The Albany Ave Substation

The Hartford Courant's Jenna Carlesso wrote an an interesting article about the opening of a new police substation in downtown while the substation on Albany Ave remains closed. It is interesting to note that while the North End clearly needs the extra police presence more than downtown, it is also important that workers and business owners feel safe while coming into town for the few remaining jobs downtown.

We've visited the closed substation on Albany. It's a place to see oddly positioned security cameras, redundant signs, a basketball court wrapped in a yellow fence, and some locals hanging out and shooting the breeze.



Ms. Carlesso's article stated ''In his memo to the council, the mayor said the satellite station would deal with "a recent increase in 'flash mob' violence around the northwest corner of Asylum and Main streets." The "flash mob" reference was because some of the teens had notified others that a fight would take place there beforehand through text messages and social media sites."


Cool. So is this texting and social media stuff is kind of like the 2011 version of "flash mobs" created by the Common Sense pamphlets? And does this now mean we can stash "flash mobs" in the Jump The Shark section of phrases next to "epic fail" and "I just threw up a little bit in my mouth?"


Anyway while this sort of thing is certain to become a political sounding board, we find it harder to believe that there hasn't been an operating substation in the high crime North End. 


Ms. Carlesso's article also had this tidbit "In his letter to the city council, Segarra wrote that "the violence has made area business owners, their employees and their customers feel unsafe in the area and has brought negative publicity to Hartford via both print and electronic media."


Well to be fair, that one brawl did get some media coverage that wasn't helpful to Hartford's image, but we are pretty sure it's shootings and frequency of that do much more to bring negative publicity to Hartford. 

At least the pigeons will watch over the neighborhood.