Our sense of collective community safety has been broken in Hartford. Gun violence, reckless driving, and break-ins are harming families and neighborhoods. Previous attempts or noninvestment have been recycled and repeated. It’s time for a new direction.
A new direction looks like investing in our youth, mental health services, and victim support. Advancing initiatives to become a trauma informed city focusing on innovative community-based strategies around violence intervention and prevention.
By stabilizing neighborhoods, investing in quality, affordable housing options, and empowering residents to lead the change in their own communities, we can advance community development across Hartford.
Coordinate a citywide Public Safety Roundtable initiative.
Promote, Recruit, Hire and Retain – Police, Fire, and other City Staff from within the city – If career development is a key factor in retention, then the city must focus on developing our staff in order to increase our retention rates. The costs to the city are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in loss of productivity around the resignation, rehiring and retraining processes.
Without a quality recruitment and retention program, hiring new employees becomes a never-ending cycle of wasted time and money.
Support the Civilian Police Review Board – Which acts to review investigations of citizen complaints against police conduct and to make recommendations to the chief of police in connection therewith. I will establish a Civilian Academy and allow the CPRB to do their job unhindered.
Leverage traditional and grant public safety dollars to support holistic approaches to safety.
Invest in organizations and programs that identify, train and deploy non-traditional leaders from within the community to serve as outreach workers to increase access and awareness to healing and recovery services for victims/survivors of violence through direct services, advocacy and public educational forums.
Establish Reckless Driving and ATV Task-force – In recent years more people have died as a result of vehicular homicides than criminal homicides in Hartford. This is an unacceptable trend that requires a focused resolution.
Re-Establish Neighborhood Block Watches/Love your Block Initiatives- neighborhood Block Watch programs empowers residents to become active in community efforts through participation in Neighborhood Watch groups, community care and beautification efforts.
