With six weeks left in the year, Hartford has already hit a grim milestone: 36 homicides so far in 2022. The only time the city had 30 or more homicides was in 2003 and 2015.
“She was fun, liked to laugh. Everybody knew her,” Diazsha Heaven said, describing her sister Jayla. “Yeah, she was just full of energy.”
She was known for her cooking and had just started a food business.
“Mac and cheese, chicken and yams. Her favorite was - it's called Rasta pasta,” Heaven said. “Everything is just different. Even, like, the holidays are coming up. She's the one who usually cooks for Thanksgiving, she does all the cooking.”
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This will be the first holiday season without her or her food. Jayla Heaven, 21, is among the three dozen people killed in Hartford this year.
Diazsha Heaven said Jayla was shot and killed at a party on the Fourth of July when two people began to argue and one of them fired a gun.
“She wasn't the intended target, of course, but she just happened to be like in the crossfire,” Heaven said.
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Jayla and Diazsha have birthdays two weeks apart and the sisters were inseparable.
“Us growing up, it was just like, everything you did was just together like sharing the same clothes, sleeping in the same bed,” Heaven said. “So now I kind of feel like, you know, I’m like by myself kind of.”
While homicides spiked nationwide during the pandemic, here in Connecticut, only Hartford and Waterbury’s numbers continue to climb. Hartford is the fourth largest city in the state and leads all of Connecticut in homicides. Its rate is three times higher than New Haven, the third-largest city in the state.
NBC Connecticut asked to talk to Hartford police about their specific strategy to reduce gun violence. They were unable to confirm an interview.
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said the city is supporting intervention programs to combat the violence.
“What's always difficult to demonstrate is the violence that you prevented through that violence intervention work,” Bronin said. “But there is no doubt that there's been a great deal of violence prevented by, you know, folks like Compass Peacebuilders, Hartford Communities That Care, hospital-based violence intervention, Mothers United Against Violence.”
He said those groups traditionally focus on gang activity and long-standing tension between groups. The challenge, he said, is that these homicides are caused by too many guns on the street and personal arguments that escalate quickly.
“These are, for the most part, not the gang disputes that people remember from years past. When the violence is very, very personal, it becomes harder to intervene to stop it,” Bronin said.
As the numbers hit a new high, it’s not clear what the Hartford Police Department’s strategy is to stop the personal violence and the killings that follow.
Bronin said the work the department does involves partners at all levels.
“Our police officers here at the Hartford Police Department are doing a tremendous job of identifying suspects quickly and taking folks off the street. But they also work hand in hand with our federal partners, FBI, DEA, ATF, with state police, with regional police departments,” Bronin said. “We focus intensely on building those partnerships and making sure that we're bringing everybody to this work.”
We sat down with New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobson to ask how he believes the city went from 26 homicides last year, to 10 so far this year. He says it’s a group effort across all law enforcement agencies and community intervention groups.
And he said the department doesn’t work in silos - they share information across units and task forces.
“This works, communication works. Communication with our communities works, and that's why I believe we've been successful,” Jacobson said.
He said the department has worked at violence intervention and community policing for years.
The plan to reduce gun violence involves daily intelligence meetings with other local and federal law enforcement agencies. And police make joint in-person visits to both gang members and individuals who are likely to be involved in gun violence before they fire a weapon.
“That face-to-face personal contact and knocking on the doors, the ability for the police, probation and parole to go out hand in hand, juvenile probation hand in hand, the youth workers in the city, we weren't able to do that due to the pandemic,” Jacobson said.
He believes that contributed to the rise in violent crime, but now they’re back at it.
“We'll check on people, we'll check on their wellbeing. But we're also letting them know, ‘Hey, we know who you are, we know you might be involved in this,’” he said. “And, and I keep saying it over, over and over, but it's an important message: we want you safe, alive and out of jail. But if you pick up a gun, we know who you are and we’re going to come after you.”
He said the department has also taken more guns off the street and made more firearm arrests than this time last year. He credits social service programs like Project Longevity, Project Safe Neighborhoods, CT Violence Intervention Program and the Project More prison reentry program.
“It's a small number of people who are actually the trigger pullers. It's a very small number of people. So, we have to affect that so they can't pull the trigger, right? Or get them to change their ways. That's why the social services piece is very important.”
Still, he said there’s more work to do to get the homicide and violent crime rates even lower.
In Hartford – a city only slightly smaller than New Haven – Bronin said police are making shooting and homicide-related arrests, which he said sends a message that people won’t get away with violent crime in the city.
“Our police department is solving fatal shootings at a higher rate than peer cities and solving non-fatals at a higher rate than they ever have before,” Bronin said. “So, our law and community partners are out there working hard every day.”
Meanwhile, Heaven said the deaths in Hartford need to stop.
“It seems like every time you turn around, there’s a new death,” Heaven said.
She is still waiting for police to arrest the person who killed her sister.
“So, we're just hoping for justice soon. because, you know, the whole situation was just unfair,” Heaven said.
