RIP Nick Pastore

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm about to finally attribute. I've told a story here
for years, but I never gave up the name, And
now that this gentleman has passed away, I don't know
is that inappropriate. I'm going to finally say it was him,
But it was former New Haven police chief Nick Pastor.

(00:21):
Now he wasn't police. He was on the scene when
this went down. Does it say the years that he
was a police chief in this article? You know, it
would have helped if I had read it, but this
would be prior to that.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
He was a beat cop. I mean he showed up.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
In the late eighties, Nick Pastor, who died day before yesterday,
eighty seven years old, downtown New Haven. A melee had
gone down, one of those fights with many of you

(01:03):
are nodding along to right now in front of memories.
The guy I was with he broke some yately's nose.
The police showed up. Pastor was one of them, and
it was me, with all kids from East Haven. I

(01:23):
was the lone New Havener, the lone guy from Morris
Cove and uh when he rounded us up and asked

(01:44):
our names and where we were from, he got a
bunch of East Havens, you know, Mike Veleki, East Davin,
Peter Ramotte, Eastdaven Eddie Veleak, East Haven, Gerald Weleka East David,
Vinnie Pettikini, New Haven. Where in New Haven Morris Cove?
And he said, do you know Carolyn Pastor? And I'm like,

(02:04):
I work with her. You can drive your buddy's car home. Yeah.
I never attributed that, Yeah, I never.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
A lot of people would look at stuff like that
as favoritism, you know, and maybe even an Italian looking
after an Italian. It might have been a little bit
of that in there, but I always looked at it
as you work with my.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Daughter, drop names. I mean, that's to me, that's damn man,
that's community policing. It's a technicolor illustration of community policing.
It was a moment.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Because, of course, swirling around my head at this time
is my father's gonna punch me right in my face
when he comes to that jail cell. He will punch
me straight in my face. And what was worse than
that was, oh the way my mother's going to carry on.
That's soap opera. Those tiers. And in the moment that

(03:04):
he said, I'll tell you what, you can drive your
Buddy's car home, get out of here, and I think
he called me a name, and I remember thinking that
my mother and father had always said stuff like that. Again,
I'm going back to the seventies. In the eighties said
stuff like that, like dropping names, networking, knowing people. I mean,

(03:29):
that's the definition of community. We all drop names for
better or worse. Sometimes they'll take a person off. Yeah,
what's that supposed to mean? That's going to get you
out of this ticket? Some it will offend. He was
the father of community policing, says current Chief Carl Jacobson,
noting that Pastor pioneered all of these community partnering policies

(03:56):
in the nineties and they continue to this day as
a foundation of New Haven policing. Abdusaber said he was
my mentor and close friend. If there was a hall
of fame for police chiefs, chief Pastor who revolutionized policing
in modern day America would be at the top of

(04:18):
the list. That's huge man from Schaffique, Abdusaber and I
would say it was. Those were great days.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
And safe days for New Haven.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Rest in peace,