HARTFORD HOUSING AUTHORITY
Public Safety Initiatives / Officer Housing / Weed & Seed
see also: Community Service Officer (CSO) - Hartford Police Department Officer Housing
The Housing Authority's Public Safety Department and the Hartford Police Department (HPD) have entered into a partnership which essentially assigns a uniformed policeman to act as Community Service Officer to the Authority and its many developments throughout the city. The CSO acts as a liaison to make communication between the HPD and the Authority more efficient. This officer has been supported by an annual HUD Public Housing Drug Elimination Grant.
Officer William Gervais is the Scout Master of Troop 105 as well as serving as the Community Service Officer and liaison between the Hartford Police Department and the Hartford Housing Authority. Here is his troop with Governor of CT John Rowland
Since starting, the CSO has researched various City, State and Federal laws and regulations and has provided written documentation that makes the Authority’s "One Strike" selection and eviction policies more effective. The CSO has also cooperated with the Homeownership Committee in their efforts to screen and advise families who want to move to the new community at Charter Oak Terrace. The steady decline in overall crime in the City of Hartford and in Public Housing is directly related to efforts such as this.
Weed & Seed
The City of Hartford and the Hartford Housing Authority, working in partnership with the Hartford Police Department and the U.S. Attorney's Office for Connecticut were fortunate to receive "Weed and Seed" designation for several years in the late 90's.
Weed and Seed is a program developed by the Department of Justice to combat crime with a comprehensive and intensive focus on a particular neighborhood in a city. Hartford was one of only a few cities in the country to win this designation. Furthermore, the Hartford venue for the first year was unique because it focused exclusively on just one public housing development - Stowe Village.
Weed and Seed did wonders at its prime site. The crime statistics went down by 1/3 each year. Whereas residents were intimidated to leave their units because of "open air" drug markets a year ago, they have now reclaimed their sidewalks and streets. see evaluation
It should also be noted that overall crime in the City of Hartford has decreased, some say because "as public housing goes, so goes the city". In the past, public housing seemed to be relegated to the fringes of community policing and rigorous enforcement practices. With Weed and Seed, one public housing development - Stowe Village - received intensive attention by both law enforcement entities and family support structures. The results indicate that positive gains can be made for the families involved, their immediate public housing neighborhood, as well as the city as a whole.
The thesis of Weed and Seed is that crime suppression, alone, will not work. Weed and Seed does support "weeding" by making possible extra policing, Community Service Officers, horse and bike patrols, etc. It brought in the FBI and others for undercover surveillance, reverse stings and major "busts".
Equally or more important, Weed and Seed, on the "seeding side", helped to fund a Computer Learning Lab, a youth program to develop self-esteem and to provide counseling to sexually active teenagers, case workers and mental health professionals. All of these complement the work of the Family Investment Center, and other youth programs and initiatives that have had success in Stowe Village.
What has been learned from the Weed and Seed program at Stowe Village is that policing, alone, cannot stabilize a neighborhood. The balance of human services and crime suppression is now being duplicated in other housing authority developments in other parts of the city.
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