Former New Haven, Conn., Police Chief Nicholas Pastore, died last week at 87. Pastore was mourned as a trailblazer whose ideas continue to guide how New Haven addresses criminal justice, reports the New Haven Independent. “He was the father of community policing,” said current Chief Karl Jacobson, noting that neighborhood-level and community-partnering policies Pastore pioneered in the 1990s continue to this day as a foundation of New Haven policing. Shafiq Abdussabur, whom Pastore recruited to the force after encountering him protesting police with fellow Muslim activists, said,. “If there was a hall of fame for police chiefs, Chief Pastore, who revolutionized policing in modern-day America, would be at the top of the list. His innovations and vision for community policing live on today in the professional skills of thousands of police officers and law enforcement executives throughout the world.”
From promoting drug decriminalization to pushing violent cops off the force; from recruiting Black, brown, female and LGBT cops to downplaying arrest numbers as indicators of success; from engaging gang members to partnering with child-psychologists and social workers to help kids exposed to violence process trauma, Pastore was ahead of his time. He delighted in criticizing traditional military-style policing and provoking controversies. The son of factory workers, Pastore was in the military when he was sent to Little Rock to confront Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus’s National Guard. Faubus defied an order to allow Black children into an all-white high school. With fellow soldiers, Pastore was assigned to escort a Black girl to school amid death threats from crowds of angry whites. Back in New Haven, he was hired as a police officer and quickly earned a reputation for knowing the street. He devoured courses on policing and pursued a college degree. His street contacts and his reservoir of information on safe-crackers and numbers runners helped arrest crooks like Eddie Devlin, who landed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.
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