Re: 5/11/00 - Threat & Harassment; What's going on at the New Haven P.D.
Threat & Harassment; What's going on at the New Haven P.D.
By Paul Bass
Published 05/11/00
Keith Wortz was already feeling the pressure. Then another cop threatened him, and pressure turned to fear.
Wortz, a New Haven police officer, had blown the whistle on alleged wrongdoing in his department. A grand jury is looking into the story he brought into public view: that New Haven cops may have covered up crucial evidence in a 1996 murder of a North Haven man, allegedly by a New Haven drug dealer. (See "Uncoverup," Advocate, April 13.) That has made the whole department tense--and Wortz the cop who crossed the blue line.
The fear hit Wortz at an afternoon shift change about a month ago. He ran into a cop named Bill Coppola, brother of a detective with whom Wortz has been feuding about the 1996 murder.
Angry words were exchanged. Coppola allegedly told Wortz that he was messing with the wrong people--and that he'd better watch his back.
New Haven Police Chief Melvin Wearing says Wortz came to him with this story. So, Wearing says, he switched Wortz's work assignment to help protect his safety while the department investigates the incident.
The department didn't start investigating the coverup in the 1996 case until New Haven State's Attorney Michael Dearington inquired about it earlier this year. It was Dearington who took the case to a grand jury, which will try to figure out whether top cops obstructed justice.
The case has already sparked disturbing questions about how the department polices--or doesn't police--itself.
And the man in charge of investigating the Wortz threat is Capt. Brian Kearney, the new head of the internal affairs unit. Kearney also oversees the department's investigation into the alleged coverup of the 1996 murder. But Kearney himself has already been the focus of serious complaints, both before and since he took over the internal affairs unit three months ago. (See accompanying story, "Busted--On Tape.")
Practically from the day in 1996 that Phillip Cusick's corpse showed up across the street from his mother's house in North Haven--apparently after his murder in New Haven's Fair Haven neighborhood--North Haven and New Haven cops have been remarkably unable to work together on the case. At least one New Haven cop, Sgt. Arthur Granucci, was told to stop providing North Haven with information.
Then, in 1998, a member of a Fair Haven drug gang came forward with an eyewitness account of how he watched a fellow drug dealer shoot Cusick to death. (Police say they have no reason to believe Cusick was buying drugs, but that he was sitting in a car next to someone who was.)
Two detectives interviewed the witness. Today, the tape recording of the interview is missing. The written interview report remained in a police supervisor's drawer. North Haven police claim not to have known about the eyewitness' statement. The suspect remains at large today, never arrested or even questioned by the cops.
An argument developed between officer Wortz, who knew the eyewitness as a confidential informant, and the two detectives who had interviewed him. Eventually, after Wortz's complaints failed to move higher-ups to pursue the case, it landed in prosecutor Dearington's office. Dearington asked for the grand jury investigation.
The pending investigation has heightened factional tensions in the New Haven police department. They boiled over at the 4 p.m. shift change a few weeks ago, when Wortz and Bill Coppola exchanged angry words, according to Wearing.
"When somebody makes a threat, you don't know if they're going to carry it out," Wearing says. "People say things. [Wortz] took it seriously enough to report it to the state's attorney. If he's concerned about his safety, then I'm concerned about his safety."
Wearing says that pending an internal investigation, he has reassigned Wortz from a solo job--bike patrol in the East Rock neighborhood--to a walking beat with another officer in the Hill.
Coppola denies threatening Wortz. "I don't know what the kid's doing [with this complaint]," Coppola says. "Let him do what he has to do." He declines further comment.
Wortz refers questions to his attorney, Karen Lee Torre.
Torre says Coppola's remark was a clear threat, but she won't reveal the precise words because of the pending investigation. She says Wortz has requested a short-term paid leave, rather than a change of assignment, to protect himself while the internal investigation plays out. She says internal affairs has already interviewed a neutral witness who confirmed Wortz's version.
"It's a runaround that Keith's getting," Torre charges. "I'm not happy, and neither is Keith, with the chief's response. We don't want another Serpico situation"--the famous New York City detective targeted for death by fellow cops after he exposed police corruption.
Wearing says he has tried to respond swiftly to Wortz's concerns, as well as to the larger controversy over the Cusick murder. He claims he had no idea about the controversy until Dearington's office began investigating this year.
"At some point we're all going to testify [before the grand jury] to what we know about this stuff, and then we'll move on," Wearing says. He bemoans the way a case like this, so "uncharacteristic of the New Haven police department," can overshadow all the department's good work.
Ultimately this controversy will call the actions of Wearing's higher-level supervisors--rather than lower-ranking officers and detectives--into question.
Usually, supervisors' adrenaline spurts into overdrive when a murder eyewitness walks in with crucial evidence. Why did they sit on this one?
Was this just petty turf rivalry between two departments? Or were New Haven higher-ups covering for a drug dealer?
And how aggressively does New Haven's police department police itself? Does blowing the whistle bring truth to light--or lead to further coverups and even threats?
"I have no confidence in any internal affairs department of any police department. It's the fox guarding the chicken house," Karen Torre says. She praises Dearington for bringing the grand jury--which, in the Connecticut system, consists of a single state judge--into the case. "This removes it from the hands of law enforcement and into the hands of judges. That's always a good thing."
Busted -- On Tape
A female sergeant was tired of her new supervisor making lewd comments to her. So she kept a tape of him making more comments that she considered harassment.
She took the tape and complained to the chief.
Normally this would be a case for Capt. Brian Kearney to investigate. He heads the New Haven police department's internal affairs unit.
In this case, though, Kearney couldn't investigate the complaint. He was the supervisor caught on tape. Police Chief Melvin Wearing says he personally investigated the case and chewed Kearney out.
Now Kearney is the point man for investigating the most serious internal allegations to hit the department since Wearing took over as chief three years ago: that police supervisors covered up crucial evidence in a 1996 murder case, and that once the coverup became public, the whistle-blower was personally threatened.
Does Kearney have the ethics and reputation to investigate cops' wrongdoing?
Chief Wearing says yes. Some people familiar with Kearney's previous conduct aren't so sure.
The harassment incident occurred within weeks of Kearney taking over the internal affairs unit three months ago, according to Melvin Wearing.
He says the female sergeant--Denise Blanchard, who works in internal affairs--brought him the tape. He says he agreed Kearney acted inappropriately.
Both Kearney and Blanchard declined to be interviewed.
"I resolved the matter. It was a verbal reprimand by the chief," Wearing says. "That kind of conduct will not be tolerated by any member of the department, especially the head of internal affairs. You have to treat people the way you want people to treat your mother or your sister.
"He [Kearney] apologized to Sgt. Blanchard. He assured her he would never do it again. I discussed it with Sgt. Blanchard. It was satisfactory to her."
The case didn't require reassigning Kearney or stricter punishment, Wearing says. "Kearney's a new boss over there. The transition probably wasn't a smooth one."
Wearing also says an earlier complaint against Kearney--that he brutalized a man strapped to a hospital gurney--doesn't disqualify him as internal affairs chief.
Karl Kirkman was the guy strapped to the gurney when the incident occurred in 1989. He sued Kearney and the city in federal court in 1992. The city eventually settled the case out of court.
The police commission also brought Kearney up on charges. The subsequent discipline was eventually removed from Kearney's record in accordance with department policy, according to police spokeswoman Judy Mongillo.
"He was a young cop then," Wearing says. "He says it didn't happen. He's such a big guy--I think if he hit somebody upside the head, he'd have broken bones."
"I don't think any officer is squeaky clean," Wearing says, adding, with a self-deprecatory chuckle, "except me. He's been a fine officer, a nice guy. He's coming along. Things happen sometimes. They get blown out of proportion. We all come from the human race" and make mistakes.
"What about the next cop who makes a 'mistake'?" argues attorney and community activist Michael Jefferson: Will Kearney be more likely to overlook or excuse the "mistakes" he's supposed to investigate? Jefferson says even a single incident like this should preclude someone from running an internal affairs bureau. "It creates a great deal of suspicion. It will raise questions in the minds of the public."
"I have no confidence in his doing a decent and credible job" in internal affairs, says Jefferson, a longtime critic of police misconduct. "He's a cop's cop. I have serious questions about whether he can investigate other police officers."
Some neighbors in New Haven's Newhallville neighborhood have similar concerns about Kearney being too much of a cop's cop to get to the bottom of wrongdoing.
Kearney used to run the Newhallville police substation. Neighbors grew frustrated over what some--not all--considered Kearney's failure to act while drug dealing continued directly across the street from the substation.
"I was disappointed. I didn't feel he pursued issues aggressively," says Bill Battle, a member of the neighborhood management team's public safety committee. "He talked a good game. He made a lot of excuses for not pursuing things."
"He always said he was his own man. We knew different," agrees another vocal member of that committee, retired postal worker Louis Moore. Moore tells of trying without success to get Kearney to respond to complaints about delivery trucks parking illegally in front of bus stops. When another supervisor ordered Kearney to the scene of one such illegal parking job--which, neighbors complained, blocked access for school kids and the disabled--Kearney showed up but refused to write a ticket.
"The best we ever had down here was Lt. [Rick] Randall," says Moore. Randall preceded Kearney as Newhallville supervisor. Coincidentally, Randall also preceded Kearney as the New Haven police department's internal affairs chief. Randall was respected in that job, too.
-- P. B.
E-mail: pbass@newhavenadvocate.com
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