NewCanaanite.com (https://newcanaanite.com/tag/police-commission/page/10)
Police Chief Leon Krolikowski shared the following letter of appreciation at the Feb. 16 meeting of the Police Commission. It was sent by St. Luke’s School Director of Safety and Security Gerald McMahon on Jan. 13, in the days that followed the death of Teddy Balkin:
“Chief Krolikowski, thank you and your department for the trends outpouring of support it has sent to St.
The head of the appointed body that oversees the New Canaan Police Department said at the group’s most recent meeting that its members are eager to move forward with a building project at the current police station site. The Police Commission is aware of significant deficiencies in the current building as-is and “we’re not seeing any other location that makes sense to us, where it should be,” according to Chair Paul Foley said. “And I think there would be a lot of dissent in town to move it onto another location—into the woods or onto a field at Saxe—and the neighbors would like to see it stay where it is, as well,” Foley said during the Commission’s Feb. 16 meeting, held at police headquarters and via videoconference. “And as we suggested in our memo to the town bodies, we would like to keep it in place and then get a deeper dive, a further study, as to either renovate the current building or to tear it down and build a new structure.
New Canaan’s highest elected official said Tuesday that he was “amused” by a memo from an appointed town body charged with managing and supervising the Police Department. The Police Commission in a Feb. 7 memo to the Board of Selectmen, Board of Finance and Town Council recommended that a future police station—whether renovated or built anew—remain where it is on South Avenue, and that the volunteer body be included in future discussions about the project. “Working together, we are confident that this project will be successfully completed,” according to the memo, read aloud during a regular selectmen meeting at Town Hall (bookmarked video embedded above). Yet after the memo had been read out, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said with respect the police station project, “We don’t have time to discuss this today.
Last month’s spurt of five smash-and-grabs from parked cars in Waveny was highly unusual, according to police, after four such break-ins occurred in all of 2021 and just one in Waveny the year before. Though it’s “not quite a hotbed of crime there,” Police Chief Leon Krolikowski said, “we are concerned and that’s one of the reasons we asked for video cameras in the parks, to help with our investigations.”
“We are increasing patrols, our detectives do have open investigations into those crimes,” Krolikowski said during a Jan. 19 meeting of the Police Commission. “We believe that these folks who actually break windows and go into the parks specifically are a very well-organized group that targets cars, and comes into the park and is in and out very quickly. A number of communities in our area got hit by them.
The Red Grape, a wine and spirits shop that’s been located for more than a decade on Burtis Avenue, is moving into a new commercial space downtown. The business is getting ready to move into a “brand new state-of-the-art” space at 42 Forest St., owner Ravi Punjabi told NewCanaanite.com.
The street-level retail space is part of the townhouse mixed-use development on the corner of Forest Street and Locust Avenue.
Punjabi through a limited liability company purchased the new retail space last month. It wasn’t immediately clear when The Red Grape would make the move. Asked about it, Punjabi said only that “more exciting news” will follow in two weeks. During the Jan.