Jury Believed The Chief

A jury listened as veteran cop Anthony Zona tearfully described how his department retaliated against him and harmed his reputation for alleged whistleblowing. Then the jury sided with his boss.

The jury Thursday voted in favor of Stratford in a civil lawsuit brought by Zona, a retired New Haven police sergeant who now works for the town’s police force. The vote followed a one-day trial pitting Zona against his police chief in a fight over rumored whistleblowing, potential police misconduct, and the correct chain of command.

Zona filed that lawsuit in 2021, arguing that he was a victim of excessive administrative discipline due to a false accusation that he called the Federal Bureau of Investigation on colleagues caught up in an apparent cellblock abuse investigation. After hearing both sides, the jury opted to believe the Stratford chief of police’s narrative over Zona’s — failing to find adequate evidence that Zona was put on leave for any reason other than continuously erupting at and challenging his supervisors. 

“This is a case about free speech of a public employee,” Zona’s attorney John Williams declared Tuesday, launching off the one-day trial inside Courtroom 6D of the 235 Church St. state courthouse.

“We need to drive a message to the town of Stratford: Stop treating your officers this way. He has a right to blow the whistle – even if he didn’t do it.”

Bryan LeClerc and Ray Rigat, attorneys with the firm Berchem Moses of Milford, argued the matter from a different perspective. Zona had a history of losing his temper and failing to follow orders, they said, and the jury shouldn’t ​“encourage that kind of behavior” among officers.

The case touched on questions of what it means to be a cop today, as Zona sought to defend the right of officers to speak out in defense of personal integrity while his boss pressed the importance of practicing de-escalation and listening to one’s superiors. 

Zona served for 24 years in the New Haven Police Department before joining the Stratford force. In the suit, Zona claimed his bosses retaliated against him because of a rumor that Zona had disclosed information about alleged perpetration of cellblock abuse to the FBI. 

The FBI requested evidence from the department after a suspect that Zona had arrested for potential involvement in a shooting was later found so badly injured in his jail cell that he was placed in a hospital’s intensive care unit. According to Zona, a group of cops who had reportedly gone to that cell to confront the suspect about covering his room’s video camera later accused Zona of telling on them to the bureau.

Zona has maintained that anyone who might have reported such behavior should be protected by the First Amendment and the state’s Police Accountability Act — while denying that he was the one to call the FBI.

Three days after the FBI subpoena was served, Zona was placed on paid four month administrative leave for a previous alleged act of rudeness against his superior. The department then sought to suspend Zona for 15 days without pay as punishment, which Zona argued down to three with the help of the police union. 

Zona’s lawyer asked the jury for $8,000 in potential overtime losses — as well as punitive damages equal to those compensatory damages.

However, Zona made clear that it was the emotional toll inflicted upon him which prompted him to file the lawsuit.

“This is a little emotional for me,” he said upon taking the stand.

Williams began by asking him about his career: ​“When did you first want to become a cop?” he asked the 60-year-old.

“When I was 7 years old,” Zona said, starting to weep and wipe his eyes with a pocket handkerchief. He was first hired in 1988 by the New Haven Police Department, where he was promoted from patrol to detective then sergeant and district commander. He had an ​“excellent relationship” with those in the department, he said, and only retired from the job alongside other colleagues when the city changed its ​“medical from a super to a not super plan.”

“I love what I do,” he said, which was why he decided to take a job as a Statford patrol officer, a drop in rank, when Police Chief Joseph McNeil told him to apply. ​“Even if you do a little good, it makes a difference to someone.” 

In Stratford, he said, ​“I train a lot of young guys who think it’s just a job. It’s a calling.”

That’s why getting hit with a 15-day suspension, the maximum action a chief can take against an employee without involving the mayor of the municipality, for ​“conduct unbecoming” was so painful. ​“I had to explain that to my parents, my friends, my relatives.”

In Stratford, ​“conduct unbecoming” is used as a ​“catch-all” punishment, he said. ​“In New Haven you’d get fired for that.” 

As Judge Karen Goodrow ordered the clerk to deliver tissues to the stand to replace Zona’s well-used handkerchief, attorney LeClerc rose for cross-examination.

Zona was a high-ranking officer in New Haven, he observed. ​“Did you want to be respected in New Haven?” he asked.

“Respect is earned,” Zona responded, stone-faced.

Now Zona is a patrol officer, frequently responding to supervisors who are significantly younger than he is, LeClerc commented. He pointed to three different instances in which Zona had been reprimanded.

“I was irritated at the situation,” Zona said when asked about a 2019 instance where he was disciplined for yelling at a supervisor. ​“Not the sergeant.”

“The only punishment I ever received” before the 15 days, Zona said, was five days off — ​“which can be explained.”

However, Zona did not get a chance to give any such explanations. 

Rather, LeClerc’s partner, Rigat, asked Chief McNeil to talk about those previous altercations. Zona missed the chance to weigh in as his attorney, Williams, said that such previous incidents were ​“irrelevant” to the matter at hand.

Why is the chain of command important? LeClerc began asking McNeil.

“It’s about keeping efficiencies so when there’s an emergency you’re not going to have an insurrection,” McNeil said. 

As a veteran officer, Zona is intimately familiar with the chain of command, LeClerc argued. 

Yet, in three different circumstances within the Stratford department, Zona was reported for blowing up at his bosses.

In 2017, McNeil said Zona was suspended after he refused to retroactively ticket a perpetrator of a reckless driving incident. Zona challenged first his sergeant, then his lieutenant, captain, and deputy chief — until the chief had to take action. 

In 2019, Zona once again fought with a superior during a traffic incident. ​“He was argumentative,” McNeil said; a sergeant had told the chief that Zona was ​“trying to bully me and intimidate me.” 

Then, in 2020, McNeil said he saw a video of Zona raising his voice at another Sergeant.

He said that the issue was that Santos and Zona, two veteran officers, had formed factions within the department and ​“were trying to undermine each other at any cost.” All Zona had to do during whatever altercation that went down, he said, was ​“deescalate,” and yet he continued to loudly fight with Santos in front of their fellow officers.

“This is what 21st century policing is,” McNeil stated. ​“We’re all trained to do that — I tell them, it’s verbal judo.”

At the time, McNeil said, ​“I got really worried. This is real fire, this is personal.” He said he believed in a potential for ​“violence between these individuals,” and imposed the extended administrative leave and maximum 15 day penalty simply to ​“separate the two parties.”

The whole fight, he said, ​“had a demoralizing effect… It was so public, the rage of it. It was tearing this department apart.” 

By August, he said, ​“it had quieted down. Discipline had worked. The civil war was over.”

The ​“cellblock abuse,” McNeil said, was actually just an incident in which the arrestee attempted to fight officers and hurt himself by falling backwards on a pipe. He assumed that the arrestee had called the FBI — he never assumed Zona was responsible. 

And, he said, if Zona had blown the whistle, it wouldn’t matter. ​“We welcome the scrutiny,” he stated on the stand.

What mattered in the end, Rigat and LeClerc emphasized, was that McNeil had not heard rumors that Zona was the whistleblower or factored that possibility into his decision to place the cop on leave.

They maintained that stance despite contradictory testimony from a number of witnesses called in by Williams, including three Stratford cops who verified that rumors about Zona had riddled the department years back and that a 15 day suspension should be considered an extreme and disproportionate penalty given the situation. 

One cop, Officer Giansanti, who was mixed up in the cellblock fiasco, denied on the stand that he ever accused Zona of having called the FBI.

He then stood up at the back of the room as another officer, Rachel Crosby, was asked whether Giansanti had told her he believed Zona was guilty. Sit down, the judge ordered Giansanti. Yes, Giansanti had accused Zona, Crosby confirmed.

“Giansanti stands up at the back of the courtroom, so intimidating,” Williams recalled during closing arguments. ​“McNeil is trying to cover it up.” Everything was an after the fact excuse, he said, and the timeline speaks for itself: The fact that Zona was sent on leave three days after the subpoena arrived, despite the fact that an investigation into the altercation had been pending for a full month before, was simply fishy.

“Sometimes,” Williams said, ​“actions speak louder than words.”

Rigat, on the other hand, began his concluding remarks with an appeal to the jury.

“One of the highest forms of service is to sit on a jury,” he said. ​“The use of reason is one of the highest gifts the universe has given us.”

When you’re a cop, constantly navigating high stress situations — like Zona’s arrest of the individual who would ultimately sustain injuries during lock up — ​“reason is thrown out the window.”

The fact is, Rigat said, ​“you can’t lose your temper.” As a veteran officer, he said, Zona had ​“missed an opportunity to model good leadership by being a proper follower.”

“We are grateful for the attention of the jury and the verdict in favor of the Town of Stratford,” LeClerc later wrote in an email to the Independent. ​“This verdict affirmed that no wrongdoing occurred in this matter.” 

Following the jury’s decision, Zona calmly said, ​“I believe the jury got it wrong — but this is the system we live by.”

The implication of the trial, he said, sent the message that nobody should sound the alarm on police misconduct, because protection against retaliation was far-fetched. Still, he said, ​“this is the system we have. It’s the system I’ve been a part of for 35 years.” And he’ll continue to serve.