Re: 6/10/00 - In Connecticut, Cases Multiply Against Police
June 10, 2000, Saturday
Metropolitan Desk
In Connecticut, Cases Multiply Against Police
By PAUL ZIELBAUER
In New Haven, a state grand jury is investigating whether two top police detectives concealed evidence in a 1996 murder case. In Hartford, federal officials have indicted six current or former police officers accused of forcing prostitutes to have sex with them. This spring, two officers in New Milford were convicted of manslaughter in two separate killings.
In the last two years, more Connecticut law enforcement officers have been accused or convicted of wrongdoing than at any time in recent memory. More than a dozen police officers -- in Hartford, New Haven, New Milford, Madison and Meriden -- as well as several county sheriffs and their deputies, have been investigated or punished by state or federal authorities for misconduct.
''That's certainly more than the norm in most states,'' said Neal Trautman, executive director of the National Institute of Ethics, which provides training to police departments across the country.
And though the situation may seem inconsequential to critics of the police in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, many Connecticut residents consider it a startling occurrence.
''It has been a tough year for policing in Connecticut,'' said the New Haven police chief, Melvin H. Wearing. ''The Police Department has a cloud over it now.'' Though he was speaking about his own force, the remark could easily be applied to many other police departments.
The reasons for the increase in misconduct complaints are not clear. But many legal and law enforcement experts say the rise may reveal more about the greater public scrutiny that the police are under nowadays than about any real increase in misbehavior by officers.
''It could well be that it's a reflection of police departments becoming professionalized,'' said Steven Duke, a professor of criminal law at Yale Law School. ''The new leadership in police departments are becoming more attuned to these problems.''
Tim Everett, a clinical professor of law at the University of Connecticut's School of Law, added, ''What I think is different in the last couple years is some communities, especially inner-city communities, have made it known that they expect the authorities to check things out rather than assume there was no wrongdoing.''
The most recent investigation involves the New Haven Police Department, which has endured several scandals in the last two years, even as it has won national awards for innovative programs and solved a vast majority of its violent crimes.
On May 30, Chief Wearing placed his chief of detectives, Capt. Brian Sullivan, and Detective Edward Kendall on paid suspensions while a Connecticut grand jury explored allegations that the two officers hid a transcript of a taped interview that the department conducted while investigating a murder in 1996.
The audiotape vanished after the interview, and the only existing transcript apparently languished in Detective Kendall's desk drawer for two years. This was despite repeated requests for help from detectives in North Haven, where the victim's body was found.
The investigation is the latest in a string of embarrassments for the New Haven police. Last year, two rookie officers were suspended for having sex with two women in a police substation. In 1998, the F.B.I. looked into accusations that a former city detective, Vincent Raucci Jr., tried to frame two men on a false murder charge. The bureau will not reveal its findings. The year before that, the police chief, Nicholas Pastore, resigned after admitting he had fathered a child with a New Haven prostitute.
''We do have a few problems, but I look at it as a couple of things a couple of cops have done,'' said New Haven's mayor, John DeStefano Jr., in an interview this week. ''But I'm also going to tell you, this isn't Hartford. There's not a systematic thing going on.''
Of all the police departments in Connecticut, Hartford's appears wreathed by the most serious and chronic problems.
In 1998, the United States attorney in New Haven started a civil rights inquiry after several Hartford officers were accused of forcing prostitutes to have sex with them, sometimes at gunpoint. Six officers have been indicted so far in the continuing investigation, and four of them have pleaded guilty to violating the prostitutes' civil rights, said Delcie Thibault, a spokeswoman for Stephen C. Robinson, the United States attorney.
Last October, an independent study of the Hartford Police Department, commissioned by city officials, portrayed a force in disarray. The report found that most of the 471 officers did not work weekends, when most of the calls for help occurred, and that crime-fighting units were so disorganized that one narcotics unit once descended with force on a major drug suspect only to find that another squad had gotten there first. The report also found that cash and property had been stolen from the department's evidence room.
''There was no coordination, there was no communication,'' said Lt. Kevin Borofsky, who credited the external audit with improving the department. ''Now investigations are coordinated. Everybody's on the same page. Now you have detectives working Saturday evening and Sunday evening.''
Many other changes, including having the department approved by a national police accrediting agency, are expected to take at least two more years.
In February, a city-appointed overseer began monitoring the department to ensure it more closely adhered to a 1973 consent order, issued by a Federal District Court, to improve overall police conduct.
Despite the improvements and a 29 percent drop in crime between 1994 and 1998, many community groups still feel that Hartford police officers are more interested in protecting their jobs and perquisites than in protecting the public.
''There's no integrity or commitment to the common good at the top level,'' said Carmen M. Rodriguez, executive director of La Casa de Puerto Rico, a critic of city police policies.
Elsewhere in Connecticut, local police officers continue to come under unprecedented legal scrutiny.
Last month, a state judge sentenced Scott Smith, a former patrolman in New Milford, north of Danbury, to six years in prison for fatally shooting a burglary suspect in the back while the man lay on his stomach. In April, a jury found another New Milford officer, William Scribner, criminally liable for killing a woman he struck with his patrol car during a high-speed pursuit of a suspect.
Last October, the police chief in the shoreline town of Madison, Paul Jakubson, suspended four officers for attending a bachelor party where a woman performed a sex act. A state police investigation cleared the officers of any criminal misconduct.
And last week, the state police began an investigation into allegations that a high-ranking police officer in Meriden, a city between New Haven and Hartford, had threatened a woman with a knife.
Though many kinds of misconduct are clearly out of line, some police officials believe that more officers are being brought to justice because of how they do their jobs.
''If you look at the news, it's been a rough year, but it's a different kind of headline,'' said Chief James J. Strillacci in West Hartford, who fired Officer J. David Colon in December after he was accused of beating up a teenage burglary suspect.
In the 1970's, it was systemic police corruption that made banner headlines, said Chief Strillacci, the co-chairman of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association's legislative committee.
''This is not what we're dealing with now,'' he said. ''We're dealing with police officers trying to do their jobs and their judgment being questioned. This kind of thing wouldn't even be in the paper a generation ago.''
''I'm not saying there's any worse behavior, or bad behavior, by police officers,'' he went on.
''What's changed is people are more interested in misdeeds by those in authority.''
Though most police officers do their jobs well, the growing list of misconduct charges is a clear signal that more training in ethical issues is required, said Mr. Trautman of the Ethics Institute.
''Ethics is the most sought-after topic in police enforcement now; that was unheard of 10 years ago,'' Mr. Trautman said. ''Chiefs don't get fired for crime rates anymore, they get fired for scandal.''
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