Cops around
Connecticut are beset by controversy - Could that be a good thing?
By
Gregory B. Hladky
3:25 p.m. EDT, October 11, 2011
This story contains a correction.
What the hell is going on with Connecticut cops? The past 18
months have seen an eruption of scandals, arrests, resignations, retirements
and investigations triggered by all sorts of allegations of police wrongdoing.
There are federal grand juries investigating police
harassment and brutality in East Haven and Meriden. Bridgeport’s deputy chief
is under FBI scrutiny for allegedly obstructing a murder investigation. In
Windsor Locks**, father and son policemen are arrested after a fatal accident.
One high-ranking New Britain commander is charged with drunk driving and
commits suicide; another is placed on leave amid sexual harassment allegations.
In New Haven, an assistant chief busts a citizen for recording a police arrest,
then retires as controversy erupts.
And an outside review finds an “overwhelming atmosphere of
paranoia and distrust” within Hartford police ranks, citing the department’s
internal affairs unit as a prime villain.
This apparent flood of bad-cop news stories might give you
the idea we’ve entered a new dark age of police rottenness. According to a lot
of legal and law enforcement authorities in Connecticut, that’s not the case.
In fact, they believe all these police controversies may be
a sign that times are changing for the better.
“I don’t think there is any new river of police misconduct
emerging,” says Jonathan Einhorn, a veteran defense
attorney and a former member of the New Haven police commission. “This is the
old stuff that’s finally being pursued.”
John Williams, a New Haven lawyer who’s handled dozens of
police brutality, misconduct and discrimination cases, has the same opinion.
“It’s not in any way unique to Connecticut. It’s common wherever you have
police departments.”
“I have always though that Connecticut, for all its [police]
problems, is better than many places,” says Williams. “At least we care about
it, we think about it.”
Gov. Dannel Malloy’s top criminal
justice adviser, Michael Lawlor, believes Connecticut
has “a big problem” with an erosion of public confidence in law enforcement,
but insists our troubles are nowhere near as bad as what goes on in cities like
New Orleans and Los Angeles. “I think we’d be on the plus side of the
spectrum compared to a lot of the rest of the country.”
Experts like John DeCarlo, a University of New Haven
associate professor and a former Branford police chief, say more of these
misconduct cases are now coming to light because local, state and federal
officials are a lot more inclined to investigate police wrongdoing than they
were 10 or 20 years ago.
“Chiefs and police administrators are more willing to step
up and not sweep things under the rug,” says DeCarlo,
who spent 34 years in law enforcement.
“What’s evident and where there’s good news is that finally
the federal government and local authorities are starting to take seriously
allegations of police misconduct,” says Einhorn.
“Historically, putting police feet to the fire over
misconduct has been like pulling teeth — nobody wanted to do it.”
Andrew Schneider, executive director of the Connecticut
branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, agrees. He says U.S. Justice
Department officials in the past “have not always been sufficiently aggressive
in prosecuting cases of police misconduct.”
That attitude is beginning to change, Schneider adds, noting
that he is seeing federal prosecutors “take an interest in the issue of racial
profiling, which is great.”
West Hartford Police Chief James Strillacci
argues that Connecticut police have become more professional in recent decades,
and that they are more willing to investigate complaints of misconduct by fellow
officers now than they were years ago.
Top law enforcement officials, defense attorneys and former
cops all emphasize that the vast majority of police at every level are honest
types who are working hard to uphold the law rather than break it.
That doesn’t mean everybody’s happy with what cops are up to
these days. For example, police use — or misuse — of electronic stun guns or
Tasers is becoming increasingly controversial.
Police across Connecticut are now armed with Tasers and are using them more
often to subdue people they’re arresting. They say using the stun weapon is a
safe and effective alternative to other types of force, like beating somebody
over the head with a baton. Critics warn Tasers are being used too quickly and
unnecessarily, such as a recent incident when a Middletown cop used a stun gun on a high-school kid who’d
stolen a meat patty from the cafeteria.
There are also fears that Tasers can kill when used on the wrong person at
the wrong time. Over a five-year period, at least nine people in Connecticut
have died after being Tasered by police. The
manufacturer and police officials insist Tasers were not the direct cause of
any of those deaths.
The Malloy administration and the ACLU last year pushed for
state guidelines and training standards for the use of Tasers, but that bill
never won legislative approval. Another ACLU-backed proposal would have given
legal protection from arrest to citizens who record police activities. The bill
was a response to several police busts of people for taking pictures of cops
making arrests, but that measure was another casualty of the 2011 General
Assembly session.
The image of policemen has suffered in recent decades as
more and more examples of police corruption and brutality have been splashed across
TV screens and news headlines.
Joe Average Citizen is a lot quicker to be suspicious of
cops today, according to Lawlor. He says police, like
legislators, prosecutors, top government officials, doctors and members of the clergy, have seen their reputation for integrity damaged by
a few corrupt jerks.
“People today are much more willing to accept the idea that
the criminal justice system can be corrupted,” Lawlor
says.
If there’s a difference, DeCarlo
says, it’s that “police are the most visible form of government.” Most people
don’t see or notice lawmakers or prosecutors in their everyday lives, and
probably don’t want to. Everybody is aware when a cop drives or walks by.
21st-century technology is also making it a lot tougher for
cops to get away with anything nasty, according to Lawlor.
There are TV monitors and recording devices and cell phone cameras almost
everywhere these days — in jails and cop cars, on street corners and inside
stores.
Video recordings at Meriden’s police headquarters have
played a big role in allegations of police brutality involving Officer Evan
Cossette (son of Chief Jeffry Cossette) and a federal investigation into a
possible police cover-up.
Evan Cossette was recorded in a May 2010 video repeatedly
entering a holding cell and moving Pedro Temich
around, who at that point already had a head wound that later required 12
stitches. Cossette claims Temich, who is five feet
tall and was handcuffed, was acting in a threatening manner, was drunk and
cracked his head open when he fell.
A lawsuit filed in federal court charges that Temich was injured when he was pushed. Meriden police
admitted erasing a six- to eight-second section of video tape that would have
shown exactly what happened when Temich fell. There
are two other claims of excessive force pending against Cossette.
Lawlor declined to comment on the Meriden case, but says police
today have to be aware that “it’s much easier to get caught” when their actions
are being recorded.
One aspect of the Meriden case centers on what the
department’s internal affairs unit did (or didn’t do) about the Temich case. An investigation didn’t start until six weeks
after the incident because none of the supervisors on duty felt the need to
report it. Turns out Temich’s
complaint was one of seven internal affairs complaints filed against the
chief’s son over a seven-month period, none of which were upheld.
In the Temich case there was a
finding that Cossette had violated the department’s use-of-force policies, but all the officer got was a letter of reprimand in his file.
The controversy is now the focus of a federal grand jury.
If there is a common theme to many of the allegations of cop
misconduct in Connecticut in recent years it’s that they somehow involved
failures by the police to police themselves.
In 2006, a lengthy study by outside law-enforcement experts found that
the Connecticut StatePolice had systematically
manipulated or botched internal investigations into charges that state troopers
were involved in bribery, drugs, sexual assaults and other alleged crimes. The
report accused top state police commanders of routinely interfering in
investigations or ignoring reports of misconduct.
There were a number of retirements and transfers following
that report, and new people put in at the top of the department. But no one in
the state police was ever publicly disciplined or fired over the findings.
The top New Britain officer who was put on administrative
leave, Capt. Anthony Paventi, was head
of that department’s internal affairs unit. He’s the target of multiple
lawsuits accusing him of sexual harassment.
The extraordinary case involving Bridgeport Deputy Police
Chief James Honis reaches all the way back to a 1977 strangulation of a prostitute. According to the
Connecticut Post, sources said a veteran lieutenant has accused Honis and others in the department of obstructing the
murder investigation.
In 1986, Honis complained he was
being unfairly investigated by the department’s internal affairs unit. There
was an immediate shakeup and Honis was transferred into
the internal affairs office. There were other allegations against him over the
years, but none were ever proven.
Honis has denied all wrongdoing.
Last month, an independent consultant issued a blistering condemnation of the Hartford Police
Department’s internal affairs division. The report found management of the unit
was “lax and at times nonexistent,” saying many members of the force lost all
faith that bad cops were being disciplined.
“There is an overwhelming atmosphere of paranoia and
mistrust that has permeated throughout the Hartford Police Department, not only
at the command level, but throughout the rank and file,” according to the
consultant.
The consultant, a former cop, pointed out that a 2008 review
of HPD’s internal affairs unit made a lot of the same proposals for reform the
consultant is now urging. City officials have promised to make changes this
time around.
Williams says this inability or unwillingness of police to
police themselves is a perennial headache in all law enforcement agencies.
“It’s a problem in every police department where I’ve had occasion to look,” he
explains.
According to Williams, police internal affairs units can be
used to both protect bad cops who are part of the “in crowd” and punish good
cops who are critical of the way a department is being run. “It’s both a shield
and a sword,” he says.
When it comes to rooting out bad cops, police organizations
always have to deal with the natural tendency cops have to back each other up. It’s part of their training and a key to surviving violent
confrontations cops face on the street, but it can also lead to a reluctance to
go after one of their own.
Civilian police commissions and review boards aren’t the
answer, according to Williams and other experts.
“They don’t work,” Williams insists. He points to the
failure of Hartford’s experiment with a civilian review board. The city
continues to have a review panel, but it clearly wasn’t able to cope with or
correct the major police problems identified in the recent consultant’s report.”They almost immediately get co-opted,” Williams
says of such boards and commissions.
Lawlor says, “A civilian review board sounds good in theory, but
they’re not in charge.” Einhorn explains that such
panels “become a captive of the organization itself.”
No matter what kind of expert you talk to about police
corruption and misconduct, they all seem to point toward the same fundamental solution:
having the right person as your top cop. (Hartford’s chief of police, Daryl K.
Roberts, announced his retirement barely three days before the release of the
consultant’s blistering report on what was wrong with the department.)
“There’s no substitute for leadership,” Lawlor
argues.
“You need a chief of police who is really deeply, personally
committed to the process,” says Williams, “and those chiefs are rare.”
Strillacci, a chief for 19 years, puts it this way: “You’ve got to
take that responsibility very seriously if you’re a police administrator.”
He adds that there’s always one last resort for policing the
police:
“There are plenty of lawyers out there ready to sue us if we
don’t do our job.”
** Originally, this article reported that the father/son
police officers arrested over a fatal accident were in Windsor. It was Windsor
Locks. We regret the error.
Copyright © 2011, WTXX-TV
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