Caught along with the East Haven Police Department in a national firestorm, Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. says that despite the arrest of four police officers — and “the taco comment heard ‘round the world” — he will lead the town out of it.

“We live in a great community,” said Maturo, a former five-term mayor in only the second month of his first term back in office after a four-year absence. “It’s a good, hard-working, blue collar community and I will get us through this and we will be a better community.

“Are there problems? Sure, there are,” he said. “We have the same types of problems that they have in any other community.”

Maturo said he already had taken some steps to address the town’s problems, including forming a new committee, the Law Enforcement Advisory Resource Network, to address criticism and usher in change at the Police Department, and would be reaching out to East Haven’s Latino community “soon,” although he did not say when or how.

“I’m reaching out. I’m being proactive,” he said, adding that any changes “weren’t going to be as expedient as maybe some people would like them to be.

“Things take time,” Maturo said.

Maturo pointed out that East Haven’s Latino community has grown in just a few years from less than 2 percent to more than 10 percent of the population, which he cited as proof that Latino residents feel safe in town.

He said there needs to be “a healing process on both sides.”

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