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Dominguez: “We need to make sure we’re doing everything in line with the law” to prevent domestic violence.
(Updated) The city’s interim police chief is recommending that a sergeant receive a six-month suspension over her handling of a case involving a drunken firefighter who broke into an ex-girlfriend’s home, then killed himself after cops twice let him go.
The interim chief, Renee Dominguez, revealed that recommendation during a “Loudermill” hearing Thursday afternoon with the police union and Sgt. Jasmine Sanders, one of three officers identified as having violated department orders in connection with the May 6 incident.
Dominguez will now forward that recommendation to the Board of Police Commissioners, which makes the final decision on suspensions over 15 days. She previously suspended two other officers involved in the incident for three days and ten days.
Sanders, in an internal affairs interview, disagreed with some of the evidence presented, and in other aspects cited the fact that she was brand new to the supervisory position.
Dominguez’s recommendation includes a “probationary period” to follow the six-month suspension.
“The recommendation for six months is in line for how serious the police department takes domestic violence,” Dominguez told the Independent after the meeting Thursday afternoon. She noted that she and other department leaders have been active in the community-wide campaign against domestic violence, including participating in task forces and rallies and working with a new Family Justice Center.
“We need to make sure we’re doing everything in line with the law” to prevent domestic violence, she said.
The sad details are contained in an Internal Affairs (IA) report obtained by the Independent under the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act. (The report is described in more depth later in this article.)
The report details how two different police forces let a city firefighter off the hook for possible hazardous driving and then breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s house that evening — and hours later he was dead. He shot himself with a gun they failed to confiscate.
Hamden police first released him to the hospital after the first incident, in which he crashed into two vehicles. He then entered his ex-girlfriend’s house through an open window, scaring her. He left, but then tried to enter through another window. The woman told police the man was drunk and was in possession of weapons.
The Civilian Review Board had asked Dominguez to delay her decision. A board subcommittee met to discuss the incident Wednesday night in executive session with the hopes of offering a recommendation on discipline. It then released a statement urging the delay so members could have time to get answers to more questions; members said they didn’t have enough information yet to offer a recommendation.
“We are concerned that all of the relevant facts have not been discovered, and we want to go deeper and broader,” board Secretary Richard Crouse wrote to Dominguez.
In a response letter to the CRB Thursday afternoon, Dominguez noted the police commissioners will take up her recommendation at a Nov. 29 meeting.
“This gives the CRB another month to provide me with a recommendation for discipline,” she wrote. “I will then provide your recommendation to the Board of Police Commissioners.”
What’s In The Report
The report concluded that three cops violated department rules and orders in the course of dealing with the incident.
First Hamden police stopped the firefighter that night. According to the IA report, the firefighter was driving a car and “struck two parked vehicles.“Hamden police didn’t arrest him. Instead they took him to the hospital. An officer “took possession of” the firefighter’s Glock 19 pistol “for safekeeping” while “he was being treated,” according to the report.
Later that night, at 3:18 a.m., officers in New Haven responded to a report of a domestic burglary. They arrived to find that it was instead a domestic violence call. A woman at the location said her ex-boyfriend had crawled into her home through a window, “causing her alarm.” The ex-boyfriend was the city firefighter.
The woman told police he “owned several firearms” and “was intoxicated.” The firefighter left the premises, returned home to Hamden, but kept trying to make contact with her. In fact he called her while police were present. Police got on the phone and told him to stay home in Hamden; they were coming there to issue him a summons.
The IA report focuses on the actions of the supervisor in charge of the scene, Sgt. Sanders. She said it was her second or third day overseeing patrol officers in her new role as supervisor.
Sanders did not go to the scene. By phone, she advised the officers to issue a misdemeanor summons. They did. They did not look for his weapons. They left. Hours later, he shot himself to death, an incident that subsequently devastated his colleagues in the NHFD rank and file.
In the course of the IA investigation, led by Sgt. Christopher J. Fennessy under the direction of Capt. David Zannelli, Sanders reported that another sergeant on duty that night suggested they go easy on the suspect, whom he knew was a firefighter.
Sanders said she called the sergeant, Louis DeCrescenzo, for advice on what actions her officers should take, including whether to charge the firefighter with misdemeanor trespass or felony burglary. DeCrescenzo served as patrol shift commander for the entire city that evening. Sanders, meanwhile, served as supervising patrol sergeant of the district where the complainant lives.
“That was my second or third day on the street,” she said, so she needed guidance.
DeCrescenzo told her that “he knew” that the suspect was a city firefighter, Sanders told IA investigator Fennessy.
“He told me, ‘Well, listen, we look out for what we have to look out for, and we do what we can to help, and this is what we’re gonna do,’” Sanders is quoted saying.
“We discussed to see if home invasion would fit or if anything else fit and he was like, ‘Trespass is fine.’ He was, like, ‘It’s not really home invasion. He didn’t break in with any intent for burglary, intent to commit a crime. He literally was just talking to her.’ He said, ‘It wasn’t a crime to talk to her.”
It was a crime, a felony burglary, to break into the house through the window, the IA report concluded.
Sgt. DeCrescenzo denied Sanders’ version of that conversation the two held by phone, according to the report. DeCrescenzo claimed that Sanders “neglected to advise him” that the firefighter “made physical entry” into the ex-firefighter’s home. No recording exists of the conversation between Sanders and DeCrescenzo, so there are no grounds to support any findings of provable fault on the part of Sgt. DeCrescenzo, the report concluded.
Two officers who responded to the scene of the domestic incident also told Fennessy that they believed that Sanders knew the firefighter.
One was Officer Yalexa Melendez. Melendez was the first to respond to the ex-girlfriend’s police call. She was the one who called Sanders for advice on what to charge the suspect with. “Um, she said, that she did know him, but she wouldn’t say anything else after that,” Melendez told Fennessy when asked if Sanders had told the officer whether or not she knew the suspect.
Later on in her interview with Fennessy, Melendez repeated, “[Sanders] said that the um, name sounded familiar to her.” Fennessy asked directly if Sanders said that she knew the firefighter. Melendez replied, “When I asked, she said, yeah.”
Another officer who responded to the domestic call, Officer Marlena Ofiara, told Fennessy that she too believed that Sanders knew the firefighter, and that that was why the sergeant recommended the misdemeanor summons rather than a felony charge.
“We were maybe under the belief that she may know him,” Ofiara said. Fennessy asked why Ofiara thought that. “He’s a redacted,” Ofiara replied, “I feel like we all know each other. We, we work together, so it wouldn’t be a sh‑, a surprise to us if she had, you know, known him from work, be on … been on a call with him. Uh, she could’ve seen him at the gym. I, I don’t know.” Ofiara provided no other information to prove that Sanders might have known the firefighter.
During her interview with Fennessy, Sanders denied that she knew the firefighter. When Fennessy asked Sanders if she knew the firefighter, she responded, “Nope. Never even had known, never seen this man, nothing.” She also said she never told Melendez that she knew the firefighter.
The IA investigation ultimately concluded with findings of fault against Sanders and other officers. The 44-page report details Sanders’ side of the story: That she was new to the position, hadn’t been adequately trained to deal with it, didn’t need to go to the scene. The report cites training materials and department regulations to conclude otherwise.
The report found that Sanders “neglected to properly supervise the officers who responded” to the incident, failed in an IA interview “to articulate the basic elements of the statutes” at play. The report concludes that she violated General Order 400 in failing to be present on the scene, General Order 1.03 in in committing an “act contrary to good order and discipline or constituting neglect of duty,” General Order 10.1 in failing to file a “complete, thorough report,” General Order 8.03 regarded domestic violence procedures, and General Order 3.06 listing a police sergeant’s specific responsibilities.
Officer Melendez, the first officer on the scene, told IA she had called Sanders for advice on how to handle the situation, including what charges to bring. Melendez began the police training academy as a cadet in September 2018.
The report concluded that she failed to bring the proper charges in the case; to “perform a search of firearms for the offender of this domestic violence incident or seize firearms related to a domestic violence related arrest”; to “interview and document a possible witness that was provided by the complainant during the investigation”; to “provide the victim with a victim services card”; or to provide evidence of having conducted a needed weapons search. Also, “[s]he inappropriately issued a misdemeanor summons to a suspect in a domestic violence incident where probable cause existed to charge the suspect with a domestic violence felony.”
Yes, her supervisor suggested not making the felony arrest. But under a department general order, “a New Haven Police Officer is not obligated to file an unlawful order from a supervisor.”
A third officer, Chris Acosta, was found to have failed to active his body-worn camera. He told investigators it was an inadvertent mistake that “he was focused on initially exiting the cruiser to determine if the officer was still on the scene and forgot to” activate it. He and Melendez both received suspensions below the 15-day threshold requiring consideration by the Board of Police Commissioners” Acosta for three days, Melendez for 10 days.
I shall let others correct me, but this seems to be the home invasion statute:
53a-100aa (a) A person is guilty of home invasion when such person enters or remains unlawfully in a dwelling, while a person other than a participant in the crime is actually present in such dwelling, with intent to commit a crime therein, and, in the course of committing the offense: (1) Acting either alone or with one or more persons, such person or another participant in the crime commits or attempts to commit a felony against the person of another person other than a participant in the crime who is actually present in such dwelling, or (2) such person is armed with explosives or a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument.
Looking at the above, I don't see how home invasion could be charged. What crime did the firefighter intend to commit? As Sgt DeC. said, it's not a crime to talk to someone. What domestic violence felony is IA talking about? Did IA parse the statute?