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| A LESSON IN VIOLENCE | |
 October 15, 1998 
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The White House hosted a national forum this week focusing on how to reduce the level of violence in the nation's schools. Betty Ann Bowser traveled to New Haven, Connecticut to see how one community is attempting to create safe schools.
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: At the White House today, President Clinton, Vice President Gore, and the First Lady hosted a conference on curbing violence and promoting safety in the nation's schools. Betty Ann Bowser reports on how one Connecticut city is dealing with the problem. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Things were really jumping last week at Fair Haven Middle School in New Haven, Connecticut. The drill team got the student body all fired up. The cheerleaders cheered — the football team was introduced. Everyone was energized for the first football game of the fall season.
OFFICER: How are you doing? BETTY ANN BOWSER: -- he also gets to know the students. And Picagli is one of the reasons Fair Haven hasn't had a single major violence incident in five years. |
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A city plagued by violence.
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Seven years ago, all of New Haven's middle and high schools were having problems. Drugs, gangs, stabbings were constant occurrences. It was a reflection of what was going on in the larger community, which was experiencing more murders than at any time in the history of the city. Back then, Officer Stephanie Redding was frustrated because frequently it was children who witnessed or were part of the violence. And she had no idea what to do with them.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Over at the Yale Child Study Center psychiatrists, like Dr. Steven Marans, were seeing increasing numbers of young patients who had been exposed to violence. And, like Officer Redding, he was concerned, because all the research showed a relationship between early exposure to violence and future incidents.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Chief of Police Melvin Wearing was on the force in 1991 and, like other leaders in the department, he thought it was time to take a communitywide approach to the problem. MELVIN WEARING, Chief of Police, New Haven: Drive-by shootings, violence throughout the city, along city streets. Children were traumatized by that violence. And it was just an ideal prime time for something different in terms of policing and addressing violence as it relates to children. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Psychiatrist Dr. Donald Cohen was thinking the same thing. So, as director of the Yale Child Study Center, he sat down with Wearing and other police officials and hammered out what became the Child Development Community Policing Program. It began with an across-the-board policy of assigning police officers to neighborhoods, not just for a month or two, but long-term. That way, officers would get to know the neighborhood, its problems, and its people, and the residents would get to know the police. Then the Yale mental health professionals gave every single police officer hours and hours of training in child development. The doctors and psychiatric social workers also put themselves on call 24 hours a day, so they could be summoned to the scene of a violence situation to help children. DR. DONALD COHEN, Director, Yale Child Study Center: During these last years we've learned a great deal from our collaboration with the police officers. We've learned how parents and children experience trauma acutely because by working with police officers, we actually go to the scenes where children and families are exposed to trauma. We've learned how they cope with the trauma and how mental health workers who are there right in the beginning can help families and police officers deal with the acute stress. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Assistant Police Chief Douglas MacDonald says the Child Development Community Policing Program has made it easier for his department to do its job.
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The importance of intervening early. |
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BETTY ANN BOWSER: The collaboration between Yale's mental health professionals and the police department expanded. Cops were assigned to schools. They started mentoring programs and after-school programs. The juvenile court system, the schools, the Department of Health and Family Services were brought into the equation. And not only did they work with kids, who have been traumatized by violence, together, they began to work with kids who were showing signs of violence. Tommy is just 10 years old, but he's already seen a lot of violence in his neighborhood. He says it makes him mad. Because he's so young, we're not going to show his face or use his last name. TOMMY: When I get really mad and my temperature just goes up – my temperature on the side where my heart at – when it touch my heart, that's when I get really mad and start throwin' stuff around. BETTY ANN BOWSER: What do you do when you get that mad?
BETTY ANN BOWSER: And last year, Tommy took a large knife to school. He planned to use it to kill a first and a second grader who had jumped his little brother. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Were you prepared to stab ‘em really bad, till maybe you killed them? TOMMY: Mmm-hmm. BETTY ANN BOWSER: And you weren't worried about what would happen if you did that? TOMMY: Nope. I wasn't worried. I wasn't scared. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Even if you could go to jail? TOMMY: Mmm-hmm. I'm not scared of jail. BETTY ANN BOWSER: You're not? TOMMY: Nope. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Are you scared of guns? TOMMY: Un-uh. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Are you scared of other kids? TOMMY: Nah. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Is there anything you're afraid of? TOMMY: Nope. I'm scared of snakes but I kill a snake before. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Is that the only thing you're afraid of is snakes? TOMMY: Mmm-hmm. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Tommy is getting help in an afternoon offender program run by the Child Study Center, Juvenile Probation, and the police department. As a condition of probation, Tommy comes to the program four afternoons a week for sessions of ninety minutes to two hours. Child Center Psychiatric Social Worker Diane Dodge works intensively with Tommy.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Studies show that kids like Tommy who attend the program are less likely to re-offend than children who are sentenced to probation without an intervention program. And according to Dr. Cohen of Yale, studies of school-age children in New Haven show they are committing fewer acts of violence.
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Just a beginning.
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BETTY ANN BOWSER: Overall crime statistics show that since 1991, violent crime in New Haven is down 35 percent, while nationwide it was down about 8 percent. There have also been fewer juvenile arrests for murder and juvenile auto theft, a gateway crime, is down 67 percent. But the work in New Haven is not done.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Cops like Detective Joanne Petersen know kids are still being exposed to violence. She spends several hours a week talking to kids as part of the police department's Guns Are Not Toys program. But Dr. Marans, at the Child Study Center, says realistically, only so much can be done.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Eight American cities have adopted the New Haven model and are using it in their communities. |
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All
this took place under the watchful gaze of Officer Dan Picagli. For
the past three years the New Haven Police Department has assigned Picagli
to the school as its resource officer. Keeping order among these middle
school students is Picagli's full-time job as a police officer. He's
one of five cops assigned to all of the city's middle and high schools
because of past incidents of violence. Not only does he keep an eye
on what's going on – 
STEPHANIE
REDDING, Sergeant, New Haven Police Department: We're in New Haven,
with Yale, some of the foremost experts in the world, and had no way
to link up those services with these children. A lot of us don't have
degrees in child psychology, but it doesn't take a lot of us to know
that a child that just witnessed someone being shot, particularly a
family member, this child's going to need help. 
DR.
STEVEN MARANS, Yale Child Study Center: The children who were at greatest
risk for developing symptoms that include eventual engagement in violent
activities themselves are those children who witness and experience
violence at a very firsthand way, where the perpetrators and victims
of the violence they witness are family members, or immediate members
of the community with whom they have close relationships. 
DOUGLAS
MacDONALD, Assistant Police Chief, New Haven: This policing model is
endorsed by the residents of this town. This policing model has – can
claim credit for a significant reduction in crime years before the trend
was for trying to be reduced, or it was recognized crime was being reduced
nationwide. 
TOMMY:
I throw stuff around. I hit the wall. And I cuss. 
DIANE
DODGE, Yale Child Study Center: We're really lucky to get him at a young
age because he is still young and he still is very much a kid. And although
he's been involved in a serious incident, that there's still very much
a part of him that's a kid that wants to be taken care, that wants to
do what kids do. So the part of him that he boasts about is the fact
that he's big and bad and that he can fight and do all these things,
but, in reality, he feels very vulnerable, and all of that is kind of
a cover-up because I think he feels really small and really needs a
lot of people to help him and to keep him safe and to help him do the
right thing. 
DR.
DONALD COHEN: Over the last four years we've seen a decrease in children's
anxieties. Children feel more secure at home and at school and their
communities, but also, they're engaging in less adverse behaviors. I
think that in New Haven children are now saying that they're seeing
fewer episodes of crime and violence than they did four years ago, fewer
children being hurt, fewer knives being carried to school. 
DETECTIVE:
How many people in this classroom know somebody who's been shot? Can
you raise your hand? How many people in this classroom know somebody
who's been shot and unfortunately have lost their lives because of a
handgun? That's a few hands. 
DR.
STEVEN MARANS: Well, this program certainly can't be a replacement for
families, and it can't be a replacement for the kind of values that
children need to have from their parents. The program is able to provide
a service that maximizes the possible containment of disruption of development
and the aftermath of acute episodes of violence. And it can also provide
a platform for considering what might be brought to bear in those situations
where children aren't getting enough guidance and aren't getting enough
structure.