Paul Bass Photo
Richard Pastore awaits his day in court Thursday.
Contributed Photo
Richard and Christine Pastore’s night on the town ended with a cop tearing through a red light, totaling their car, wrecking a traffic island, and another cop putting Richard in handcuffs — all in what a top cop dismissed as a “minor accident.”
Richard Pastore (pictured) had his day in court Thursday. It’s unclear whether a day of judgment awaits the officer involved.
In the view of Pastore, a 46-year-old Waterbury schoolteacher, and his wife Christine Pastore, a 45-year-old freelance technical director for sports media outlets, the incident raises questions about how police deal with victims of dangerous accidents they cause — and how the department deals with allegedly dangerous drivers wearing a badge.
In the police’s view, Pastore was a possibly drunken menace at an accident scene.
The incident took place last week, on Aug. 11, right after midnight at the intersection of Howe Street and Whalley Avenue.
Richard and his wife Christine were heading home to Prospect after an evening out at Cask Republic on Crown Street. He’d had three scotches, he said. “I was probably a little looped. That’s why I had [his wife] drive.” Christine said she had deliberately consumed no alcohol so she could drive home.
Christine pulled up to a red light on Howe. She was preparing to turn left onto Whalley. The light turned green. She inched forward to turn. Next a police cruiser screeched through the intersection and destroyed her car; the police car flew into the air, she said. It rammed into a traffic island and knocked over granite curbs, as during this accident nearly a year ago.
“Another couple of inches,” she said, “and we would have been dead.”
The Official Version
Allan Appel Photo
Officer Podsiad.
Here’s a one-paragraph official description of the incident released last week by Lt. Lisa Dadio (who was filling in as official department spokeswoman):
“Two officers were involved in a minor motor vehicle accident after midnight at the intersection of Broadway and Howe Street. Officers [Martin] Podsiad and [Martin] Feliciano were driving an unmarked police vehicle when the accident occurred. Both officers were transported to an area hospital for minor injuries. The occupants of the other vehicle declined medical attention.”
Dadio was asked for more details on the incident. She said she had none and failed to provide any more in days to come.
An official police report was in fact written the same day, with more details. It clearly pins fault on the officer driving the cruiser, Martin Podsiad, for failing to exercise due caution.
Podsiad was rushing to a call, according to the report, written by Sgt. Chris Rubino that cited consistent witness accounts. He had his lights flashing and his siren on. He was traveling in the right lane. He crashed into the Pastores’ car.
Podsiad, Rubino wrote, “is found to be at fault in violation of 14 – 283.” He and Officer Feliciano went to the Hospital of St. Raphael for treatment of injuries. The Pastores were “checked by EMS and released,” according to the report.
The Aftermath
The Pastores and a separate police report told different tales about what happened after the crash.
Christine said no cops offered to help her. “We were invisible; we didn’t exist … I had to ask for medical attention,” she said. She also asked to see her husband.
Officers kept her and her husband apart, she said. They said they repeatedly asked to see each other; they feared the other was badly hurt.
Richard Pastore got into an argument with an officer about that.
“You have to come with me,” he quoted an officer as telling him.
“I don’t want to come with you. Where’s my wife?” he said he responded.
He was refused permission to see his wife. Instead he was handcuffed and placed in the back seat of a cruiser, he said.
Christine Pastore said at that point she declined an officer to travel by ambulance to the hospital. She worried about what would happen to her husband.
The cops ended up charging her husband with interfering. Then he was released with a citation.
Here’s what led them to do it, according to a report also written by Rubino: Two officers were “attempting to control the situation.” Richard “failed to respond to any of their requests and was extremely aggressive toward the officers. He made statements such as ‘I’ll have your job,’ ‘My uncle is chief of police,’ ‘You’re fucking assholes.’”
Rubino “attempted to issue the misdemeanor”; Richard “refused to sign,” Rubiino wrote. “It was obvious to this officer that R. Pastore was extremely intoxicated.”
The report then quotes one of Richard’s in-laws, who showed up at the scene: “You have to excuse my brother-in-law. He gets abusive when he drinks.”
Richard contested the officer’s version of events. He said the police were taunting him. When they learned his last name, they asked if he is related to former New Haven Chief Nick Pastore. Richard said he was being sarcastic in response; he’s not related to the former chief, he said
Anyway, said his lawyer, Bruce Matzkin, claiming to be related to a former chief of police is “not against the law.”
Matzkin was in state Superior Court on Elm Street with the Pastores Thursday morning. Richard’s appearance before the judge took just a moment; his charge was reduced to an infraction, meaning he just has to pay a $50 ticket, Matzkin said.
Matzkin said it’s unclear whether the Pastores will pursue legal redress.
“What we’d like,” Christine said, “is for them [the police] not to fly through intersections like that.”
Department policy requires that the patrol division investigate all motor vehicle accidents involving officers. Any potential negative findings are then forwarded to the chief. Assistant Chief Patrick Redding, who’s in charge of patrol, is on vacation and couldn’t be reached to discuss this case.
Meanwhile, the traffic island remains taped off. City traffic chief Jim Travers said officials are waiting to obtain police reports so they can initiate an insurance claim to pay to repair the damage. “It looks like it should be not terribly complex,” he said. The dislodged granite pieces appear largely “intact,” he said. The contractor will probably need to bring in a crane to lift the pieces back into place, then use pins and adhesive to keep them there.
At least until the next crash.
NHPD Cops drive like they own the roads in Our city. Some thing so small a civilian winds up cuffed in the back of a police car, While the true bad get a ride to the Hospital.
Cops today are not trained to talk to people, that's why the love Teasers.