Thomas MacMillan Photo
Hwang (at right) with his attorney, Charles Tiernan.
Sgt. Rob Criscuolo had reason to believe he might be walking into a Batman sequel — not to the film, but to the deadly real-life confrontation at the film’s Colorado screening.
Criscuolo was the top cop on the scene at downtown New Haven’s Criterion Cinemas Tuesday night when patrons saw an ambitious local lawyer named Sung-Ho Hwang carry a loaded Glock semiautomatic pistol as he went to a screening of the new Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises.
Soon some 15 cops entered the theater under Criscuolo’s direction. They were well aware that on July 20, another gun-toting patron at an Aurora, Colo., screening of the same film went on a deadly rampage.
Thoughts of that rampage ran through Sgt. Rob Criscuolo’s mind as he dispatched some 15 cops into the Batman screening. Especially when the smiling Glock-toting patron ignored his and terrified onlookers’ shouted calls to show his hands.
In the end, no one got hurt Tuesday night. New Haven’s downtown Criterion Cinemas did not host a sequel to Aurora.
To hear one of the drama’s main actors, Criscuolo, tell it, the police had reason to worry the evening might have turned out otherwise. In an Independent interview, Criscuolo, who confronted the gun-toting patron while directing back-up cops, offered a step-by-step account of the event. He said the patron — attorney Hwang — repeatedly and consciously ignored commands to show his hands in a tense, potentially dangerous situation.
Criscuolo served some 500 search warrants in a previous stint on New Haven police’s narcotics unit. “I’d put it up there” in terms of tense standoffs, Criscuolo said of Tuesday night’s confrontation.
For his part, Hwang, a 46-year-old immigration attorney in line to head the Connecticut Bar Association — whose clients have included members of an alleged Korean sex-trafficking ring busted in town—denied disobeying any police commands at the Criterion. At a Wednesday press conference he turned the Batman incident into an indictment of New Haven for being dangerous. (Read about that here.) He said he carried the gun for safety when walking back home after the movie; Hwang lives near the theater in a downtown condo he bought in 2010 for $370,000. He proclaimed himself not guilty of the breach of peace and interfering charges against him.
Hwang read a prepared statement at that press conference. He didn’t take reporters’ questions. He couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday for this article. His attorney, Charles Tiernan, was asked about Criscuolo’s account. “I don’t want to get into details about what [Hwang] did,” Tiernan said. “All I’ll say is that he did what he was asked to do.”
Visions Of Aurora
Criscuolo went into detail in the interview Thursday.
The sergeant, who’s 44, was supervising patrol shifts downtown and in Dixwell and Newhallville Tuesday night. His shift was to end at 10:30. But shortly after 10 he found himself responding to a call at the Criterion: Witnesses had reported “an Asian male, white T‑shirt, blue jeans, in one of the theaters. He had a gun in the small of the back,” Criscuolo recalled.
Close to 20 officers responded from different city precincts as well as Yale’s force. By the time Criscuolo arrived, some of the officers had already searched the cinema’s Theater 1, where “The Watch” was showing. Hwang wasn’t there. Witnesses had seen him enter either that theater or Theater 2 right beside it in the cinema complex’s rear southern wing. Theater 2 was showing the Batman movie.
Criscuolo gathered the officers for a quick chat in the hallway before entering Theater 2.
“I slowed things down and made sure everyone was together,” he said. “I made sure we had enough personnel. I told them we would go in, control the crowd, make sure we saw everyone’s hands.”
You couldn’t help but think of Aurora, he said.
“There wasn’t a discussion about Colorado,” he said. “I’m sure it was on everyone’s mind.” It was on his mind. “In light of that tragedy, our response needed to be immediate and professional.”
Criscuolo stationed a couple of officers outside the theater while he led the others inside. It was “dim” in the theater, house lights on; the movie hadn’t started. Maybe 15 patrons were scattered in the room.
“Police!” Criscuolo called out. “Everyone put your hands up!”
Everyone immediately complied, he said. Except for one man sitting by himself in the middle of the aisle, closer to the screen than everyone else.
“I could immediately see it was a male with dark hair and a white T‑shirt,” Criscuolo said.
The other patrons “turned and raised their arms and looked toward us.” The man in front “did nothing. He looked straight ahead. He never acknowledged our presence.
“It was odd. There were 15 or so officers with their guns drawn.”
“Show Him Your Hands!”
So Criscuolo made his way down the aisle.
He approached to within 5 feet of the man, who would turn out to be Hwang. Criscuolo resumed shouting to him, maybe six more times: “Police! Let me see your hands.”
Hwang continued to ignore “my presence,” Criscuolo said. Then, “he finally looked at me and he laughed.
“He had his phone in his left hand. He goes right back and looks toward his phone.”
The atmosphere grew increasingly tense in the theater. Criscuolo repeated the command. Hwang “turned towards” him once more, smiled once more, then returned to looking at his phone, according to Criscuolo.
“Show him your hands!” members of the crowd yelled at Hwang. “Show him your hands!”
Officers escorted the patrons sitting closest to Hwang out of the area, in order to remove them from possible harm.
Then Criscuolo ordered a nearby officer, Leonardo Soto, to “go non-lethal”: to put his gun in his holster, take out his taser instead. Criscuolo already had his own gun trained on Hwang; “if this was a situation where we could use non-lethal, I wanted it available.”
After several more requests to show his hands, Hwang “finally looks towards us and acknowledges us,” Criscuolo said. “He raises his arms not above his head, to about his eye level. I can see he just has a cell phone in his hand. There’s nothing in his hands besides a cellphone.”
At that point, with Soto’s taser and another officer’s gun at the ready, Criscuolo put his own weapon in his holster, then moved in on Hwang. He “got control of his hands” and, with the help of a Yale cop, handcuffed him.
“I put my hand in the small of his back,” Criscuolo said. “The gun came immediately out of the holster, and the holster fell on the ground. It wasn’t secured to his belt or person. It was just stuck in the small of his back.”
It was a .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic. It was loaded.
Hwang didn’t resist as the cops detained him, according to Criscuolo. They escorted Hwang into the hallway; he started laughing, as fearful patrons looked on.
“The scene was chaotic. I can only imagine if my family was in the movie theater and I wasn’t there, what they would think,” Criscuolo recalled.
In the lobby, Hwang finally spoke as he laughed, Criscuolo said. “Will we get to finish,” he asked, “watching the movie?”
The “Real Issue”
The answer was no. The officers brought him to the theater manager’s officers. They got ahold of witnesses. They determined that Hwang owned his .40-caliber Glock legally.
Eventually officers escorted Hwang to police headquarters, where detectives conducted a largely fruitless interview. He was released with a promise to appear in court.
In his eight-paragraph statement read to the press the next day, Hwang called the charges against him “baseless.” He said the arrest “threatens our constitution[al] right to bear arms.” The “real issue,” he said, why “law abiding citizens feel that they need to carry a weapon.” Police emphasized that the charges did not contest his right to bear arms, but rather his response to the cops dealing with a potentially dangerous public incident.
In the aftermath of his arrest, many in New Haven — including people in positions of authority — learned for the first time that Connecticut has become a state where it’s legal to carry unconcealed weapons in public. Private businesses can ban them from the premises. The Criterion technically has such a policy but didn’t post it.
Hwang Wednesday did credit the police for “act[ing] very well under a tough situation. They were very professional and understanding once they discovered that I had a valid state carry permit,” he said.
Paul Bass Photo
On that question, he and Criscuolo agreed. Criscuolo (pictured) repeatedly praised the officers for their handling of the incident.
“We had rookies. We had veterans. We had officers from different parts of the city all work together,” he said. “They let me take command. They responded to everything — they took a stressful situation in a crowd and handled it very well. I was proud to work with them.”
“It’s not what happened,” Criscuolo concluded. “It’s what didn’t happen.”
why is it in such a blue state that people dont just stay home all the time in fear of the criminals that are bred here?
cops themselves mostly carry when off duty, I'm ready to myself since the mayor cant get this town in order.
what I want to know is why didnt the mayor hold a press conference when his own cops shot off guns after DRINKING in a parking lot on state st??? this guy did nothing wrong, in fact I hope more citizens start carrying and arming themselves after this fiasco.