public employees are subject to a too ridged
protocol, and so called “whistleblowers,” free under statutes to whistle to
their hearts content, are many times frustrated by the prospect of job loss or
other punishments meted out by superiors attentive to the politics of the
moment. The cardinal rule in politics and civil service is -- don’t mess your
own nest. And if you unintentionally mess it, clean up after yourself;
administrators will be only too happy to lend a hand with the whitewashing.
The good public servant will transcend this subservience to
the moment. And O’Leary has been, and will continue to be, a good public
servant, in or out of office.
O’Leary likely would heartily agree with several strategies
proposed by Anthony Braga and Philip Cook in their new book, Policing Gun Violence: Strategic Reforms for
Controlling Our MOST Pressing Crime Problem, reviewed in the Washington Examiner.
Strategy 1: “Hot
Spots Policing, which simply means keeping track of where crimes happen,
increasing police presence in places where bad events are frequent, and, when
possible, stopping illegal gun-carrying there.” Eschew “stop and frisk” but
deploy “street stops” when genuinely suspicious people (felons with rap
sheets?) are encountered. “Precision policing,” now deployed in New York, is
“directed at individuals who make communities unsafe.”
Strategy 2: Focused
Deterrence: Not only is violence concentrated in certain places, “… it’s
also concentrated in social networks such as gangs. The focused deterrent
strategy involves keeping tabs on violent groups, offering social services to
members willing to accept them, directly communicating that gun violence won’t
be tolerated, and, when necessary, following up on that threat… Braga helped to
implement this strategy in Boston, which saw youth homicides plummet. However,
focused deterrence has to be implemented consistently and maintained over time,
or the effects wear off.”
Strategy 3: Solve the
crime: “When a homicide or shooting happens, solve it. This incapacitates
the most violent people, grants justice to victims so they are less likely to
retaliate on their own, and deters future shooters. Today, close to half of
murders go unsolved, as do a large majority of nonfatal shootings.”
The natural enemy of this third strategy is the old enemy of
policing, a lack of sufficient resources. But treating non-fatal crime like
fatal crime clearly improves solve-rates for both.
We can deduce from O’Leary’s “State of the State” address
that he is familiar with these strategies. And that leaves an agonizing
obstacle to crime reduction – politics. Police used to believe that politicians
had their backs. That, sadly, may no longer be the case, and O’Leary has told
us very clearly: If we think the most serious problem we face is policing,
think again.
Connecticut Democrats friendly to police reform – no bail
for certain crimes, reduced prosecutions, especially for lesser property
crimes, and restraints on police, such as the elimination of partial immunity,
which so far has protected police from nuisance suits attacking the personal
assets of arresting officers – have all but surrendered the serviceable notion
that punishment deters criminal activity.
O’Leary warned, “Take a look at these statistics. This is
Waterbury, but New Haven, Hartford and Waterbury are no different. Actually,
Hartford is worse. Look at the people arrested for fatal and non-fatal
shootings while out on pre-trial release… In 2021, in Waterbury, there were 31
individuals arrested for fatal and non-fatal shootings in the city. Out of
those 31, 20% were out on bond, 20% were out on probation, and 12% more were
out on parole. So, add it up: 52% of the people responsible for fatal and
non-fatal shootings in the city of Waterbury were people with long records –
violent records, felony records, firearm records, and 20% were out on bond, 12
% out on probation and 12 % out on parole.”
“The pendulum” on crime prevention, O’Leary said, has swung
“really far left.”
“So,” O’Leary concluded, “when you hear about crime in
Connecticut, don’t look to the police. Look to the legislature.”
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