Re: 8/28/01 - NH Register: Whistle blower sues Chief
WHISTLE BLOWER SUES CHIEF
Claims New Haven's top cop retaliated
William Kaempffer, Register Staff August 28, 2001
[picture]
From left, Pastore, Wearing and Cusick
NEW HAVEN — A city detective who brought accusations of a police cover-up to state prosecutors has sued the chief of police, claiming his whistle-blowing was answered by a pattern of retaliation.
Detective Keith Wortz in his lawsuit also charged Police Chief Melvin H. Wearing violated his First Amendment right to free speech when he ordered an internal affairs inquiry into Wortz's dealings with the media.
The backdrop for the suit, filed Friday in federal court, is the murder of Philip Cusick, 23, whose body was found outside his parents' North Haven house in 1996. At the time, Wortz was a patrol officer.
Wortz maintains that he learned soon after the killing that Cusick had been shot in New Haven.
He developed some leads that could have led to an arrest.
Instead, he claimed, it led to a ominous warning from the department's top detective and years of reprisals that intensified after he brought allegations to New Haven State's Attorney Michael Dearington that city police may have deliberately derailed the murder investigation.
The case spawned a state grand jury that led to the arrest of the detective, Capt. Brian Sullivan, 46, who is awaiting trial on charges of hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence.
Although the federal suit names only Wearing, it's allegations span two administrations.
Wortz recounts in the lawsuit a March 1997 meeting with Sullivan, the former head of the detective bureau, about four months after the murder. At the time, the killing was a North Haven investigation because that's where the body was found.
During the meeting, Wortz claims, Sullivan ordered him to cease helping North Haven police, and told him that then-Police Chief Nicholas Pastore did not "want this homicide coming back to New Haven." According to the suit, Sullivan added that North Haven police were "out of their league" and unable to solve the killing.
Wortz said he suspected his superiors were "deliberately taking steps to ensure that the homicide would remain unsolved." No arrests have been made.
"Nothing could be farther from the truth," Pastore said Monday regarding the charge he ordered a halt to helping North Haven. During his tenure, he said, the department regularly worked with other agencies.
"Certainly, we're concerned about having the proper jurisdiction. That certainly was a concern," said Pastore, who left the department in 1997. But "we're quite accustomed to dealing with multijurisdictional cases."
Wearing did not returns calls.
Police now believe Cusick was a passenger in a car when he was shot in a soured drug deal in the city's Fair Haven section. The driver sped off and later dropped his body in North Haven.
In late 1999, Wortz spoke with prosecutor Cecelia Wiederhold, a supervisor at the Elm Street courthouse, about his concerns, according to the suit. In February 2000, Wortz brought the allegations of a cover-up to Dearington.
Wortz claimed that after the initial meeting with Sullivan, he suffered a pattern of workplace retaliation that lasted for years. The suit detailed a laundry list of offenses and stated Wearing "ordered, encouraged or permitted" them to happen.
In the last three years, the suit states, Wortz repeatedly was passed over for promotion to detective, denied a position on the department's SWAT team, and removed from a desirable assignment to the statewide task force. When he was threatened by detractors inside the department, Wortz claimed, the department turned a blind eye.
Furthermore, he said, Wearing suspended him for a day for wearing the wrong type of pants at the gun range. Yet Wearing "would not take action against other police officers committing real and more serious offenses."
In May 2000, Wearing placed Wortz on paid leave and included a letter recommending he seek psychological counseling. Wortz claims that was done to embarrass him and undermine his credibility.
In December, Wearing ordered and later rescinded an internal affairs investigation into whether Wortz violated internal regulations restricting contact with the media. Wearing's "effort to investigate and discipline the plaintiff, and to bring public attention to the matter, was designed to intimidate and embarrass the plaintiff and to chill the plaintiff's future exercise of his First Amendment rights," the suit states.
Contacted Monday, Wortz referred questions to his attorney, Karen Lee Torre, who did not return a call.
Judge Carmen Elisa Espinosa, sitting as a one-person grand jury, focused on a 1998 informant statement that named a suspect in the case. The detectives who took the statement were preparing to apply for a search warrant to find the murder weapon when Sullivan ordered them off the case.
Sullivan said the order came "per the chief," according to records.
Those detectives brought their concerns about a cover-up to an inspector at the state's attorney's office and were told to follow the orders, but to also document them.
In February 2000, Wortz renewed the accusations. A month later, after his own investigation stalled, Dearington asked the state to convene a grand jury to investigate whether high-ranking New Haven officials hid evidence from North Haven police.
Seven months later, the chief state's attorney's office obtained an arrest warrant charging Sullivan, then a captain, with hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence. The grand juror cleared Wearing.
©New Haven Register 2001
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