Hartford has seen the most homicides of any New England city in 2015.
A spike in violence in the city of Hartford has already left 18 people dead this year.
Last week, Mayor Pedro Segarra asked Governor Dannel Malloy for support. On Monday, the two men met with local, state, and federal officials to talk about the best response.
The governor is giving the mayor what he asked for and a little more: three detectives and one sergeant to assist in investigating crimes, more parole officers and correctional staff, money for a gun buy back program. and technical resources to help tracking ex offenders.
Malloy told reporters that while the state as a whole is seeing record low crime, Hartford is a notable exception.
"This is obviously a spike. Overall crime is down about two percent. Homicides have doubled for a comparable period of time and shootings are up," said Malloy. "So we're going to stay with this for a period of time until we can put things back to where they need to be."
Hartford police have said their roughly 400-member department is easily short 60 or so officers. That's something they'd like to work on, but the city's budget often gets in the way.
But Mayor Segarra seemed to say that the bigger problem was how the state reduced the number of troopers it assigned to the city's shooting task force that investigates violent crimes in the city. The state said it has grown the number of people that work on that task force, but reduced the component of state troopers who do so.
"I think that if we return to a fully staffed shooting task force, the way that we had a while back, that we could have a more targeted and stronger effort to bring down the homicides in the capitol city," Segarra said.
It's a problem that also has a political dimension for the mayor. He's been taking heat from his challengers since the violence started.
