Re: 6/4/00 - UNDER FIRE; Amid successes, police again feel sting of scandal
UNDER FIRE
Amid successes, police again feel sting of scandal
By Walter Kita and William Kaempffer, Register Staff June 04, 2000
NEW HAVEN ? It was the crowning achievement for a Police Department that in the last decade has won national acclaim for its work with traumatized children and for its innovative community policing program.
Last month, people came here from all over the country for the dedication of the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence, an institution that grew out of the pioneering collaboration between the Yale Child Study Center and the New Haven police.
But just a few blocks away, in police headquarters at One Union Avenue, trouble was brewing. A grand jury had been appointed, and there was an internal probe into alleged police misconduct. The situation quickly became another headache for the "other" New Haven Police Department, the one battered by controversy over the last several years.
In 1997, Police Chief Nicholas Pastore resigned from office following news that he had fathered a child out of wedlock with a prostitute. Pastore was married at the time.
In 1998, the Federal Bureau of Investigation completed a controversial report that suggested former New Haven Detective Vincent Raucci Jr. may have framed two men for murder.
At the same time, another top member of the department, Capt. James Sorrentino, faced allegations that he had lifted bootleg videos from the police property room and returned them for cash and store credit at a local retailer. He later pleaded guilty to sixth-degree larceny and retired.
Last year, two rookie police officers were suspended without pay for having sex with women in a police substation while on duty. And about a half dozen officers have been arrested in recent years on charges ranging from drunken driving to domestic violence.
Today, two of the department?s highest ranking detectives have been placed on paid leave amid allegations they covered up evidence in the 1996 murder of a North Haven man.
While the investigations continue into the conduct of Capt. Brian Sullivan and Sgt. Edward Kendall, defenders say the department?s overall record is exemplary, and the allegations against a few should not be allowed to tarnish that reputation.
"When you look at the record of the New Haven Police Department, what stands out is a preponderance of innovation and accomplishment," said Mayor John DeStefano Jr. "There are not two faces to this department ? there?s one face ? a professional and human one."
Police Chief Melvin H. Wearing said the episodes shouldn?t diminish all the department has accomplished in the last decade.
During that period, the department won two national awards for its community policing efforts from the National League of Cities.
"We have done just about everything we can do in policing to make New Haven a better place," he said, ticking off the department?s youth-oriented Police Athletic League, a mentoring program for at-risk children and officers assigned to schools to help connect with youth.
Last week Wearing sent Sullivan and Kendall home on leave after he found their testimony in an internal probe suggested they had information in a murder case which was not passed onto North Haven police.
The 1996 slaying of Philip S. Cusick remains unsolved. Police believe he was shot in New Haven in a soured drug deal and then left by an acquaintance outside his parents? North Haven home. North Haven police handled the investigation.
In 1998, two New Haven detectives took a taped statement from an informant who named a possible suspect in the murder. The tape is now missing.
A transcript of the statement sat in Kendall?s desk drawer for some two years until New Haven State?s Attorney Michael Dearington began an inquiry this year, according to sources close to the investigation.
So far, no one connected with the investigation has been able to provide a definitive answer as to why the veteran officers may have put their careers in jeopardy over this.
One published report contends that police here were protecting Cusick?s killer. The suspect?s half-brother, a police informant, was murdered in 1994 in Bridgeport with a second man, Tyler White. White, 22, was the son of New Haven police Lt. William White, and police theorize Cusick?s killer was an informant or helped police convict White?s killers.
Police investigators discount that theory as speculative, and federal court documents never mention the suspect?s name as a witness in the trial of White?s killers.
But officers espousing that theory note that if the killer was being protected, his name would be buried deep in the files of the intelligence unit, not on public court records.
DeStefano pointed out that unlike other police departments around the nation where corruption has been unearthed recently, there is no evidence of a "pattern of systemic misbehavior" among New Haven officers.
He credited the department?s pioneering community police program with helping to lower the crime rate by 50 percent since the early 1990s.
"If in the end we find there has been wrongdoing, I expect the department will take appropriate and swift action," said the mayor. "That?s the standard of any department?s effectiveness." Still, Wearing acknowledged the current controversy has taken a toll.
"There?s a shadow over the department right now," he said. But he added he was confident that the department would pull through and move on.
"We have 454 sworn police officers, and most all of them are fine officers," Wearing said.
When officer conduct comes into question, Wearing said he tries to deal with it quickly.
And that has happened recently more often in New Haven than city officials would like.
The biggest scandal was the embarrassing controversy surrounding Pastore.
Nationally recognized in the police community, Pastore had bucked internal resistance and brought community policing to the city. He forged relationships with the Yale Child Study and community groups.
But he resigned in 1997 after his liaison with a convicted city prostitute became public.
In 1998, a female police sergeant filed a federal lawsuit accusing the head of the department?s patrol division, Capt. Odell Cohens, of sexual harassment. She alleged he told her she would receive favorable treatment if she performed a sexual act. Cohens denied the allegations, but retired soon after Sgt. Sonya Marie Atkinson filed the suit.
Also in 1998, the FBI completed a controversial report that suggested Raucci was embroiled in the city?s drug trade, in addition to possibly having framed two men for murder. Raucci retired from the department on a disability pension in 1996 as the department moved to fire him.
The department arrested him on larceny and domestic violence charges and placed him under surveillance.
He later jumped bond and lived for two years in New Mexico as a fugitive.
The FBI report went public in September 1998, prompting calls for new trials for the two convicts.
Currently, a Superior Court judge is deciding whether to grant one of those requests.
In July 1999, two city patrolmen received six-month suspensions for having sex while on duty in a police substation, and a third officer received 30 days off for not reporting it.
Officers Mathew Myers and Terrance McNeil acknowledged they had sexual encounters with two women at the Brookside substation. Officer Milton Jackson admitted not reporting the misconduct to supervisors.
In the North Haven controversy, Wearing said he never gave the order to halt the city?s involvement and said suggestions that he did are not true. Kendall told investigators Sullivan ordered the investigation halted "per the chief."
"There?s a serious problem with that. I am not going to let anyone tarnish my reputation," Wearing said.
Dr. Steven Marans of the Yale Child Study Center, who has worked closely with city police to develop a variety of programs over the last several years, had high praise for them.
"The center?s collaboration with the department has changed the way that police and mental health services are delivered to children and families in crisis situations," said Marans, director of the center?s child trauma programs. "And it hasn?t been a case of a bunch of academics going in there and showing them how it?s done. It?s been a true partnership in which we have learned from each other."
Developing the programs required Marans and his staff to spend many long hours with police officers as they went about their work ? enough time to become impressed by their professionalism and commitment to their jobs.
"Police officers have to be held to a high degree of scrutiny because of the nature of their jobs," said Marans. "The unfortunate thing is that when (negative) stories get so much attention, all the good work goes unnoticed. And all the vast majority of officers who do those jobs are diminished."
¸New Haven Register 2000
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