A family thought it was the cops bursting into their apartment late at night. It turns out cops weren’t at the door; bail enforcement agents were.
That is the conclusion of an internal affairs investigation into an incident that occurred at the Farnam Courts/Mill River Crossing housing complex on Grand Avenue.
A woman who lives in the apartment with a son and daughter filed a complaint with internal affairs after men wearing badges pounded on her door at 11:30 p.m. on Feb. 5 then, with guns drawn and pointing at the family members, swept through the apartment in search of a wanted man. The family said the men berated them, falsely accused them of knowing the wanted man, and ransacked the apartment.
The family said the incident was doubly upsetting because it is still grieving over the 2018 murder of the woman’s son.
Family members stated in the complaint that it was New Haven police who conducted the operation. They provided badge numbers. The family members said that the agents identified themselves as being parf of a “bail enforcement” unit. One allegedly wore a ski mask.
“I have not slept … because of the trauma that we endured,” the complainant wrote.
A relative of the family, activist and police critic Rodney Williams, raced to the scene that night and posted a Facebook Live video (at the top of this story) blasting the New Haven police for their behavior in the incident.
The police department’s internal affairs division investigated the complaint. This week it released a copy of its findings to the Independent under the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act.
Sgt. Christopher J. Fennessy, who conducted the investigation, wrote that there was no record of any New Haven police officer having been in the apartment that night. The badge numbers provided by the family do not correspond to any New Haven police officers’ badges.
However, he tracked down the identities of two private bail enforcement agents who wear badges with those numbers and who work under the supervision of ‘the Connecticut State Police Special Licensing and Firearms Unit. Their names are Craig Baldwin and Joseph Costanzo. The unit confirmed that the two agents had been the ones who conducted the Feb. 5 visit to the Farnam Courts apartment. Detective Ken D’Amato of the unit “stated that Baldwin and Costanzo stated that they were acting independently under their own licensing and were not aided by any members of the New Haven Police Department.”
“They’re lying,” Rodney Williams told the Independent Wednesday when asked about the IA report. “The cops were out there. They came with back-up from New Haven. For them to say they wasn’t, that’s bullshit.”
The IA report stated that a police cruiser was indeed parked at Farnam Court that evening. According to the report, officers regularly park there as part of a crime suppression patrol. The report concluded that the officers were not involved in the visit to the family’s apartment.
“This investigation determined by a preponderance of the evidence, that the misconduct of malfeasance complained of did not occur. The allegations made against The New Haven Police Department are unfounded,” Sgt. Fennessy and IA chief Lt. David Zannelli wrote in the report.
This should never happen to a family. Who let them in?