Long Island Law Enforcement

Suffolk County Law Enforcement

The rejection of the overwhelming majority of the People’s Plan by Suffolk County’s elected leadership should come as no surprise.  It is a reflection of the toxic political influence of police labor unions whose unbridled and reportedly unlawful political campaign spending has demonstrably compromised Suffolk County governance.  It should be viewed within the context of a prevailing decades-long institutional culture that is opposed to transparency, accountability and oversight.  Stakeholders committed, in earnest, to a truly collaborative reform effort and labored for months, some for years, to develop evidence-based proposals in good faith. County officials did not come to the table with clean hands or in good faith.  SCPD remains plagued by a decades-long culture dominated by nepotism, intolerance, unlawful abusive enforcement practices, secrecy and corruption.  Hiring, discipline and promotion decisions are heavily influenced by racial, ethnic, gender and religious animus.  Members who dare to break the Department’s code of silence pay a dear price for doing so. Truth-tellers in the represented ranks can be and have been expelled by the union for doing so.  Those in the management ranks can be and have been demoted for doing so.  Elected officials who vote against union interests find themselves defending against withering campaigns that are financed in the hundreds of thousands of dollars by police union money.  

In January 2021, former County Executive Steve Levy, a central figure in the long running drama of Suffolk County corruption, offered well-informed insights into other cast members and the plot line while commenting on the trial of former District Attorney Spota and his assistant, Tom McPartland: "You see from the trial - police officers, hardened tough guys, were scared for their lives." He corroborated incumbent County Executive Bellone’s characterizations of a “culture of intimidation” recounting the experience of his own staffers who “were pulled over to the side of the road and had the bejesus scared out of them” by police. That corroboration built on the June 4, 2019 corroboration of DuWayne Gregory, then the sitting presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, who, from the dais of the legislative chamber, spoke at length about the “serious corruption in Suffolk County.” On the record, Gregory revealed that he had received threats after directing an investigation into a whistleblower complaint regarding improper promotion practices in the Police Department; he also alleged that attempts had been made to bribe and intimidate witnesses in the matter. Gregory’s assertions were unambiguous: “I made a serious allegation . . . I’ve spoken to the FBI about my allegations. Do you know what the FBI said? They said there was serious corruption in Suffolk County.” Click HERE to view the video and for a closer look at corruption in Suffolk County government.

Contemporary pleadings, findings and rulings in matters before the United States District Court in the Eastern District of New York provide compelling corroboration of this enduring culture of unaccountability. These include, but are not limited to:

• The March 12, 2021 Report and Recommendation of U.S. Magistrate Judge Lois Bloom

• The August 4, 2021 Memorandum and Order of U.S. District Judge William F. Kuntz, II

• The May 1, 2023 Jury Verdict Sheet in the matter of Michael W. McDevitt v. Suffolk, which found sufficient evidence of official sanction of the violation of civil rights under the color of law by officers to extend liability beyond the offending officers to the municipality itself.

These are additional installments in a growing record of findings of bad acts and bad faith on the part of SCPD.  For decades, the Department has successfully thwarted accountability efforts through unwavering commitment to resistance and recalcitrance.  Leadership denies the allegations, demands more proof, grudgingly commits to stipulated terms when compelled to do so, and then cheats and retreats.  The Department runs a black-box operation in which appeals for transparency are firmly resisted, and ultimately manages to run the clock through endless dilatory tactics. By any measure, it has been rewarded handsomely for doing so.

Ignoring that harsh reality and relying on humble appeals while hoping for ‘good faith’ reforms is a failed strategy.  Recent history reaffirms how plainly unsuccessful it is. The Department is unmoved by adverse civil awards that burden Suffolk County’s taxpayers rather than police.  It is indifferent to bad press that exposes scandalous exploits.  The costs and consequences of recalcitrance are borne by taxpayers.  Suffolk County’s elected representatives are captive to obscenely resourced, emboldened and unaccountable labor unions.  All discussions with Suffolk County officials must be regarded within the context of this enduring culture of corruption, dishonesty, abuse of power, intolerance, disparate treatment of minorities, recalcitrance, and non-compliance with stipulated commitments and obligations.  

The police reform reinvention process has demonstrated that, in spite of best hopes and best efforts, meaningful sustainable change will not come without sustained political will and accountability.   

The outcome of the reform and reinvention initiative is best understood within the context of the culture and history of Suffolk County governance in general and Suffolk County law enforcement in particular.

CONTEXT: CULTURE & HISTORY  – A Survey of abuse, corruption, discrimination and misconduct.

• From 1976 to 1981 appellate courts reversed eight convictions obtained by the Suffolk district attorney because confessions had been obtained improperly.

• 1976 a grand jury concluded that the Suffolk County Police Department had a "tradition" of not reporting crimes committed by its own police officers to the district attorney.

• 1979 the National Law Journal reported that Suffolk police often used force to induce defendants to confess in homicide cases. 

• 1980 a report of the Suffolk County Bar Association, "Report of the Civil Rights Committee on Allegations of Police Brutality in Suffolk County," indicated that Suffolk police had a brutality problem, which the district attorney ignored. 
  In response to this article, as well as the decisions of the New York Court of Appeals and other public criticism, the Suffolk County Bar Association delegated to its Civil Right Committee the tasks of examining allegations of brutality.

  • After an extensive investigation, which included public hearings and a review of court records and other documents, the Bar Association issued a report which concluded:

    • "….the Committee that believes that sufficient evidence is present to indicate that there is a serious problem with respect to police brutality in Suffolk County and the manner in which such complaints are investigated and resolved (p.53)

    • "The District Attorney's Office as it presently operates does not act as an adequate check against police brutality (p.43)”

    • "…. The Committee believes that it would be a strong deterrent to such incidents [of misconduct] if the police are made aware that Assistant District Attorneys will not countenance police misconduct and that such matters will be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted. If this is not made a priority, and in Suffolk County the indications that it is not, it will be the naturel tendency of the Assistant District Attorney to be less than zealous in pursuing matters of police misconduct and the situation will worsen (p.46)

    • The Bar Association made a series of recommendations, ranging from a change in Suffolk County Charter permitting more civilian participation in police disciplinary investigations, to videotaping confessions, to earlier participation by assistant district attorneys in major felony cases.

    • Few if any of these recommendations were instituted by the Suffolk Department or by the District Attorney.

    • The Bar's prophesy that the situation would worsen", did indeed prove correct. Although the Commission of Investigation did not find that excessive force and coerced confessions during the timeframe after the Bar report, they did find other serious misconduct.

• 1983 DOJ filed a civil action against SCPD for discriminating against women and minorities in hiring. Suffolk denied that it engaged in intentional employment discrimination.

• 1985 Suffolk County Court Judge Stuart Namm wrote to Gov. Mario Cuomo to request the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into criminal misconduct by the police and the district attorney's office in their role in two homicide cases tried before him. Namm reported police and prosecutorial misconduct including flagrant perjury, destruction of evidence, abuse of subpoena power, evidence tampering and attempts to intimidate a sitting judge.

• 1986 Long Island University Management Report on the Suffolk County Police Department

  • In March 1986, then Suffolk County Executive Peter Cohalan requested that Long Island University conduct a management analysis of the Suffolk County Police Department. This request followed several incidents provoking unfavorable publicity for the Department and resulting in a high-level personnel and administrative shake-up within the Department.

  • The incidents which precipitated the report included criticism by Judge Namm and a series of narcotics-related allegations against Suffolk police personnel, including former Chief of Detective John Gallagher and several police officers.

  • While the LIU report made no pretense to being anything more than a quick review of the Department, the conclusions reached were highly critical of the Police Department's management.

• 1986 Suffolk settled the 1983 DOJ employment discrimination lawsuit. Suffolk signed a consent agreement in which it agreed to increase minority hiring and to not impose any qualification or selection criteria that would adversely impact candidates because of race, ethnicity or gender. 
  [37 years later, Suffolk’s residential population is: 64.4% white; 21.4% Latino; 9.5% Black; 50.3% female; and 49.7% male.
  SCPD’s sworn members are: 89.15% white; 10.85% Latino; 2.66% Black; 11.2% female; and 88.8% male]

• 1986 A Newsday investigation titled “The Confession-Takers” included allegations by multiple homicide suspects that detectives had beaten them with telephone books to secure false confessions.  Governor Mario Cuomo authorized an investigation into SCPD and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office’s handling of homicide investigations by the Temporary Commission of Investigation of the State of New York ("SIC"). 

• 1987 (Feb) in the matter of Skorupski v. Suffolk County, 652 F. Supp. 690 (E.D.N.Y. 1987) in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York, Judge Bartels found, in relevant part: “Although [SCPD Inspector] Snow's affidavit does not specify the procedures currently used to investigate complaints and discipline officers, it does present a markedly different picture of investigation and supervision of police officers by the Department than that presented in the 1980 Bar Association Report. For example, the Report indicated that in 1978 there were 93 complaints of undue use of force alone, of which only 5 resulted in discipline, and in 1975 there were 83 complaints with no disciplinary action taken. The Report also noted the findings by several courts, in the years before 1980, of a pattern of excessive use of force and inadequate supervision by the Suffolk County Police.”

• I987 investigation of SCPD by the Suffolk County Legislature Public Safety Committee revealed substantial, possibly criminal, misconduct in the county police department and the DA's office. 

  • In his testimony before the Committee, then-police Lieutenant Howard Mandell “described the department as insufficiently proactive in fighting organized crime, resistant to change, and more focused on protecting its internal bureaucracy than on protecting the public. He also set out his view that the "old-boy network" within the department covered up officers' misconduct, including criminal activity, and that racism and anti-Semitism were systemic. On the following day, plaintiff's photograph and an excerpt from this testimony appeared on the front page of Newsday under the headline, "Suffolk Cop Charges: `They Look Out For Their Own.'"

  • The Committee reported that "fear of retaliation and retribution" within law enforcement had discouraged people from testifying. 

  • Peter L. Davis was special counsel to the Public Safety Committee during the investigation

• 1989 the Temporary Commission of Investigation of the State of New York issued its report. Its findings were compelling: 

  • Suffolk homicide detectives routinely used coercive tactics — including beatings — to get admissions from defendants. Police violated defendants’ civil rights, mishandled evidence and frequently lied. The district attorney’s office, meanwhile, systematically failed to investigate and punish law-enforcement officials who engaged in misconduct.

  • “The Suffolk County Police Department and district attorney’s office engaged in and permitted improper practices to occur in homicide investigations, including perjury, as well as grossly deficient investigative and management practices . . . “Because of credibility problems with prosecution testimony, including police testimony, and other defects in homicide prosecutions, guilty persons may well have been allowed to go free.”

  • According to Peter L. Davis

    • “The SIC's 1989 report was an impressive, comprehensive analysis. But no one should read it without an analgesic nearby; its drumbeat of prosecutorial and police sins is unrelenting, with evidence of illegal drug use and related offenses by Suffolk police officers, illegal wiretaps, preferential treatment for relatives of public officials, and a failure by the police department and DA to investigate and punish employees guilty of misconduct (what the commission called "the practice of sweeping law enforcement misconduct under the rug")”

    • Regarding homicide cases, the State Investigation Commission uncovered controversies over the recovery of murder weapons, what it called "false testimony" by Det. James McCready (later, the lead detective in the Tankleff investigation), and possible perjury by Suffolk assistant district attorneys. 

    • The commission also found a neglect of routine note and record keeping by Suffolk police, as well as "an overreliance on confessions." Suffolk detectives purportedly extracted confessions or other oral admissions in fully 94 percent of Suffolk homicide cases - "an astonishingly high figure compared to other jurisdictions; so high, in fact," in the SIC's view, "that in and of itself it provokes skepticism." 

• 1989 (June 19), the Order of District Court Judge Korman in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York in the matter of Quartararo v. Mantello included the following:

  • Temporary Commission of Investigation of the State of New York ("SIC") recently observed that, in contrast to other large suburban counties, the Suffolk County Police Homicide Division obtained and relied upon confessions and admissions in 94% of homicide cases prosecuted during the period relevant to this case. The SIC went on to conclude that: [T]he result of Suffolk's unique incidence of confessions has been for officers to rely on confessions and neglect both routine investigative steps and proper scientific and technical evidentiary practices. The prevailing attitude has been that note-taking, forensic evidence, neighborhood canvasses and crime-scene searches are not important because ultimately a defendant will confess. Confessions are of course important, but usually insufficient, and they should not become the nearly exclusive method of developing homicide cases. With Suffolk's methods, the chances of the guilty going free are simply too high. 

  • The Suffolk County Police here deliberately violated the Constitution of the United States and the laws of the State of New York to obtain a confession. They did not develop any significant additional evidence against petitioner. Because of the manner in which they conducted the investigation into the death of John Pius, which the SIC found was characteristic of conduct long tolerated by responsible officials of the Suffolk County Police Department and the District Attorney's Office, Peter Quartararo may go free after serving only nine years of a nine-year-to-life sentence. Unfortunately, it is a result that is unavoidable because each of petitioner's confessions were improperly obtained and erroneously used against him at his trial.  Accordingly, the petition for a writ of habeas corpus is granted and respondents are directed either to retry petitioner or to release him within ninety days of this order. 

  • The SIC specifically found that: The Suffolk County Police Department and District Attorney's Office engaged in and permitted improper practices to occur in homicide prosecutions, including perjury, as well as grossly deficient investigative and management practices. Because of credibility problems with prosecution testimony, including police testimony, and other defects in homicide prosecutions, guilty persons may well have been allowed to go free.

[It is noted that Tom Spota was the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the Prius case and that James Burke, then a 14-year old reputed drug dealer and burglar, was Spota’s star witness.  Burke would go on to join SCPD and, in 2012, to be appointed Chief of Department by County Executive Steve Bellone at the behest of Tom Spota.]

• 1988, 1992 and 1996 hiring exam scandal. Involved tests that awarded points for answers that matched profiles of ideal officers and allegations that senior staff who had answers ran a prep school. Hundreds of 37,000 applicants were found to have falsely answered questions in order to match profiles of ideal officers. A grand jury indicted a Sergeant who taught a prep course for using stolen profile information to coach more than 700 applicants. A Lieutenant was indicted for destroying evidence of test cheating sought by the District Attorney’s Office. That Lieutenant ultimately retired and is now a practicing attorney on Long Island. A Deputy Inspector admitted that he had answers to the 1996 test and faced departmental charges for coaching the sons of friends in the department for the 1988 test. Ultimately 55 officers averted dismissal. Then-Chief Gallagher offered: “I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.” Pursuant to an agreement negotiated by County attorneys, the officers and the PBA, three officers received six-month suspensions, 19 received shorter suspensions – some as little as two days, and ten were exonerated. A retired detective and spokesman for the Guardians, a fraternal organization of black officers, noted “It’s kind of strange that a lot of the names people were expecting on that list weren’t there,” saying that he believed that senior officers were protecting friends and family.

• 1992 At the request of his supervisor, then-Deputy Inspector Howard E. Mandell gave an interview to Newsday for a series of articles entitled: "Black 'n' Blue in Wyandanch: Summer in the 1st Precinct." Mandell revealed disturbing truths:

  • Despite his effort to screen out officers with racist attitudes prior to their assignment to the Pct., he had to remove some officers from Wyandanch due to their racist attitudes.

  • The Suffolk County Police Department had difficulty recruiting black officers because the black community viewed police officers as oppressors.
    [This revelation echoes findings of the 1968 Kerner Commission Report.]

• 2003 U.S. Court of Appeals in the Second Circuit ruled on the employment discrimination suit brought by retired Suffolk County Deputy Inspector Howard E. Mandell, a practicing Jew. The court found Mandell’s evidence of discrimination against him by the Department, which included allegations of endemic racism and anti-Semitism, to be persuasive and reversed the District Court’s dismissal of Mandell’s claims.   Excerpts of relevant evidence and findings from the ruling are reprised later here in detail.

• 2003 federal EEOC judgment against SCPD for gender-based employment discrimination related to its pregnancy policy. 

• 2006 federal jury found that SCPD’s failure to accommodate pregnant officers with light duty assignments (desk duty) was discriminatory (23 years after signing of consent agreement). 

• 2006 Police Commissioner Dormer implemented a pilot program to begin tracking the race / ethnicity of traffic stop subjects to demonstrate that the department does not engage in “racial profiling” in traffic enforcement.  Dormer then refused requests for disclosure of the records.

• 2007(December) The NYS Supreme Court Appellate Division Second Department unanimously vacated the conviction of Martin Tankleff for the 1988 murder of his parents and ordered his case back to Suffolk County for a retrial “to be conducted with all convenient speed,” stating “It is abhorrent to our sense of justice and fair play to countenance the possibility that someone innocent of a crime may be incarcerated or otherwise punished for a crime which he or she did not commit.” 

  • Dec. 2007 The New York Times reported that the New York State Investigation Commission (SIC) had quietly opened an official investigation into Suffolk County law enforcement’s handling of the Tankleff case more than a year earlier.

  • January 12, 2008, Gov. Eliot Spitzer appointed NYS Attorney General Andrew Cuomo as special prosecutor in the Tankleff case. 

  • June 30, 2008, Attorney General Cuomo’s office announced it would not retry Tankleff, citing insufficient evidence to prove his guilt.

  • July 22, 2008, a State Supreme Court Justice dismissed all charges against Marty Tankleff in the murder of his parents, Arlene and Seymour Tankleff.

  • On the first day of his senior year in high school, shortly after his 17th birthday, Tankleff woke up to find his parents stabbed and bludgeoned. His mother was dead; his father, Seymour, later died without ever regaining consciousness. Tankleff told Detectives that his father’s bagel store partner owed his father half a million dollars, had recently threatened his parents, and was the last guest to leave the house the night before. Marty Tankleff was taken into police custody where he was interrogated. Detective James McReady arrested him for the murder and produced an unsigned, incomplete “confession” that he (McReady) had written for Tankleff and that Tankleff recanted.  Tankleff was convicted on the basis of the confession and sentenced to 50 years in prison.  A week after the attack, Seymour Tankleff’s business partner reportedly faked his own death and fled to California in disguise under an alias. SCPD reportedly did not pursue him as a suspect. 

  • In its 1989 report, SIC, the Temporary State Investigative Committee, reportedly found that Detective McReady had perjured himself on the stand in a murder case three years before the Tankleff murders.  Following Tankleff’s conviction, Tom Spota, then an attorney in private practice representing the SCPD Detectives Association, reportedly successfully defended James McReady at his trial for the beating of a bar patron.  

  • In 2001, Tankeff persuaded a retired NYPD Detective to investigate his case. The investigator reportedly determined that Seymour Tankleff’s business partner’s son sold cocaine out of the bagel store and that the son’s drug enforcer had bragged about having participated in the murders. The investigation reportedly identified an accomplice of the enforcer who drove the getaway car on the night of the murders and ultimately led to the identification of those responsible for the attack. 

  • A member of Tom Spota’s law firm is reported to have represented Seymour Tankleff’s business partner in the late 1980s in a matter related to the sale of cocaine out of the store.  A baking supplies wholesaler is also reported to have testified in 2004 that he had frequently observed Detective James McReady and Seymour Tankleff’s business partner together in the store in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

  • Tankleff ultimately spent 17 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.  He graduated Touro Law Center in 2014 and passed the New York State bar exam in 2017.

  • In April 2018, Tankleff reached a settlement with Suffolk County for $10 million.

  • In January 2008, Peter L. Davis offered the following thoughts on the Tankleff matter:

    • One gets the depressing feeling that, despite the SIC's authoritative report all those years ago, and all the other reports over time, not much has changed in Suffolk law enforcement.

    • Nearly 30 years of studies and reports is enough. If (and this is a big if), in the course of its Tankleff investigation, the SIC finds that Suffolk law enforcement has not changed much since its 1989 report, then the SIC ought to change the nature of its recommendations this time around.

    • In 1989 it made most of its recommendations to the police commissioner and the district attorney, who head the two major law enforcement agencies in the county. This time the commission should make recommendations aimed at establishing some external controls over those two agencies.

    • First, the SIC should recommend that Suffolk County come into the 21st century by establishing a civilian complaint review board to institutionalize genuine civilian oversight of law enforcement. The police department has proved time and time again that it cannot police its own. For too long Suffolk has been known as the Wild, Wild East.  

[Note: Thirteen years later, the People’s Plan proposed establishing independent civilian oversight in the form of an independent Civilian Complaint Review Board and an independent Office of Inspector General.  The Suffolk County Police Reform Task Force rejected that proposal in spite of overwhelming evidence of the need.  
It must be noted that the political campaigns of the Police Task Force’s elected members had collectively benefited from not less than $2,180,000 in Suffolk County law enforcement organization political expenditures on their behalf!]

• Second, the SIC must address the more difficult problem of the district attorney's office. While there is by now a significant tradition of civilian oversight of police agencies in the United States, American law has long given prosecutors almost complete discretion; there is no simple mechanism to check prosecutorial misconduct.

[Note:  County and state officials ignored this advice.  Spota remained in office, committing innumerable harms for nearly ten more years until the federal government finally intervened and held him accountable – what the PBA-controlled County Executive’s office and County Legislature continually failed to do.] 

• 2009 racially-motivated murder of Marcello Lucero

  • DOJ initiated a Pattern and Practice investigation into SCPD

  • 2011 DOJ Technical Assistance Letter provided detailed analyses of shortcomings re:  bias policing, hate crimes, IAB investigations, and provided detailed remedial measures

  • January 2014 Suffolk County and DOJ entered into a Settlement Agreement that stipulated specific reforms that SCPD must implement regarding bias policing, hate crimes, IAB investigations and traffic data collection, analysis and reporting requirements

• 2012 (December 14) Christopher Loeb was arrested for stealing a bag containing property of SCPD Chief of Department James Burke from his police vehicle.  Loeb was assaulted by Burke and other officers while in police custody.  A cover-up ensued and the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York and the FBI opened an investigation into the matter. 

  • The investigation revealed that Burke had deliberately compromised the efforts of a joint federal-SCPD task force that was investigating gang violence on Long Island by pulling SCPD detectives from the task force and assigning them to low-crime areas.  

    • One of those Detectives reportedly alleges that Burke’s intent was to eliminate the ‘hovering presence’ of the FBI in the county. Burke also reportedly inhibited the effort of federal authorities to collaborate in the investigation into the numerous murder victims on Gilgo Beach.  

    • The phone of one of the other task force Detectives was reportedly illegally wiretapped by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office at the direction of Spota’s assistant, Government Corruption Bureau Chief Christopher McPartland, who cops reportedly referred to as the “Lord of Darkness.”  

    • Court records indicate that Burke reportedly ordered officers to install a GPS device in a SCPD Deputy Commissioner’s car in an effort to blackmail him.

    • A March 8, 2016, Newsday article DA Spota ‘thwarted’ efforts to investigate Walsh, feds say reported that Tom Spota thwarted Suffolk County Sheriff DeMarco’s investigation of Edward Walsh, Sheriff Department Lieutenant and Suffolk County Conservative Party leader, for wire fraud and theft of government funds. Walsh collected more than $80,000 in pay and overtime for time when he was not actually at work and for time when he was working on party political activities.  Walsh was ultimately convicted by a federal trial jury of both charges in the scheme to defraud the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office and received a sentence of up to two years in federal prison.  

    • After Burke’s indictment, Spota and Bellone engaged in a finger-pointing, accountability-dodging exercise over Burke’s clearly negligent appointment.  Bellone claimed: "This district attorney's office is quickly losing any credibility . . . He told me there was nothing to it, he investigated everything, and that Burke had a clean bill of health." For his part, Spota claimed: “I did not speak to Bellone at all about it.”  A copy of a 2011 letter Spota wrote to Kevin Law, who headed the search, asserted: "The allegation that Mr. Burke was recently caught up in a prostitution sting in NYC' is a baseless rumor . . . not one shred of evidence has ever been brought forth to support any of this trash."  Following disclosure of the letter, Bellone said: "What the letter demonstrates is, exactly what he said to me, is exactly what he put in writing . . . If I and the people of this county cannot trust the word of the district attorney, we have a real problem from a law enforcement perspective."  Through a spokesperson, Spota offered: "I publicly acknowledged my mistake but County Executive Bellone is incapable of admitting he made a mistake and he continues to cast blame anywhere he can. It's that simple."

  • 2016 (February 26) James Burke pleaded guilty to violating Christopher Loeb’s civil rights and conspiracy relating to efforts to conceal relevant evidence.  He received a sentence of 46 months in federal prison. 

  • 2017 (October 25) FBI agents arrested Spota and McPartland on charges including witness tampering and deprivation of civil rights.  Spota resigned his office in November.

  • 2019 (December 17) After a six-week trial, a federal trial jury convicted former District Attorney Thomas J. Spota and former Government Corruption Bureau Chief Christopher McPartland of conspiracy to tamper with witnesses and obstruct an official proceeding, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and being accessories after-the-fact to former Suffolk County Police Department (SCPD) Chief of Department James Burke’s deprivation of a prisoner’s civil rights.  In August 2021, Spota and McPartland were each sentenced to five years in federal prison. In November 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied Spota and McPartland’s requests to remain free on bail while their appeals were pending. Both began serving their terms in December 2021. Spota is incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. McPartland is incarcerated at Beaumont Federal Correctional Complex in Texas.. 

  • At the trial, Pat Cuff reportedly testified that he led an internal affairs investigation into James Burke in the 1990s that was initiated when Burke was caught having sex with a prostitute in his patrol car while in uniform. In 2005, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, under Tom Spota and Christopher McPartland, sought to upgrade charges against Cuff’s then 18-year-old son, who was caught with Cuff’s gun, from misdemeanor level to felony level. In 2012, at the recommendation of Tom Spota, and in spite of a disqualifying disciplinary record that included consorting with prostitutes, losing his department gun and threatening subordinates, County Executive Steve Bellone appointed James Burke Chief of SCPD.  Cuff testified that when Burke was promoted to Chief, he demoted Cuff four ranks and assigned him to work in a property warehouse.

• 2014 (January 13) The County of Suffolk, SCPD, the DOJ Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of New York entered into a settlement agreement that obligates SCPD, among other things, to revise its traffic stop data recording, reporting and analysis, revise hate crimes investigations practices and procedures, including the publication of maps, and revise its bias policing and internal affairs investigation practices and procedures.  And they agreed to publicly report operational data, including on its website.  The Agreement obligated the Department to begin having its traffic stop data analyzed annually by 2015. 

• 2014 (January 31) SCPD Sgt. Scott Greene arrested on charges stemming from a sting operation in which he was recorded stealing money from the vehicle of a Latino undercover officer during a traffic stop.  Greene was suspected of targeting Latinos for traffic stops and then stealing from them. Greene was charged with official misconduct and larceny and suspended without pay.  

• 2015 (April) 21 anonymous Latino plaintiffs filed a civil action in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York against Suffolk County, SCPD, Scott Greene and other SCPD supervisors individually alleging, among other things, targeting Latinos for illegal traffic stops; targeting Latinos through unjustified checkpoints; targeting Latinos in a ‘stop and rob’ scheme, that results in the wrongful and unjustified deprivation of property during unconstitutional traffic stops; failing to adequately investigate crimes and police misconduct perpetrated against Latinos; and otherwise harassing Latinos because of their race and/or national origin as a result of policies that were “enforced, encouraged and sanctioned” by Suffolk County, SCPD, the Police Commissioner and the supervisory defendants.

• 2015 (December) In its Agreement Compliance Report (https://www.justice.gov/crt/file/800746/download), DOJ noted, on page 14, in relevant part:

  • SCPD submitted a report pursuant to this requirement in its August 2015 Self-Report. However, the report was based upon the aforementioned unreliable data set. Accordingly, the report does not reliably reflect SCPD’s traffic stop activity. SCPD also needs to modify its benchmarking methods to accurately assess its enforcement patterns.
    The traffic stop report, albeit based on flawed data, reached troubling conclusions about SCPD traffic stop practices. Should future reports indicate the same trends, we will expect SCPD to produce an exacting plan about how to correct these problems. SCPD should immediately begin to address this issue, should it be substantiated in the next report.

• 2016 (1st Quarter) SCPD began a two-year initiative of surreptitiously duplicating traffic stop records, in bulk, and the consistently allocating them among the various precincts pursuant to a prescribed percentage scheme. In total, the Department altered its publicly reported traffic stop data with more than 112,000 deliberately duplicated traffic stop records. 74% of the records that were duplicated involved discretionary interactions with white motorists. The duplicated records artificially inflated the actual number of discretionary enforcement actions involving whites and materially mitigated the actual disparities between cohorts undermining the objective and purpose of the relevant provisions of the Agreement.

• 2016 Scott Greene was acquitted of grand larceny as a Hate Crime and convicted of misdemeanor official misconduct and larceny charges.  In May, he was sentenced to a term of one to three years in prison.

• 2017 (May) Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Glenn Kutzrock resigns in wake of revelation that he engaged in prosecutorial misconduct by withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense in a murder trial. 

  • 2018 (February) The murder conviction of Shawn Lawrence, who was convicted of murder in 2010 and sentenced to 75 years to life in prison, was thrown out and Lawrence was released from prison after serving nearly six years. The judge who dismissed the case noted that prosecutors withheld 45 pieces of evidence from the defense that would have tended to exonerate Lawrence. 

  • 2018 (April), Lawrence filed a $20 million notice of claim against former Suffolk County, former DA Tom Spota, Glenn Kurtzrock, Robert Biancavilla, Laura Newcombe and eight detectives.  The claim alleges: “Mr. Spota essentially encouraged, tolerated, and ratified a culture of lawlessness within the Suffolk D.A.’s office that resulted in prosecutors systematically violating the Constitution and the laws of the United States and the State of New York and the due process rights of criminal suspects and defendants.”

  • Ultimately, five murder convictions were vacated due to such prosecutorial misconduct.

• 2017 (October) Newsday published Unequal Justice, a series of articles that included analysis that found that nonwhites on Long Island are nearly 5 times as likely as whites to be arrested on charges typically resulting from traffic stops.Newsday reported that “pull over” traffic stops (the suburban equivalent of ‘stop & frisk’) are claimed to be “part of an overall crime reduction strategy.”That strategy is inconsistent with the Department’s obligation, pursuant to the DOJ Agreement and the terms of New York’s Gun Involved Violence Elimination (GIVE) Program, from which Suffolk County has received approximately 10 million dollars, to implement community-oriented problem-solving strategies and to embrace procedural justice. 
  Newsday’s editorial board followed the series with an apt and scathing assessment:

On Long Island, statistics show black and Hispanic people are treated worse than white people at every step of the criminal justice system.  It’s an unjust, unjustifiable situation that must end.  

On car-centric Long Island, such disparities are similar to the ones found in the discredited New York City stop-and-frisk policing program.

Experts told Newsday that illegal drug use is similar among whites and minorities.  That makes drug search, arrests, convictions and sentences a strong indicator of racial profiling.  The rate of marijuana use between whites and others is similar.  But on Long Island, the rate of arrests of minorities for possession of marijuana is quadruple the rate for whites.

People of all races are entitled to equal treatment.  Being black is not probable cause, and being brown doesn’t warrant more time in jail. That they are often treated as such by police, prosecutors and judges, consciously or unconsciously, has to change.

• 2019 (January 2) The nephew of the sitting Chief of Detectives, a probationary Sergeant with only four months in rank and no experience supervising investigators, was appointed to fill a vacant Detective Sergeant position in the Suffolk County District Attorney Section Detective Squad over several qualified and eligible candidates.  The position customarily earns annual compensation in excess of $300,000 with overtime.  The appointment was made in spite of the Chief’s nephew’s ineligibility for the position and without waivers from the County Executive and the Legislature as required by nepotism provisions of the Suffolk County Administrative Code. The appointment also violated relevant provisions of SCPD rules and procedures, the SCPD Superior Officers Association collective bargaining agreement, and NYS Civil Service Law.  

  • The Police Commissioner waited nearly one month after assigning the Chief’s nephew to the DA’s Detective Squad to submit a formal written request to the Office of the County Executive seeking the necessary legislative resolution (waiver). 

  • The Legislature Laid a Proposed Resolution on the Table in February.

  • The Legislature appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter in April.  

  • Correspondence from counsel to the Suffolk County Attorney to the special counsel to the Legislature in May alleged that the presiding officer of the Legislature had a conflict of interest in the matter, asserted that the DOJ Civil Rights Division had jurisdiction over the matter, and requested that the special counsel discontinue his investigation and allow DOJ to handle it. 

  • Special counsel to the Legislature debunked both claims.  He produced correspondence from a DOJ Civil Rights Division Employment Litigation Section Senior Trial Attorney that stipulated, in relevant part: “We do not review or have authority to act on nepotism or whistleblower-related activity per se . . . We consider our review of the SCPD’s broader transfer and assignment practices and your investigation, as you have explained it to us, as being separate and distinct. We have not found our separate investigatory jurisdictions to be in conflict, as they are exercised simultaneously. Therefore, we do not see your investigation as an impediment to our review.” 

  • The County, not the Legislature, pulled the proposed Resolution.

  • The ineligible Sergeant remained in the position without the required waiver.

• 2019 (May 22) Suffolk County Court Judge Anthony Senft vacated the 1976 murder conviction of Keith Bush, then a 17–year old who spent the next 33 years of his life in prison, due to overwhelming proof of prosecutorial misconduct. Evidence showed that Bush’s conviction was secured by a confession that was coerced by racist Suffolk homicide detectives (August Stahl and Dennis Rafferty) and the withholding of evidence of another potential suspect by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office.  The findings of the review offer profound insight into a culture of abiding racism, abuse and contempt for the law:

  • In 1989, SIC, the Temporary State Investigation Committee investigation revealed that Rafferty was involved in other “highly suspicious” confessions.  SIC noted that Rafferty defended his failure to test a bullet in a murder case with the argument that “every black guy in Amityville has a .22.” The SIC noted: “Rafferty’s convenient talent for producing crucial testimony and evidence at the 11th hour in homicide prosecutions disturbs the Commission.”  

  • During an April 2019 Interview by investigators at his home in the German American Settlement League in Yaphank, which only ended its policy barring residents who weren’t of “Germanic extraction” in 2017, former Detective August Stahl, then 90, unburdened himself:  “That (expletive) n----- did it there is no doubt about it; he should have been executed for it.”  Stahl shared one of his regrets of old age with the investigators: “I can’t pound people the way I used to be able to.”  Court filings indicate that Stahl referred to murders in predominantly black neighborhoods as “misdemeanor homicides” and confided that the methods he employed as a detective would have gotten him indicted today.  Stahl said the quiet part out loud: “Why is this thing being opened again? I thought Tommy Spota took care of this." Tellingly, Stahl offered that some of the tragedies he experienced in his life might have been “payback for some of the bad things I’ve done in my life.”  

  • In September 2021, Suffolk County authorized payment of $16 million in taxpayer funds to settle the lawsuit brought by Keith Bush. 

• 2019 (June 4) From the dais, in response to comments referring to the legislature’s investigation into a whistleblower complaint about the proposed promotion of the nephew of the Chief of Detectives, the presiding officer of the Suffolk County legislature made sobering allegations of corruption. He said that witnesses in the matter and top elected officials accused him of manipulating witnesses in the matter and engaging in unlawful conduct. One official threatened to use his office to wipe the presiding officer out for defending a whistleblower; another attempted to blackmail him and then had him investigated by the DA’s office.  He was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing.  Interested parties reportedly intimidated witnesses and offered one witness a $50,000 bribe.  The presiding officer said: “I made a serious allegation. I’ve spoken to the FBI about my allegations.  Do you know what the FBI said? They said there was serious corruption in Suffolk County . . . When the federal government is saying . . . that ‘you preside over a corrupt government,’ I take that very seriously.” 

• 2020 Independent analysis of SCPD traffic stop data finds that the integrity the traffic stop data is significantly compromised inhibiting comprehensive analysis.  The data are replete with incomplete and missing entries.  Like with the IAB reporting, reporting criteria are constantly evolving.  Most problematic, the analysis revealed that the data contained more than 100,000 non-random bulk duplicate records that were consistently apportioned to the various precincts pursuant to the same prescribed percentage scheme over a period of years.  74% of the duplicates were attributed to enforcement interactions with whites. When the data is subjected to digital analysis, the duplicate records significantly reduce the degree of racial disparities that exist in the actual discretionary enforcement interactions between the racial / ethnic cohorts. The duplicates are not the product of a computer glitch. They were deliberately generated and apportioned.

•  2020 (October) – some14 years after SCPD reportedly began capturing traffic stop data and the Commissioner disclaimed any racial profiling, yet refused to release the data - Newsday published analysis of SCPD traffic stop data that revealed striking racial / ethnic disparities in traffic stop decisions and outcomes.

• 2020 (October) nearly seven years after committing to DOJ to provide annual analysis of its traffic stop data, SCPD releases its first analysis of traffic stop data. The analysis was performed by the Finn Institute on traffic stop data from March 2018 to March 2019.  Finn did not deny the striking racial disparities in traffic stop decisions and outcomes but used specious logic and dubious methods to determine that it could not conclude a finding of inequity.  See Assessment of Finn Institute Traffic Stop Data Analysis

  • In her March 12, 2021 Report and Recommendation that the lawsuit involving 21 anonymous Latino plaintiffs be certified as a class action, U.S. Magistrate Lois Bloom noted, in relevant part:

SCPD has never been in full compliance with the Agreement’s data requirements. Both the United States and the SCPD acknowledge that the data that has been collected is unreliable. Further, the SCPD has admitted that, at the time the instant motion was filed, the SCPD never analyzed its stop data as required by the DOJ Agreement . . . The primary takeaway from this review of the data is that SCPD data collection protocols changed every 2–3 years and never consistently captured the fields necessary to determine whether Latino motorists were treated disparately from White motorists in key post-stop outcomes. 

• Independent analysis reveals the data set Finn reports examining likely contains nearly 5,000 non-random bulk-generated duplicated records, 83% of which were attributed to enforcement interactions with whites.  As discussed above, racially-skewed duplicate records alter the true proportion of disparity between racial / ethnic cohorts.

• Written requests to County Executive Bellone and then-Chairman of the Public Safety Committee, Legislator Tom Donnelly, including detailed analysis of the duplicate records and requesting clarification of how they were generated and their potential impact on Finn’s analysis, have gone unacknowledged and unanswered.   

• The County is obligated by the DOJ Agreement to report accurate traffic stop data and analysis in order to provide accurate measurement of the influence of racial bias in discretionary traffic stop decisions and outcomes.  SCPD deliberately generated duplicate records in bulk to put a thumb on the scale and deceive the public.  The fact that it went on for years and that the Commissioner failed to explain how and why it happened is an indictment of the integrity of the leadership of SCPD.  

• The question must be asked:  was the County Executive’s decision to not respond to the request for explanation of the duplicate records potentially influenced by the $1.25+ million in police labor union contributions to his political campaign over the last ten years?

• 2021 (January) during a Zoom presentation of SCPD raw traffic data analysis by UJPLI, then-Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart acknowledged that the bulk duplicate traffic stop records had, in fact, been deliberately generated in what she characterized as ‘a misguided attempt to make the data more digestible’ and said that the duplicate records had been removed from the raw traffic data sets. She commented that UJPLI’s duplicate records count was inaccurate then refused to discuss or explain any aspect of the duplicate records further.   Following that meeting, UJPLI forwarded a written request to the Commissioner for clarification of the term ‘misguided attempt to make the data more digestible.’  That request has also gone unacknowledged and unanswered.

  • After learning that independent researchers used license plate and precinct data to identify and verify the bulk duplicate traffic stop records, SCPD subsequently removed and replaced the raw traffic stop data files on its website.  The ‘revised’ files

    • eliminated more than 112,000 deliberately generated bulk duplicate traffic stop records

    • removed license plate and precinct data from the records without any legal basis for doing so after publicly reporting it for seven years

    • and retrospectively modified reporting criteria rendering much of the data backwardly incompatible and, thereby, inhibiting period-to-period analyses of baselines, patterns, trends and anomalies.

• 2021 (February) SCPD members are captured on body cam video beating a handcuffed defendant who is observed to be standing flatfooted, looking forward, complying with instructions and offering no resistance when he is first struck by officers from behind then taken to the ground and kicked.  Perhaps most troubling and most telling is the fact that there were approximately a dozen other members, including a supervisor, looking on who made no effort to intercede. 

  • Subsequent reporting and subsequently released video indicate that one of the involved officers filed a sworn statement containing unambiguously false allegations that the defendant rammed the front of a police vehicle with a stolen car at a gas station when, in fact, gas station video captured a police vehicle deliberately striking the passenger side of the vehicle that the defendant was operating. 

  • The District Attorney dropped several of the charges against the defendant. The actions of the police reportedly remain under criminal investigation by the District Attorney’s Office yet experts question the amount of time that investigation is taking.

• 2021 (March 8) Newsday reported that Rich Shaffer, Babylon Town Supervisor and Suffolk County Democratic Committee Chairman, selected the sitting SCPD Chief of Detectives to conduct an arm’s length for-profit review of the Babylon Town public safety division.  Yes, the same Chief of Detectives whose unqualified nephew was promoted to Detective Sergeant, and appointed to a position he was ineligible for, in January 2020.  The Town of Babylon committed to pay a company formed by the Chief of Detectives an hourly rate of $85 up to a maximum of $50,000.  Explaining why he awarded the engagement to the Chief of Detectives, Shaffer said that he has “a great deal of respect for him and he knows the town well” and emphasized that the Chief is a town resident and that he commanded the First Precinct for five years.  For his part, the Chief of Detectives said that a county attorney consulted the county’s board of ethics and he was subsequently authorized to participate in the engagement.  Perhaps it was the same member of the county attorney’s office who attempted to stop the Legislature’s special counsel’s investigation into the improper promotion of his unqualified ineligible nephew on the basis of bogus claims.   

• 2021 (March 12) Federal Magistrate Lois Bloom of the Federal Court of the Eastern District Court of New York issued a Report and Recommendation in the matter of 21 anonymous plaintiffs seeking to pursue a class action against Suffolk County, SCPD and individual members of SCPD that alleges systemic civil rights violations of Latinos through discriminatory and unconstitutional policing policies, practices and patterns.  The allegations center on the unconscionable actions of former SCPD Sergeant Scott Greene and focus largely on enforcement measures related to traffic stops.  The Magistrate recommended that the matter be allowed to proceed as a class action for the purpose of injunctive relief, including the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee policing in the county.  The Magistrate gave Suffolk County until March 26, 2021 to file any objections to the Report and Recommendation. The findings of the Magistrate provide instructive corroboration of analyses of these issues performed by members of the police reform coalition that developed the People’s Plan.  Relevant excerpts of Magistrate Bloom’s findings are included in Part II.

  • On April 5, 2021, U.S. District Court Judge William F. Kuntz, II of the Eastern District Court of New York accepted Magistrate Bloom’s report and recommendation and certified the lawsuit as a class-action. 

  • Magistrate Judge Lois Bloom’s report takes judicial notice that: Defendants have filed a report commissioned from the John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety, Inc. as an exhibit with their pending motion for summary judgment. The Court notes that this report was completed in late September 2020, on the eve of defendants’ summary judgment motion deadline, nearly seven years after defendants entered the DOJ Agreement, and nine years after the SCPD was formally put on notice regarding its insufficient data collection in the Technical Assistance Letter.
    ”SCPD has never been in full compliance with the Agreement’s data requirements. Both the United States and the SCPD acknowledge that the data that has been collected is unreliable. Further, the SCPD has admitted that, at the time the instant motion was filed, the SCPD never analyzed its stop data as required by the DOJ Agreement.”  It cites an expert’s assessment that: “The primary takeaway from this review of the data is that SCPD data collection protocols changed every 2–3 years and never consistently captured the fields necessary to determine whether Latino motorists were treated disparately from White motorists in key post-stop outcomes.” 
    It excerpts deposition testimony of the County’s own Rule 30(b)(6) witness that verifies numerous material performance failures:  

    • No steps were taken to ensure that officers input information accurately 

    • No steps were taken to ensure the input of the correct race of stop subjects 

    • R & D had not conducted an analysis of the traffic stop data 

    • Traffic stop data had never been reviewed for atypical traffic stop activity 

    • Commanding officers had not reviewed the annual report 

    It also notes the following allegations by plaintiffs: “Similar to the traffic stop data, the SCPD has never analyzed checkpoint data to assess whether checkpoints were being disproportionately set up in Latino neighborhoods nor to otherwise assess its use of checkpoints. In summary, plaintiffs argue that by failing to collect accurate traffic stop and checkpoint data, the SCPD has employed a successful strategy to escape a finding of discrimination.” [emphasis added]

    DOJ’s 2011 Technical Assistance Letter to Suffolk County stipulated, in relevant part: “We have received reports, however, that SCPD’s checkpoints have been used primarily to request documentation of citizenship” and recommended that SCPD revise its use of checkpoints in Latino communities. 

    SCPD Commissioner Harrison declined a request that SCPD publicly report checkpoint stops asserting that they are not defined as Traffic Stops.  That claim is directly contradicted by the language of DOJ-approved SCPD Rules and Procedures Chapter 13, Section 9, paragraph III.DEFINITIONS A. Traffic Stop (T-STOP), which expressly stipulates: “. . . any time a member initiates contact which results in the detention of a motorist.  A traffic stop does not include contacts initiated to provide assistance to a motorist, or any contacts resulting from broadcast notifications or calls for service.” Unlike motorist assistance contacts and calls for service, checkpoints are not expressly excluded from the definition.

• (Sep. 2020 – Mar. 2021) While the Suffolk County Police Reform & Reinvention Task Force was empaneled, the political campaigns of County Executive Steve Bellone and the six elected officials he appointed to serve on the Task Force [District Attorney Tim Sini; Sheriff Erroll Toulon; Legislator Rob Calarco, Presiding Officer; Legislator Tom Donnelly, Public Safety Committee Chairman; Legislator Jason Richberg (Dist. 15); and Legislator Samuel Gonzalez (Dist. 9)] had collectively benefitted from not less than $2,080,000 in Suffolk law enforcement organization political expenditures.

• 2021 (March 26) In a 7-page opinion, “The County Where Cops Call the Shots,” [PDF] New York Times editorial board member Farah Stockman provides a compelling outline of the history and the harmful dynamic and impact of law enforcement political spending on Suffolk County governance.  Stockman offered several compelling anecdotes:

  • In 2019 nearly half of SCPD’s sworn members earned over $200,000, including an officer who was criminally charged for falsifying time sheets and earned $291,868

  • State law prohibits police from soliciting political donations from the public. PBAs have operated outside those restrictions

  • Former District Attorney Spota was once a police union lawyer. Although a witness at his trial testified that a union official coaching officers to lie to cover up Mr. Burke’s crimes, no union official has ever been charged.

  • Stockman quoted Washington Post journalist Gus Garcia-Roberts: “Historically, in Suffolk County, you can’t win a major office without the police unions’ endorsement . . . Suffolk is an extreme version of the same problems that are elsewhere.”

  • Legislator Robert Trotta, a retired Suffolk County Detective, told Stockman that elected officials visibly stiffened when police union representatives walked into county meetings. Noting that a member of the union served on the reform task force, Trotta told Stockman: “I can’t stress to you enough how afraid of the union these people are . . . The root of the evil is the money.”

  • A longstanding prohibition on police officers’ soliciting political donations from the public remains on the books, but appears to be rarely enforced.

• 2021 (March 30) - The Suffolk County Police Reform & Reinvention Task Force final report pledged that SCPD would post raw (source) bicycle and pedestrian stop data to its online Data Dashboards, which are located on the Department’s Transparency Hub. SCPD has yet to post any raw (source) bicycle or pedestrian stop data to its online platform.

• 2021 (May 3) Police Commissioner Hart halted the promotion process for Detective Sergeants and ordered an internal investigation in to the leak of candidate interview questions from the Office of the Chief of Detectives to one of the candidates.  This was the second investigation of alleged impropriety in the Detective Sergeant promotion process that involved the Chief of Detectives in two years. 

• 2021 (April 15) Police Commissioner Hart announced her resignation, effective May 7, 2021.

• 2021 (May 11) Chief of Detectives Gerald Gigante announced his resignation, effective sometime in July, amid an Internal Affairs investigation ordered by former Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart. 

• 2021 (May 16) Riverhead Local published a column by Gregg Blass, former Suffolk County family court judge, six-term Suffolk County legislator and commissioner of Social Services, regarding the contents of 1,000 pages of documents released by the federal district court judge who presided over the trial of Tom Spota and Christopher McPartland, after their conviction.  Blass leveled serious allegations:

  • Former County Executive Steve Levy’s reluctance to have Tom Spota’s protégé, James Burke, as chief of SCPD and his frugal collective bargaining with police unions put him at odds with the DA’s office and the police unions. Tom Spota’s office investigated Levy’s campaign finances and used the findings of improprieties to force Levy out of office.

  • Steve Bellone was elected County Executive with the backing of Spota and significant support from police labor.  Bellone appointed and the legislature approved Edward Webber police commissioner.  Webber appointed James Burke Police Chief.  

  • Steve Bellone negotiated collective bargaining agreements that awarded generous salary and benefits increases SCPD. 

  • When Spota wanted to run for another term after being term limited, he sued Suffolk County in order to be exempted from the term limits law.  Bellone and the legislative majority, both beholden to police labor, simply declined to defend against the lawsuit. 

  • Following Spota’s downfall, Police Commissioner Sini announced his candidacy for DA. Contemporaneously.  The Commissioner reportedly unceremoniously dismissed 84 police misconduct complaints that had been languishing in Internal Affairs.  His political campaign for DA received strong political and financial support from police labor and the Legislature’s [2017] Public Safety Committee reportedly received the news of the dismissal of the 84 IAB misconduct case dismissals without comment. 

• 2021 (May 27) – 35 years after SCPD executed an employment discrimination investigation consent agreement with DOJ in which it agreed to increase minority hiring and to not impose any qualification or selection criteria that would adversely impact candidates because of race, ethnicity or gender, Newsday reported that in four years following its 2015 test, SCPD had hired only 16 of 1,419 Black applicants (1%). In April 2021, SCPD swore in 104 recruits; only 4 were Black. 

• 2021 In an August 4, 2021 Memorandum & Order, U.S. District Judge William F. Kuntz, II held, in relevant part:

Considerations of public policy and fairness weigh strongly in favor of finding a rebuttable presumption in this case. The SCPD’s long history of failing to collect adequate traffic stop data should not serve as a shield against potential liability for the misdeeds of the SCPD. Indeed, as Plaintiffs point out, failure to grant the presumption in this case would essentially allow the SCPD to avoid liability for discrimination by affirmatively choosing not to maintain records. The DOJ investigation and the prosecution and conviction of Defendant Greene put the Defendants on notice of biased policing within the department. The SCPD’s failure to adequately collect data, in violation of the settlement agreement, that may have confirmed the allegation of department-wide bias should not shield them from liability now . . . this Court will draw a rebuttable presumption that had the SCPD adequately collected, audited, and analyzed traffic stop data, such data would show that SCPD officers targeted Latinos for traffic stops and subjected them to disparate treatment during those stops.

• 2022 (Feb 9) - A New York State Appellate Court held that several members of SCPD did not have probable cause to search and arrest a man who was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. The appellant had served 5 years of that sentence by the time of the ruling. The transgressions detailed in the ruling describe fundamental misunderstanding or blatant disregard for prevailing statute and case law and a profound lack of adequate supervision and leadership. Several of the officers involved were named as defendants in other lawsuits, one of which involved the death of a prisoner in SCPD custody resulting a settlement payment of $2.8 million of Suffolk Co. taxpayer funds. Several of the officers were subsequently commended for their high volume of enforcement activity. Four of five who were named were subsequently appointed to the rank of Detective. They remain among the highest overtime earners in the Department.

• 2022 (Feb. 16) At the behest of Suffolk County Legislator Robert Trotta, the Suffolk County Board of Ethics issued Final Signed Advisory Opinion No. AO-2021-17, which held, in relevant part:

  “If a public servant acting as a prosecuting attorney receives campaign contributions from a police union or one of its political action committees the receipt of such a contribution is improper because a significant non-waivable appearance of impropriety arises due to the unique nature of the relationship between a prosecuting attorney and the police department . . . Because the Suffolk County Code of Ethics is designed to foster public trust in government, the appearance of impropriety in organization interaction and oversight of police conduct leads this Board to determine that receipt of campaign contributions from an organization representing police or law enforcement agencies, from any related PACS, or from any similar organization such as a “Super PAC” is violative of the Code.  This Board acknowledges that the application of the rule regarding appearance of impropriety from the receipt of campaign contributions could be argued to apply to any elected official or county public servant who contributes to any Suffolk elected official, not just the District Attorney.” [emphasis added]

  In spite of this opinion, the County Executive, the County Sheriff, the County Clerk, the County Comptroller and the overwhelming majority of Legislators continue to benefit from Suffolk County law enforcement organization political funding.

• 2022 (June - July) - SCPD Commissioner Harrison repeatedly denied advocates’ repeated requests for Traffic-Stop data integrity and data access:

  • He refused to restore license plate data in spite of the fact that New York’s Court of Appeals has held that there is no expectation to privacy regarding license plate data.

  • He restored a small portion of the missing precinct data but failed to restore that data back to Q1 ‘21

  • He refused to rename data field names to, to remove null fields and fields with blank and null values in order to facilitate backward compatibility.

  • He refused to report checkpoints, first falsely claiming that they are not defined as Traffic Stops. When advocates demonstrated that Checkpoint Stops are clearly meet the definition of Traffic Stops that is codified in SCPD Rules and Procedures, Commissioner Harrison shifted his rationale and claimed that the Department has no system to record Checkpoint Stops. That claim is directly contradicted by SCPD’s own March 30, 2018 DOJ Settlement Agreement compliance report, which stipulates that SCPD adopted a modified DOJ-provided Checkpoint Stop checklist form to record Checkpoint Stops and amended its rules and procedures accordingly.
    See “Vehicle Checkpoint Record” (PDCS-3270)

  • He refused to release the Standard Query Language (SQL) code that he claims ‘inadvertently’ produced the duplicate records.

  • To date, he has failed to comply with a tri-coalition request for the data set that Finn analyzed and the original traffic stop records to be posted to the Department’s website side-by-side so that they can be reconciled. While he did pledge to post the Finn data to the website, he has yet to do so. He failed to acknowledge the request for the original traffic stop records. Those failures provide additional corroboration that SCPD maintains one set of T-Stop records for DOJ-mandated public reporting and a different set of T-Stop records for DOJ-mandated analysis.

  • He claimed that the Department is unable to uniquely identify DUI/DWI stops, record the year of vehicle manufacture, specify the type/nature and quantity of contraband seized due to data system limitations.

    It is noted that, in 2021, former-Commissioner Hart conceded that the duplicate traffic stop records were the product of deliberate agency. She offered the exculpatory explanation that they were “a misguided attempt to make the data more digestible.”
    In 2022, her successor, Commissioner Harrison, contradicted former-Commissioner Hart and insisted that the duplicates were the result of an ‘inadvertent’ Standard Query Language (SQL) coding error. Apart from the technological improbabilities of that ever happening, both former Commissioner Hart’s and Commissioner Harrison’s explanations simply cannot be true. They are mutually exclusive. At least one of those chief executives was mislead or deliberately attempted to mislead advocates.

    It is also noted that the Department has been endowed with more than $5 Billion in operating and capital funds during the pendency of the Settlement Agreement and that it has reported several T-Stop data system upgrades and purchases in that period. It is utterly implausible that with that much money, over such an extended period of time, and with so many system replacements, the Department is unable to reliably record and report relevant T-Stop data while ensuring its accuracy and integrity.

• 2023 (Jan 27) - 9 years after SCPD executed the Settlement Agreement, DOJ issued its Ninth Report Assessing Settlement Agreement Compliance by Suffolk County Police Department. Among other things, the assessment found:

  • “United for Justice in Policing Long Island (“UJPLI”) published an analysis that highlighted the apparent insertion or alteration of 112,000 duplicate records for stops in 2017 and 2018. A majority of these duplicate records involved stops of white people, which UJPLI alleged had a mitigating effect on the racial disparities identified in Finn’s review. See https://www.ujpli.org/li-law-enforcement. DOJ’s independent analysis of the data available on SCPD’s website confirmed evidence consistent with the duplicate records identified by UJPLI. As a result, we have concerns about whether Finn’s analysis may have understated racial disparities in SCPD’s traffic stop activities . . . In order to gain substantial compliance with the traffic-stop data provisions of the Agreement, SCPD must ensure and demonstrate that data is captured and preserved in a transparent and reliable manner. We recommend that SCPD conduct additional quality assurance checks on the data that Finn relied upon to address the apparently duplicated records. If it identifies errors or discrepancies in the dataset, we recommend that Finn re-run its analysis on a dataset that is accurate and reliable. Alternatively, SCPD could conduct a new analysis with more updated data that it subjects to rigorous quality assurance processes to ensure its accuracy and reliability . . . In furtherance of its compliance efforts and to help rebuild community confidence, we also recommend, as a matter of technical assistance, that SCPD work with stakeholders to ensure that its analyses of traffic stop data satisfy not only its direct law enforcement needs, but also is responsive to the concerns of community stakeholders . . . Once SCPD has a study of its traffic stop data based on accurate and reliable datasets, the Agreement requires SCPD to explain what steps it will take, if any, to address the findings of the study: “SCPD will provide to the United States a report analyzing the collected traffic stop data and explaining what measures, if any, SCPD will take as a result of the analysis.” Agreement III(c.)(ii.) at 6 (emphasis added). The Finn study did not include this kind of explanation, and SCPD did not otherwise convey an explanation to DOJ.” [emphases added]

• 2023 (Jan 26) Legislator Robert Trotta confronted Police Commissioner Harrison at the meeting of the legislature’s Public Safety Committee demanding an explanation of the actions the commissioner had and had not taken to confirm the allegations Legislator Trotta’s made to the Commissioner more than one year earlier regarding PBA political activity. Specifically, Legislator Trotta informed Commissioner Harrison that the PBA and its members were violating SCPD rules and procedures by participating in political activities while wearing their SCPD uniforms. Legislator Trotta cited the following provision from SCPD’s rules and procedures: "Improper political activity, including but not limited to sub-3, solicit, collect, receipt of funds for political purposes."

  Legislator Trotta threatened to play a recording of a conversation he had with the commissioner about the matter.

  2023 (Feb 8) Reporting by Newsday made it clear that a) the SCPD PBA pressed presiding officer McCaffrey to remove Legislator Trotta from the committee, b) that presiding officer McCaffrey had already reached the determination that Legislator Trotta should not be on the committee, and c) that the PBA president had already been assured that Legislator Trotta would no longer be serving on the committee:

  2023 (March 6), Presiding Officer McCaffrey, whose political campaign has benefitted from not less than $209,000 in Suffolk County law enforcement organization political expenditures, unilaterally removed Legislator Trotta from his police oversight role on the Public Safety Committee without the opportunity for public inquiry or input at a scheduled meeting or special hearing.

  2023 (May 1) A federal jury in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York finds Suffolk police liable for $750G for the malicious prosecution of a Deer Park man who was beaten by police during his 2014 arrest. The jury also found that SCPD maintained a “custom, patter, or practice or policy” that deprived Michael McDevitt, 61, of his constitutional rights. It is up to a federal judge to seek to remedy the jury’s findings. He could order sanctions, including federal monitoring and civilian oversight.

  2023 (Aug 10) Finding that Suffolk County tolerated a custom and pattern of civil rights violations under color of law by members of SCPD, a federal jury in Central Islip awarded $35 million - $13.5 million in compensatory damages and $21.5 million in punitive damages - on Thursday to the family of a Bay Shore man who died after he was beaten by Suffolk police following a 2008 traffic stop. The family of Kenny Lazo, 24, of Bay Shore, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the county and its police department in 2009, arguing the police failed to seek medical treatment for Lazo after he was beaten. Suffolk police and county officials, it added, conducted a sham investigation into Lazo’s death to avoid accountability. Jurors spent about six hours Thursday deliberating the case, trying to decide whether police officers had used “appropriate and justified” force when they beat an unarmed Lazo and then refused to take him to a hospital for treatment. Lazo was found unresponsive on the floor of a holding cell at approximately 9 p.m., less than an hour after he had been arrested and pronounced dead at Southside Hospital 45 minutes later.

  The jurors told U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven L. Tiscione that they wanted to make a statement about the case shortly after they reached the verdict. “Upon review of the evidence, we the jury feel strongly that the policies and practices of the Suffolk County Police Department should be better enforced to protect and serve the community . . . The failure to properly train, retrain and/or discipline officers directly led to this unfortunate situation . . . Our hope is that actual change comes from this verdict.”

Relevant Details

Thomas Spota

Tom Spota, graduate of Chaminade private Catholic high school and St. John’s University Law School, worked as an Assistant District Attorney in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in the 1970s and early 1980s.  He then entered private practice where he represented police labor unions, particularly the SCPD Detectives Association.  Formerly a Republican, he was elected District Attorney as a Democrat in 2001.  A May 2013 federal investigation into the assault of a defendant in police custody by Police Chief James Burke, subsequent cover up and coercion of witnesses was expanded to encompass a broader pattern of corruption in SCPD and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.  October 2017, Tom Spota was indicted for obstruction of the federal investigation of James Burke for police brutality. Spota resigned from office in November 2017.  In December 2019, he was convicted of obstruction, witness tampering, and conspiracy charges. He was disbarred in June 2020.

Spota reportedly defended officers who were being investigated by the Temporary State Investigatory Committee (SIC) in 1989.  According to a Newsday article published in 2013: 

A 1982 investigation into an alleged kickback scheme linked to Spota's private law firm, referrals of drunken-driving defendants and an assistant district attorney was superficial. The prosecutor who conducted the incomplete inquiry left the district attorney's office in April 1984 and sublet space in Spota's office. He joined Spota's firm as a partner a year later . . . Two county police officers said that an assistant district attorney had told them that if they sent drunken-driving defendants his way, he would refer them to Spota's law firm and "we would all make some money . . . Spota acknowledged the investigation into purported kickbacks for drunken-driving referrals may have been cursory. But he said he knew nothing about the alleged scheme. Spota said he hired the prosecutor who handled the lax inquiry for his legal expertise . . . Spota said there was "a great deal of animosity" between himself and the chairman of the State Commission of Investigation, which he said may account for references to the kickback allegations in the report. "I think that it was retribution on the part of the SIC because I had represented many of the police officers, and aggressively represented them," he said. There was an overreliance on confessions by Suffolk law enforcement in the past, Spota acknowledged, but he said he never used a confession that was obtained improperly.

The following excerpts from the article Arc of Thomas Spota’s career marked by close relationship with police published by Newsday Dec. 23, 2017 are instructive:

In 1987, the Suffolk County Legislature’s Public Safety Committee called a public hearing about allegations by county police officers that a prosecutor had told them in 1982 that if they handed out Sullivan and Spota business cards to people they arrested they would get part of the legal fee. One officer testified he could make $100 per referral. Another said he heard detectives got as much as 30 percent of the fee.

Spota and Sullivan said at the time they were unaware this was happening.

The State Investigation Commission in 1989 had hearings on that issue and numerous others involving Suffolk law enforcement. In a report, the commission found the district attorney’s office made little effort to investigate whether police were improperly referring cases to Sullivan and Spota.

Spota also had success representing law enforcement officials charged with crimes. One was former homicide Det. K. James McCready, who was charged with beating a Rocky Point bar patron. Spota won an acquittal in 1993.

In 1999, Spota represented Suffolk Undersheriff Edward Morris, who was charged with 89 counts in a corruption investigation of the sheriff’s department by Catterson’s office. Then-Sheriff Patrick Mahoney also was charged with pressuring employees to make political contributions.

Morris pleaded guilty to defrauding the government, theft of services, using the jail for improper political activities and offering a false instrument for filing. He was sentenced to community service and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine; Mahoney paid a $3,000 fine.

By then, Spota, a Republican, had begun to explore the possibility of running for district attorney as a Democrat. Suffolk Democratic leader and Babylon Town Supervisor Richard Schaffer said Spota offered to run in 1997 when Catterson, a Republican, was prosecuting Babylon officials for financial improprieties — a case that ended with four acquittals and one misdemeanor conviction.

Schaffer said he passed on Spota’s offer, but that by 2001 he was eager to help Spota unseat Catterson. With police union support, Spota became a Democrat and campaigned against Catterson — often with Burke, now a police lieutenant, by his side — and won office in November.

“He was full of energy,” Schaffer said, noting that Spota was “looking to begin his third career.”

Schaffer said he will forever feel affection for Spota, despite the indictment. “I love him, and I always will,” he said.

Schaffer said he had no role in how Spota ran the office. Proof of that, he said, was that Spota insisted on retaining one of the prosecutors who worked for Catterson on the Babylon case: Christopher McPartland. McPartland later became chief of Spota’s public corruption unit.

Schaffer said he never asked Spota why he wanted to keep McPartland. “It wasn’t my business,” he said. Spota quickly won a name for himself by taking on political corruption, winning convictions against members of both political parties.

Excerpts of the U.S. Second Circuit Court ruling in the matter of Mandell v County of Suffolk: Hostile Work Environment and First Amendment Retaliation

• He joined the department as a police officer in 1969 and attained the rank of captain in 1988, through a series of promotions based on civil service examinations. Mandell asserts that throughout his police career he faced a pro-Christian and, more specifically, pro-Irish-Catholic bias. Further, he contends anti-Semitism for a long time has been a part of the department culture. He has repeatedly been a target of anti-Semitic remarks and taunting, such as being called "that Jew" and "Jewboy" and being told that all Jews stick together, and was subjected to insulting and demeaning conduct by fellow officers. He relates that on one occasion, for example, another officer tossed a dime on the floor before him to see if he would stoop down to pick it up. Plaintiff claims also to have heard virulent anti-Semitic remarks directed at other Jews, such as "f* * *ing Jews" and "f* * *ing Jew lawyer."

• Rabbi Jeffrey Wartenberg, a Suffolk County police chaplain, supported plaintiff's allegations, stating in an affidavit that during his 20 years with the department he had heard many Jewish officers complain about the disparaging remarks made against their religion. Based on his experience, Rabbi Wartenberg concluded that "anti-Semitism is a way of life within the Department" and that Jewish officers had been held back in their careers by superiors with negative feelings about them. He said his complaints to every police commissioner, including defendant Gallagher, did not result in any corrective action, and the Suffolk County Police continues to favor Catholics, while Jewish officers are only promoted in the rare cases where merit is the sole criterion.

• In June 1987, when he was a police lieutenant, Mandell testified before the Suffolk County Legislature's Public Safety Committee. His testimony described the department as insufficiently proactive in fighting organized crime, resistant to change, and more focused on protecting its internal bureaucracy than on protecting the public. He also set out his view that the "old-boy network" within the department covered up officers' misconduct, including criminal activity, and that racism and anti-Semitism were systemic. On the following day, plaintiff's photograph and an excerpt from this testimony appeared on the front page of Newsday under the headline, "Suffolk Cop Charges: `They Look Out For Their Own.'"

• Apparently members of the department were offended, because in January 1988 plaintiff was expelled from the Suffolk County Patrolmen's Benevolent Association for having "branded the entire department as racist and anti-semites." Plaintiff says his expulsion was another manifestation of the general hostility toward him, triggered by his testimony, that persisted in the department for years.

• After the publication of the Newsday article, Mandell's co-workers' hostility toward him escalated. For example, other police officers would not talk to him unless they had to, and two police chiefs expressly warned him that his comments in Newsday might harm his chances for advancement. Within days of publication, Chief Edwin Michel told him that if he wanted to be a chief he would have to learn to keep his mouth shut, and Chief Gerald Marcoe advised that his career might be adversely affected because he was "still carrying the baggage from having testified," referring to the 1987 Public Safety Committee testimony. In January 1993, five months after the interview, Mandell was transferred from the executive officer position he held in the First Precinct to a post of commanding officer in the Staff Services Bureau. Plaintiff viewed this transfer as punishment because his superiors knew he preferred to work in the more prestigious patrol division rather than in the desk job at Staff Services.

• In January 1997 defendant John Gallagher became police commissioner of Suffolk County. The crux of plaintiff's complaint is that Gallagher, who is Irish-Catholic, promoted a pro-Catholic mentality in the department. At official police functions Gallagher made statements like "[W]e are all good Christians," and, "[W]e can all work well together because we all went to good Christian schools, were taught by the Christian Brothers and learned good Christian values."

• In November 1999 Gallagher involuntarily transferred plaintiff, who was then a commanding officer — a top-ranking and decision-making position in a division — to the more subordinate position of executive officer. This transfer was perceived as a demotion not only by plaintiff but also by his fellow officers who commented that the transfer was not favorable, not in anticipation of a promotion, and that it was plain the department was trying to force plaintiff to resign.

• In the case at hand, plaintiff's evidence of discrimination falls into three categories: (1) Gallagher's statements indicating his preference for promotion of Christians or Catholics; (2) evidence of department culture tolerant of anti-Semitism; and (3) promotion of Catholic officers on the four occasions at issue.

• At an official police function shortly after he became commissioner, Gallagher addressed members of the department in a speech replete with references to Christian values and Catholic education, including such comments as the "all good Christians" remarks noted earlier. On another occasion, the commissioner professed his belief in absolute papal authority at a breakfast meeting with department members. From these statements, a reasonable juror could infer that Gallagher viewed Catholicism — or, more broadly, Christianity — as a necessary part of a good police officer's make-up and that he considered non-Christian officers to be lacking the right make-up.

• In his response, Gallagher declares that he mentioned Christian schooling only in pointing out that Chief Monteith and he had attended the same school run by the Christian Brothers order, and the Pope's absolute authority, he said, was used as an analogy to a police commissioner's prerogative to circumvent hierarchical channels of communication and to work directly with officers at the various level of the chain of command. At the summary judgment stage, however, we must resolve all factual disputes in plaintiff's favor. Accepting plaintiff's account of Gallagher's comments as true, a reasonable juror could conclude that these comments indicated Gallagher's pro-Christian or pro-Catholic bias.

• Contrary to the district court's belief, plaintiff did submit evidence of anti-Jewish animus, which we discuss in a moment. Second, to establish a claim of religious discrimination, plaintiff does not have to prove that defendants discriminated solely against his religion. An employer discriminating against any non-Catholic violates the anti-discrimination laws no less than an employer discriminating only against one discrete group, in this case, Jews.

• Anti-Semitic comments and behavior have traditionally been part of the culture of the Suffolk County Police Department. The facts section detailed the epithets aimed at plaintiff and the department's tolerance for anti-Semitic conduct, such as the coin toss mentioned earlier, which was a reference to the demeaning ethnic stereotype that Jews are "cheap." Although most of these examples of overt anti-Semitism pre-date plaintiff's 1989 promotion to deputy inspector, a reasonable juror could find this improved behavior reflects not a change in attitude, but only greater caution by fellow officers regarding their conduct in the presence of an officer who outranked them.

• Further support for plaintiff's allegations about the department's culture bias is provided by the affidavit of Rabbi Wartenberg who served as the Suffolk County police chaplain for 20 years. Although his affidavit contains a number of conclusory characterizations, Rabbi Wartenberg also avers that he had communicated his concern about anti-Semitic attitudes within the department to every commissioner with whom he had worked, including Commissioner Gallagher. All responded by acknowledging that anti-Semitism was a problem, but failed to take any concrete action to remedy it. For instance, throughout his tenure as a chaplain, Rabbi Wartenberg said he had never seen an official statement issued by a commissioner condemning anti-Semitism, nor had he ever heard of a police officer receiving punishment beyond chastisement for anti-Semitic conduct.

• This proof indicates that department leadership, including Gallagher, knowingly tolerated anti-Semitic attitudes and conduct. Interpreted in the light most favorable to plaintiff, it suggests an anti-Jewish bias on defendants' part and therefore further supports the assertion that Gallagher's decisions not to promote plaintiff and to transfer him to a subordinate position were motivated by an illegal animus.

• On four occasions Gallagher passed over plaintiff for promotion to inspector in favor of others. Of the six deputy inspectors promoted in 1997-1999, five were concededly Catholic. Mandell admittedly does not know the religion of the sixth deputy inspector though he believes he is also Catholic. Defendants do not dispute the religious backgrounds of the promoted deputy inspectors, declaring instead that such promotions are not proof of discrimination.

• A showing of disparate treatment — that is, a showing that the employer treated plaintiff "less favorably than a similarly situated employee outside his protected group" — is a recognized method of raising an inference of discrimination for purposes of making out a prima facie case . . . In the instant case, plaintiff has adduced enough evidence to support a finding that the promoted officers and plaintiff were sufficiently similarly situated to support an inference of discrimination. Mandell and the promoted officers were all qualified and Mandell had greater or comparable seniority, having spent more time in rank and more time in the department than all but one officer of those promoted ahead of him.

• Mandell presented evidence suggesting that defendants' reliance on plaintiff's letter to Legislator Postal as a reason for denying plaintiff promotions is pretext. Legislator Postal and her assistant, who handles Postal's correspondence, submitted affidavits stating that they never showed plaintiff's letter to anyone or copied it, and that their practice generally is to treat all incoming correspondence as confidential. Plaintiff similarly denies ever forwarding a copy of his letter to anyone. From this proffer, a trier of fact could find, contrary to defendants' assertions, that Gallagher did not see the letter until the commencement of this law suit and that defendants may therefore be using the letter as a pretext to cover up a discriminatory motive.

• Defendants do not articulate any basis for the 1999 transfer from commanding officer to the more subordinate position of executive officer. In fact, in their briefs in the district court and here, defendants address the transfer claim primarily by stating that officers other than plaintiff have also been transferred from commanding officer positions to executive officer positions. Without any evidence with respect to the circumstances of these transfers, the fact they occurred is not relevant to our analysis. Accordingly, defendants failed to carry their burden of establishing legitimate nondiscriminatory reasons for the demotion, and the dismissal of plaintiff's claim of discriminatory transfer must be vacated.

• In sum, we think that based on the evidence submitted in support of plaintiff's prima facie case and on plaintiff's evidence of pretext, a reasonable juror could find that defendants' 1997-1999 decisions not to promote plaintiff to the rank of inspector were motivated by religious discrimination.

• . . . we find wholly unpersuasive defendants' contention that plaintiff's 1987 Public Safety Committee testimony did not enjoy a constitutionally protected status because it was a disgruntled employee's complaint about his own promotional opportunities. Such characterization of Mandell's testimony finds no support in the record. As a general rule, speech on "any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community" is protected by the First Amendment.  Plaintiff's testimony criticized the department's approach to fighting organized crime, its resistance to change, and its systemic racism and anti-Semitism. All these subjects are clearly matters of public concern.

• Similarly meritless is defendants' contention that plaintiff suffered no adverse employment action. Adverse employment actions include both refusals to promote and demotions. It is undisputed that defendants refused to promote plaintiff to the rank of an inspector, and that the 1999 transfer placed plaintiff in a position subordinate to the one he had previously held.

• Again, defendants maintain plaintiff failed to establish a causal connection between his public criticism of the Suffolk County Police and the adverse employment decisions. "Causation can be established either indirectly by means of circumstantial evidence, for example, by showing that the protected activity was followed by adverse treatment in employment, or directly by evidence of retaliatory animus."  We think Mandell adduced sufficient direct evidence of retaliatory animus to create a triable question of fact on this issue. Several reasons lead us to this result.

• The 1988 letter expelling plaintiff from the Suffolk County PBA expressly stated that he was being removed for having "branded the entire department as racist and anti-semites." This expulsion shows that, at least during the months following Mandell's testimony, a substantial number of police officers viewed the testimony as a betrayal of the department. An evaluation placed in plaintiff's personnel file in May 1988 contained negative comments and recommendations plainly brought on by that testimony. Specifically, Inspector Stewart wrote negatively about plaintiff and although the inspector did not recommend denial of plaintiff's next promotion — the non-discretionary promotion to the rank of a captain — he did emphasize that Mandell's "attitude should be taken into account when placing him in any future assignment." Because this evaluation was placed in plaintiff's file, it could have reasonably impacted Mandell's career opportunities in the ensuing years.

• Further, during the days following the Newsday interview, Chief Michel told plaintiff that he would have to learn to keep his mouth shut, and Chief Marcoe told him that his career might be adversely affected because of the "baggage" created by his 1987 testimony. The latter comment suggests that negative attitudes towards Mandell caused by that testimony lingered for at least five years. Because both Michel and Marcoe were among those chiefs who recommended candidates other than plaintiff for the 1997 promotion to inspector, a reasonable factfinder could find their comments indicate a retaliatory animus that influenced their decision not to recommend plaintiff.

• Gallagher's denials of knowledge, even if truthful, are not dispositive because, as noted a moment ago, Gallagher's choice in 1997 was based on recommendations of police chiefs, two of whom had made statements indicative of retaliatory animus. Moreover, Gallagher's asserted lack of knowledge is irrelevant to the remaining denials of promotions and to the 1999 transfer decision, as Gallagher admittedly reviewed plaintiff's 1987 testimony shortly after the 1997 denial of promotion.

• Nor does plaintiff's claim of retaliation fail because of his 1989 promotion to deputy inspector. First, no promotions followed the 1992 Newsday interview, the second instance of protected speech. Second, a reasonable juror could find that Commissioner Guido's administration in 1989 had a fairer and more merit-driven promotion policy than Gallagher's administration in 1997-1999.

• As a consequence, we believe plaintiff submitted adequate proof to support a finding that his public criticism of the department affected defendant Gallagher's promotion and transfer decisions.

• Finally, we reject defendants' argument that the state's interest in regulating Mandell's speech outweighed his interest in the speech simply because when he gave his Newsday interview he held the rank of deputy inspector. Defendants advanced no reason why the interview was likely to disrupt the department's operations, nor has our own review of the Newsday article revealed any basis for such a conclusion.

• In the present case retaliatory intent is an element of plaintiff's claim, and we have already noted that plaintiff's evidence of retaliatory animus is sufficient to make defendants' motivation a triable issue of fact. Until that issue is resolved by a factfinder, therefore, the retaliation claim against defendant Gallagher cannot be dismissed on qualified immunity grounds.

• In sum, we conclude that the district court erred in dismissing Mandell's retaliation claim for lack of evidence of causation. And because defendants' remaining arguments lack merit, we must vacate the dismissal of this claim and remand it to the trial court.

The Strange Rise and Violent Fall of Long Island's Dirtiest Police Chief

Former Suffolk County Chief James Burke’s recent conviction on civil rights charges opened a window into a lurid cop culture of illegal wiretapping, cover-ups, sex addition, drunk driving, and blackmail.

March 14, 2016 | Michael Edison Hayden | VICE

"He used to tell people that he wanted to become a cop so he could get away with breaking the law." —a high school acquaintance of James Burke

"He was once in a bathroom in a hotel room with other guys and there was definitely coke there. But drugs weren't his thing. Sex was." —a former New York cop

Click HERE or on the link to read and or listen to the article.

Sordid and violent life of ex police chief James Burke resurfaces amid reports of botched Gilgo Beach murders probe

July 18, 2023 | Barsha Roy | Meaww.com

LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK: Details of disgraced former chief of Suffolk County Police Department James Burke's sordid life has resurfaced in the wake of Gilgo Beach murders suspect Rex Heuermann's arrest.

Following Burke's 2016 arrest that led to a 46-month sentencing, reports about his fondness for drugs and prostitutes came to light. A source told the Daily Mail that Burke's colleagues thought he was "uncontrollable" and always "horny." The source claimed that several of his colleagues also described him as a "psychopath." 

Click HERE or on the title to read the article.