Re: 1/13/00 - Hit & Run - Inside Dope: The Skinny on Vinny
Hit & Run - Inside Dope: The Skinny on Vinny
A 78-page FBI report alleges that former New Haven detective Vincent Raucci was a thief and drug dealer.
By Paul Bass
Published 01/13/00
In one chapter, the crooked police detective wants to set up his wife. They're going through a divorce. He wants custody of the kids. So he asks one of his crack-smoking pals to take the wife out for a toot. Then he'll have a cop stop the wife driving back, get her on drug or DWI charges.
Then there are the side characters: "G." "JB." "Natural." "Cookie." They deal drugs in run-down neighborhoods. The detective steals their drugs, then gives the drugs to one of his coke-ingesting and dealing cohorts to resell on the streets.
Good reading, no?
The Advocate obtained this 78-page potboiler last week. It's an internal FBI investigation into the career of former city detective Vincent Raucci.
It's a sequel to an extraordinary volume the Advocate first brought to attention 16 months ago, a separate story of two drug dealers who claim Raucci, immersed in the drug trade, set them up for a double murder they never committed.
The FBI believed the dealers after an extensive investigation. (See "The Cop & The 'Killer'".) Raucci, in two interviews with the New Haven Advocate and in FBI interviews, has denied all allegations of illegal behavior.
This sequel isn't publicly available, although some of the less powerful portions came out in 1998 in response to a freedom of information request for Raucci's personnel file. (The police department pushed him out of his job in April 1996, amid charges he stole money on the job.)
But there's someone else in town who needs to read the sequel, if he hasn't already. A copy is surely lying around his office.
That someone is U.S. Attorney Stephen Robinson.
This potboiler is the latest reason -- a compelling one -- why Robinson should heed calls to reopen an investigation into alleged widescale drug trafficking and other crimes by one and possibly more New Haven cops in the '90s.
Two possibly innocent men have been sentenced to 70 and 120 years behind bars. Others may be in jail for crimes they didn't commit. Dozens or more drug cases may be compromised. Who knows if people involved with Raucci in alleged misdeeds are still on the force? Those who supervised him certainly are.
Robinson's predecessor as U.S. attorney declined to prosecute Raucci, in an inter-agency disagreement with the FBI. Since he took office, Robinson has prosecuted corrupt cops in Hartford. He offered an unprecedented public rebuke of the behavior of the East Haven cop who killed Malik Jones. Will he reopen the Raucci case?
Robinson declines comment through a spokesman.
The FBI report cites up to 14 separate sources. They say that, among other alleged crimes, Raucci:
* regularly used cocaine;
* robbed dealers and kept their stashes;
* ran his own drug dealing operation;
* sold two stolen motorcycles to drug dealers;
* shot at the car of a dealer with whom he had a dispute;
* gave confidential police informants P-Dope and cocaine instead of money;
* pocketed department money meant for informants.
Some of the sources in the report are named, others unnamed. Some claim firsthand knowledge, others secondhand. Some corroborate each other's stories; two vouch for Raucci.
Two key people who don't vouch for him are Paul and Pat, two Raucci pals with convictions for drug abuse and dealing. (We've left out their last names.) Raucci spent lots of time with them in a house on Clay Street in Fair Haven. The local cops and FBI kept Raucci under surveillance there; he kept hanging out there despite departmental orders to stay away.
Paul and Pat not only confirm that they regularly did drugs with Raucci; they confirm that he obtained the coke for them to sell, or gave Paul the money to buy the coke, with specific directions of where. They also confirm the plan to have Pat set up Raucci's then-wife; Pat says she declined.
"According to the proposed plan, [Pat] would take Mrs. Raucci 'out on the town' and get her 'high' on cocaine after which, Raucci would have his wife arrested as she was driving home from the city," the report quotes Pat as saying.
"According to Paul," the FBI's report on its interview with him reads in part, "Detective Raucci also related 'stories about his days with the New Haven Police Department Street Crime Unit (SCU). Vincent Raucci told Paul about search warrants and arrests of drug dealers ... and how he and other members of the SCU did not always turn in all the monies and drugs they seized." The report named another cop, now retired, with whom he allegedly shared these "ill gotten gains."
Another named informant is former city cop named Phil. Phil left the force after becoming a drug addict. He reports that he saw Raucci hanging out with Frank Parise, one of the region's biggest drug distributors until the authorities caught him in 1995. Parise is now in jail. In the previous FBI report, dealers accused Raucci of being in business with Parise. Phil reports here that he recalled Raucci "interacting with Frank Parise ...[T]heir meetings did not appear to be related to police business."
Raucci told the FBI Paul was an important informant, though not always reliable. Raucci now lives in New Mexico.
The police and FBI investigated some of these charges in the mid-'90s, but never collected enough hard evidence that prosecutors felt they could base a case on. Did prosecutors have the will? Let's see if Robinson does.
Note: The FBI agents who did the bulk of the Raucci investigation are not the same ones we've been writing about who allegedly fabricated evidence on warrant applications. The Advocate has previously contacted some of the people the FBI interviewed in the Raucci investigations; they said the FBI quoted them accurately.
Note: To read the FBI report, click here.
E-mail: pbass@newhavenadvocate.com
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