City of New Haven responds after neighborhood sees uptick in car thefts, break-ins

Residents living in the Beaver Hills neighborhood have been faced with an increase of car thefts and car break-ins by minors.

Laib Vail, a resident of the neighborhood, said it's something the neighborhood has always dealt with, but has noticed there’s been an increase over the past month.

“You have literally neighbor after neighbor reporting that their car has either been stolen or broken into,” Vail said. 

Chief Karl Jacobson with the New Haven Police Department said they are aware of the issue.

“Overall in the city, we’ve seen an increase for a 4-week period, we had 20, then we had 32, then we had 35, luckily this week, we only saw five,” Jacobson said.

Jacobson said the department saw an increase of car thefts in the weeks leading up to school, and then they saw a decrease which he believes was due to some of the arrests made.

“So far this year in Kias alone, we’ve seen 58 arrests related to Kias alone, 58 arrests of juveniles, so that’s quite a large number of arrests of juveniles," Jacobson said.

Jacobson added that overall in the city, there’s been a 26% decrease in the number of cars stolen this year in comparison to the same time last year.

“Right now, we have 659 stolen cars where last year, we had 859. So we have 200 less stolen cars,” Jacobson said. 

Resident Binyomin Libelich of Beaver Hills said that he’s had his car stolen twice by minors and one of those times, his 8-year-old daughter had just gotten out of the car.

“I feel extremely unsafe in my own neighborhood. I came here to live in New Haven because I thought it would be a peaceful, quiet place to settle down, to raise a family but with this kind of criminal activity that’s going on, it doesn’t look like it's that kind of a city anymore,” Libelich said.

Libelich said that during one of the times that his car was stolen, he jumped into another car with a friend and began following his stolen car, while on the phone with the police, to try and give them an exact location to find his car, but he said the police told him, “let them go.”

“I got the car back because I found it myself, the police only showed up after I found my own car,” Libelich said.

Libelich said the city needs to change their policies, to be able to place tougher punishments to the youth committing the crimes.

In response, Jacobson said he is working on developing a task force with different departments in the area.

“We’re going to put together a task force of different departments in the area, use intelligence to identify these kids and then also work with the court system to make sure these kids are getting the things they need to stay out of the stolen cars and this behavior," he said.

Jacobson said the entire police department is getting trained on stop stick use.

“It’s a device that safely deflates tires so the vehicle comes to a stop, but of course they can still travel at times and it's very difficult, and at times, can be unsafe so it has to be done properly. So that’s why we’re retraining most of our people in it," Jacobson said.

The New Haven Police Department is also using technology such as Star Chase.

“It shoots out a GPS onto the car, it allows us to follow from a safe distance. We’re looking into all these factors and taking into account the safest thing possible,” Jacobson said.

Mayor Justin Elicker said many city departments are working hard to address the issue of youth car thefts while reminding the public what the police department can legally do.

“On the police side, we’re not allowed to pursue vehicles in a high speed chase, state statute does not allow the police to do that so we have to find more creative ways to catch people who are stealing vehicles. For example, we’ve installed many, many cameras around the city to track where the cars go," Elicker said.

The mayor added the city is increasing their youth resources to encourage them to choose alternative options.

"We've received millions of dollars from the state to put into our work at the youth program and we've really expanded the program really significantly," Elicker said.

In addition to youth support, the mayor said they need diversionary programs for young people engaged in violent activity.