Ansonia Police Department Appoints Three New Officers

Denyce Ruiz (left) and Anthony Santos (right).

ANSONIAThe Ansonia Police Commission appointed three new officers at its meeting on Oct. 16.

Anthony Santos, Denyce Ruiz, and Erick Cruz Garcia were each welcomed to the force after brief introductions to the commission. They will each start with a salary of $77,937.00, according to Lt. Patrick Lynch.

Ansonia Police Police Department Chief Wayne Williams welcomed the new recruits.

These three candidates did very well on the testing process for our agency,” Williams told the commissioners. They have fulfilled all of the standards that we are looking for and we are looking to hire all three individuals.”

Before joining the police department, Santos was a judicial court marshal in Waterbury. He holds an associate’s degree in forensic science from Tunxis Community College in Farmington.

Santos told the commission he wanted to join the force as a public service.

Growing up I always wanted to put people’s needs before mine, and I always like feeling good that I did something good for someone,” Santos said. 

Ruiz described herself as a first-generation student and officer, with her family immigrating to Yonkers, N.Y. when she was young. She grew up in Yonkers and moved to Ansonia with her family in 2020. She is bilingual in English and Spanish, and she holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Vermont State University in Montpelier.

I want to be able to help the ones who are less fortunate, that’s a really big thing for me,” Ruiz said.

Cruz is a four-year vet from the New York Police Department (NYPD), and a former reservist and recruiter for the U.S. Marine Corps. He’d been looking for a way to move to Ansonia after his wife got a job in the area. He holds an associate’s degree in business management from the Globe Institute of Technology in New York.

He said his NYPD and Marines experience taught him a lot about community policing.

Deterring violent crime and valuing information from the community in order to decrease property crime, that will be how I will move,” Cruz said.

The next step for Santos and Ruiz is to enter the police academy for training at the end of the month. Cruz, because of his prior police experience, will instead be submitted for comparative compliance certification from the state.

In his most recent monthly address to the Ansonia Board of Aldermen on Oct. 8, Williams gave the Aldermen updated recruitment numbers for the department. As of that date, the department had eight open officer positions. He said the patrol division is short of its allotted staffing levels by 35 percent.

Cruz shakes hands with members of the police commission.

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