Favoritism Charged At Discipline Hearing

Should a sergeant be suspended for six months for mishandling a domestic violence case involving a drunken firefighter who later killed himself?

Or is the acting police chief’s recommended discipline too harsh— focused on just one individual, while letting politically favored supervisors off the hook?

The Board of Police Commissioners wrestled with those questions, and launched a broader look into how department brass has, and hasn’t, held its officers accountable, at a disciplinary hearing Monday evening.

Over 60 people turned out to watch the nearly three-hour virtual special meeting of the Board of Police Commissioners, held online via Zoom.

At the center of Monday’s disciplinary hearing was Sgt. Jasmine Sanders.

Acting Chief Renee Dominguez has recommended to the board that Sanders be suspended six months without pay for her role in a series of police mistakes during an incident that took place in the early morning hours of May 6.

That incident culminated with city firefighter William McMillian shooting and killing himself with one of his own guns.

During Monday night’s disciplinary hearing, city-hired attorney Floyd Dugas, Internal Affairs investigator Sgt. Chris Fennessy, and Acting Chief Dominguez made their case for why Sanders — who served as supervising patrol sergeant of the district where the complainant lives — should be punished for what went wrong that night. (Click here to read a previous article about the investigation.)

“I think the failure to supervise in this case, where a life has been lost, where we could have prevented it, is worthy of a six-month suspension,” Dominguez said.

Police union attorney Marshall Segar, meanwhile, took up the case for Sanders. He argued that the police department has unfairly targeted her, then a newly minted sergeant, to bear the disciplinary brunt for an incident that involved multiple officers, and multiple supervisors.

Segar outlined alleged coordination among Dominguez, Internal Affairs investigators, now-retired former Lt. Mark O’Neill, and Sgt. Louis DeCrescenzo to drag out the investigation and downplay certain evidence so that the department could pin the blame entirely on one person — Sanders.

This investigation was ​“anything but” thorough, Segar said. ​“It is contrived and it is outcome-based, and it smacks of bias on a whole host of levels.”

The case has raised questions not just about how police respond to domestic violence calls, but also about whether or not current New Haven Police Department leadership — which has seen an exodus in recent months of Black and brown leaders—are cracking down too hard on some officers, particularly officers of color, while letting others, like this officer, off the hook. 

After an asking an hour’s worth of questions, the commissioners unanimously voted to push out their disciplinary decision until a to-be-determined future date.

They also told the police department to hand over a log of all discipline meted out to officers over the past five years, including detailed explanations for suspensions that lasted six months or longer.

The issue arises at a time when Acting Chief Dominguez has faced scrutiny herself as the Board of Alders prepares to vote on whether to confirm her as the permanent chief.

City: ​“Sanders Neglected To Properly Supervise”

Fennessy, who oversaw the Internal Affairs investigation into the May 6 incident, began Monday’s disciplinary hearing by providing a summary of the investigation and its findings.

On May 6 at around 3:18 a.m., he said, three city police officers were dispatched to a West Hills address in response to a call about a ​“domestic burglary.”

Sgt. Sanders was the patrol supervisor for that district, meaning that she was the primary supervisory point of contact for the officers responding to the call. She had recently been promoted to sergeant and was beginning duty as a patrol supervisor.

Upon arriving at the scene, the officers learned that McMillian, an off-duty New Haven firefighter, had broken into the residence of his ex-girlfriend. He subsequently left when she told him to get out.

The ex-girlfriend told police that McMillian owned several firearms, that he had been intoxicated when he broke into her residence earlier that night, and that he had been trying to make contact with her multiple times.

The officers then traveled to McMillian’s residence in Hamden, where they interviewed him and wound up issuing him a misdemeanor summons to appear for second-degree breach of peace and simple trespass.

“Shortly after the misdemeanor summons, on the same night,” Fennessy said, ​“McMillian committed suicide with a firearm he owned.”

The police officers had not conducted a firearm check when they issued McMillian the misdemeanor summons, he said.

And Sanders did not respond in person to the incident — even though it involved a city official, and even though the officers on the scene called her for guidance.

Instead, Sanders stayed where she was at police headquarters at 1 Union Ave. and did paperwork.

“She had the opportunity and an obligation to respond to the scene as the assigned supervisor for the area,” Fennessy said.

Furthermore, Sanders should have known that what McMillian had allegedly done — climbing in through the window of an ex-girlfriend’s residence — exceeded the statutory threshold of simple trespass, he said. That action instead qualified as a felony, he argued.

Ordering the police officer on scene to issue a misdemeanor summons rather than to make a custodial arrest was ​“inappropriate,” Fennessy said.

Fennessy also said that Sanders signed off an arrest report that included grammatical and spelling errors.

During her interview with Internal Affairs about the incident, Fennessy said, Sanders told investigators that she called Sgt. Louis DeCrescenzo during the incident to ask for advice on how best to charge McMillian.

DeCrescenzo was serving as ​“Car 9” at the time — that is, as the shift commander responsible for the whole city. Sanders was the patrol commander for just one district.

Sanders claimed during that interview with IA that DeCrescenzo told her to go easy on McMillian because he was a city firefighter, because police need to look out for fellow public safety officials.

During his separate interview with IA, DeCrescenzo denied that he said any such thing.

Instead, he claimed that Sanders neglected to tell him the severity of McMillian’s behavior. He claimed she told him only that he had knocked on the window of his ex-girlfriend’s home, not that he had climbed through the window and into the residence.

Now-retired Lt. Mark O’Neill, who was the patrol commander at the time of the incident, told IA in a later interview that he had spoken with DeCrescenzo at least three times about the incident before IA had even begun its investigation.

O’Neill sided with DeCrescenzo’s version of the call. He said DeCrescenzo did not know at the time that McMillian had made physical entry into his ex’s residence. And he praised DeCrescenzo’s character and professional track record.

IA was not able to prove one way or the other what exactly was said between Sanders and DeCrescenzo during that call, Fennessy said.

The investigators were also not able to corroborate one of the responding officer’s assertions that Sanders knew McMillian. (Sanders denied that she knew him.)

“Ultimately, Sgt. Sanders neglected to properly supervise the officers who responded to the incident in her assigned area,” Fennessy said.

He concluded that Sanders had violated a handful of police department general orders. The orders detail a sergeant’s responsibility to be present on scene for certain incidents; a supervisor’s responsibility to ensure that incident reports are complete, thorough, and have no spelling errors; and a police officer’s responsibility not to neglect their duties.

What exactly is the difference between a summons and a custodial arrest? city-hired attorney Dugas asked Fennessy. Why is that distinction important in this case?

A summons is a promise to appear in court, Fennessy said. A custodial arrest, meanwhile, sees an offender taken into custody, transported to the police detention facility at 1 Union Ave., processed, and held there until they bond out or appear in court. For a domestic violence case like this, he said, McMillian would have had a court date the following day.

And how are officers supposed to inquire about firearms when responding to a domestic violence incident like this one? Dugas asked.

Fennessy said that the local police department mandates that officers conduct a firearm check when responding to a domestic violence call. ​“No check was performed for McMillian to see if he owned any firearms,” even though a condition of his release as spelled out in his misdemeanor summons was that he not possess any firearms, he said.

Dominguez told the commissioners that her recommended discipline in this case was six months suspension without pay.

Why such a severe penalty? Dugas asked.

For one, Dominguez said, she was not notified the night of the incident that a firefighter had been arrested. The chain of command within department requires that supervisors let her know if ​“any official [is] arrested or anything newsworthy” like that.

When she found out that not only had a firefighter been arrested, but he later committed suicide, she ordered the IA investigation, Dominguez said.

Dominguez said that, based on the investigation’s findings, Sanders should have responded in person to such a complicated and serious call.

Officers had responded to a domestic involving a city official, and then had traveled across town lines to Hamden to interview that official, and then had called Sanders for help. ​“It’s important and paramount in this case that the sergeant responds to the scene,” she said.

“Had the sergeant responded to the scene and been able to with her own judgment and firsthand knowledge really understand what was going on, the charges would have been appropriately applied” and some of the requirements that were missed — like the firearm check — likely would not have been missed, Dominguez said.

While many different factors led to McMillian’s suicide and death that night, Dominguez said, Sanders’ lack of in-person response and inadequate supervision of the officers contributed to the tragic outcome.

Dugas closed out the city’s opening testimony by arguing that Sanders has shown no remorse and taken no responsibility for the supervisory errors she made that night.

“She wants to blame everybody under the sun,” he said. ​“She wants to throw Sgt. DeCrescenzo under the bus because he was technically in charge of the whole city at the time. She wants to throw the department and the city under the bus for” allegedly providing inadequate training for her as a newly minted supervisor.

“This is not the hallmark of somebody who is willing to learn from their mistakes and to avoid those in the future.”

Union: City Seeks To ​“Whitewash Certain Individuals,” Blame Sanders Alone

With Sanders sitting in uniform behind him, local police union attorney Segar took up her defense Monday night.

He criticized Fennessy’s investigation for being biased from the start against Sanders, and for going too light on DeCrescenzo and O’Neill.

Both Sanders and DeCrescenzo told IA that they spoke over the phone that night as Sanders reached out for guidance on how best to charge McMillian, Segar said. The fact of that call is not in dispute, even though contents of the conversations are.

Segar said that Sanders’ personal cellphone records show that that call between her and DeCrescenzo lasted for eight minutes.

The duration of that phone call is curiously not part of the IA report, Segar said, because the investigators never asked Sanders to provide that call log.

“This wasn’t a one-minute phone call,” Segar said. ​“This wasn’t a short conversation,” as DeCrescenzo suggested in his testimony to IA. ​“It was eight minutes in length at 3:20 in the morning.”

Clearly there was a substantive conversation that took place between those two sergeants at that time, he asserted.

Segar also pointed out that, while Dominguez first ordered the IA investigation opened on May 7, investigators didn’t start actually conducting interviews with relevant police personnel until early July.

“Where is the exigency?” Segar asked. ​“Where is the problem?”

If the department now thinks that Sanders acted so negligently, why did investigators drag their feet and allow Sanders to continue serving as a supervisor for nearly two months before beginning the investigation in earnest?

That’s where Segar offered his theory.

Segar noted that DeCrescenzo was ​“actively involved in the lieutenant’s promotional exam” between early May and late June.

“It is the union’s position that Sgt. Fennessy was holding back” on the investigation to see where DeCrescenzo fell on the promotional list, he said.

When the department realized that DeCrescenzo had not placed in the top 10 of the promotional list, he said, ​“they saw it safe to proceed with the investigation.”

The city has a history of skipping people on promotional exams while those people are under disciplinary investigations, Segar said. Only when DeCrescenzo was clearly not going to be promoted did the department continue apace with the investigation, he said.

“There was no exigency to get to the bottom of these circumstances between May and July.”

Segar also noted that O’Neill retired from the police department in late June. He wasn’t interviewed by investigators for this case until August.

The police union attorney pointed to state statute that says that if a police officer retires while under investigation, they cannot become a police officer elsewhere in the state. Allowing O’Neill to retire in two months before interviewing him in this case meant he could ​“escape the department without any blemish on his record,” Segar said.

Segar said that, when Sanders called DeCrescenzo for help the night of the incident, call records show that DeCrescenzo ​“had to take another call.” Segar contended that that other call was from Lt. O’Neill.

What Segar was implying was that DeCrescenzo, with O’Neill’s blessing, had recommended to Sanders that she order the officers to arrest McMillian on lesser charges than warranted by his alleged actions.

“This ability of the city to whitewash certain individuals — DeCrescenzo and O’Neill,” Segar said, ​“they put the entire blame on Sgt. Sanders, a sergeant that had been on the street for two days that was asking a senior officer, ​‘How do I do this?’”

“It was an outcome-based investigation,” Segar continued. ​“DeCrescenzo and O’Neill get a pass. The blame is going to Sgt. Sanders.”

Segar implored the commissioners not to approve the proposed six-month suspension. He requested instead a suspension of 20 days or less. A six-month suspension, he said, is ​“far too severe.”

Segar also called the charge against Sanders for signing off on a report with grammatical errors was ​“nitpicking”; he noted that Dominguez herself made grammatical errors in her recommendation to discipline Sanders.

“There Are No Comparables”

During the Q and A section of Monday night’s hearing, Police Commissioner Tracey Meares asked Segar to clarify the structure of his argument.

“As I understand your argument, your argument has mostly consisted of pointing out the department’s failure to investigate other people involved in the incident, not really an argument about what Sgt. Sanders didn’t do?”

That’s right, Segar said. He urged the commissioners to consider Sanders’ ​“lack of senior and experience” in relation to the other supervisors consulted that night.

He stressed that ​“there are no comparables” when it comes to other discipline meted out by the department for ​“failure to supervise.” A six-month suspension is by far the most severe in this department’s recent history for a case like this, he said.

“In my understanding, there are no comparable failures of this magnitude by a supervisor,” Dugas said in defense of the six-month suspension, ​“and therefore it warrants the more severe” punishment.

He also pointed out that, while Sanders may have been new to her role as sergeant, she had been a police officer for well over a decade. ​“It’s not like she was new to the street.”

Why wasn’t Sgt. DeCrescenzo questioned further about what was said during his eight-minute call with Sanders that night? Police Commissioner Darrell Brooks asked Fennessy.

Given that Sanders and DeCrescenzo differed so dramatically on the contents of that call — that is, on whether or not DeCrescenzo knew about the break-in and still recommended the lesser charges — shouldn’t have IA pushed harder on not just Sanders, but DeCrescenzo too?

“Due to the preponderance of evidence, [there was] no way to prove the content of the conversation,” Fennessy said. There was no recording. Both sides were interviewed, and had different takes on what was said. ​“Regardless of the time limit, there are no ways to prove the content. There’s no evidence, recordings, other than the recollections of the two parties.”

Sanders repeatedly refers to DeCrescenzo as her superior in her testimony to IA, Police Commission Chair Evelise Ribeiro said. How is that possible, given that both officers are the same rank: sergeant?

DeCrescenzo was shift commander that night, Segar noted. That means that, even though he held the same rank as Sanders, he was responsible for the whole city — and therefore superseded Sanders’ role as district supervisor.

“A Failure Of Leadership”

After deliberating for 45 minutes in private, the commissioners returned to the public portion of the meeting to vote unanimously in support of going into recess until an indeterminate date in the future.

During the interim, the commissioners will review all of the documentation provided by both the union and the city, as well as the newly requested information on five years’ worth of police officer discipline.

Before voting in support of that recess along with the rest of his colleagues, Brooks voiced his discontent about Sanders apparently taking the entire blame for an incident that appears to have involved multiple levels of wrongdoing.

“I’m concerned that there’s been a failure of leadership in this incident,” he said, ​“and the unfortunate piece is that the failure of leadership doesn’t start and end with Sgt. Sanders.”

There are others who may be culpable too, he said, but they are not part of the conversation.

It’s unfortunate, he continued, ​“that this failure of leadership is starting and ending with Sgt. Sanders alone, when others should be joining in this conversation.”