City of New London
Office of the Mayor
181 State Street  New London, CT 06320  Phone (860) 447-5201  Fax (860) 447-7971

December 11, 2017

Statement On Unacceptable Violence In Our City
Our city experienced unacceptable violence in unrelated incidents this past weekend
that resulted in the deaths of two people. These two most recent deaths follow a similar
violent death just a few weeks ago at a Blackhall Street residence. As a community, we
deeply regret the loss of life and express our condolences to the families and friends of
the victims. Thankfully, in each of these tragic incidents, the general public was never at
risk. Our City is safe and the New London Police Department has done a remarkable
job investigating and swiftly resolving these crimes. Moreover, beyond merely reacting
to violence of this sort when it happens, City staff has been proactively engaged in
developing methods to prevent this type of violence. The City has assembled an
interagency, multijurisdictional initiative to identify the underlying social factors that lead
to incidences of violence like the city experienced this past weekend. This effort
engages our police, fire prevention, health, human services and building departments in
a collaborative effort that will identify causes and formulate methods and policies to
mitigate conditions that lead to this type of violence. This string of recent tragedies is, of
course, discouraging to our efforts. The goal of our task force in the coming weeks will
be to completely deconstruct the circumstances that led to these two latest violent
confrontations and to redouble our efforts to identify measures that could help to
prevent future violence of this nature. The City administration is committed to stemming
violence of this type in our community and continuing our overall quality of life
campaign.
Respectfully,
Michael E. Passero, Mayor

Affirmative Action – Equal Opportunity Employer