Allan Appel Photo
Casanova and Campbell at recent commission meeting.
In the second such drama in eight months on the third floor of 1 Union Ave., Police Chief Anthony Campbell has requested an internal affairs investigation of Assistant Chief Luiz Casanova and temporarily removed him from his responsibilities overseeing the training academy.
Campbell acted after supervisors at the academy came to him with concerns about potentially conflicting messages from him and Casanova.
Campbell said Monday night that he is acting primarily in response to “a concern presented by staff members of a hostile work environment” as well as in response to potential insubordination.
For now, he said, he is restricting Casanova to working inside the third-floor chief’s suite on “administrative assignment.”
“He’ll be inside until we sort this out,” Campbell said.
“I took action to make sure he’s not at the academy at this time, to make sure the academy operates smoothly,” Campbell said. “I believe that a fair and impartial investigation will be conducted.”
He said he can’t discuss the matter further because of the pending internal affairs (IA) probe. Casanova said he, too, is not authorized to discuss the matter.
The police union was notified of the action because of it involves reports written by two union members. Union President Craig Miller declined comment.
This is the second time Campbell has acted on a complaint involving Casanova. Last December, when Campbell was still the interim police chief (he got the permanent job this May), he gave Casanova a one-day suspension for calling an officer a “fucking mope” and then denying the officer the right to have union representation at a meeting about it. Casanova was competing with Campbell at the time to become police chief. That incident sparked a demonstration by Casanova supporters in the community alleging that he had been unfairly treated.
This latest incident occurred last week. At the time, Campbell was out of town at a three-week Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) training course in Boston. Campbell also authorized Casanova to take the three-week course. Casanova had started a week earlier, returned to work in New Haven last week.
Meanwhile, Campbell had decided to discipline three officers whom IA investigations had found to have failed to have followed proper search and seizure procedures. Campbell said the officers were involved in three separate incidents, but their violations were similar. So he decided it made sense as part of their discipline to have them go back to the academy for retraining.
People familiar with what happened next, speaking not for attribution, offered somewhat conflicting versions, based on whether they are sympathetic to Campbell or to Casanova — whether they think Casanova had indeed been insubordinate and undermined Campbell while he was out of town, or whether they think he has been unfairly accused based on out-of-context trumped-up accusations. Here’s where the accounts converge: Casanova disagreed with Campbell’s discipline decision. He told supervisors at the academy so and told them to alter the assigned retraining for the three officers in order to make the day feel like less of a punishment, including hours blowing off steam at the firing range.
Mayor Toni Harp said she plans to meet about the matter with city human resources chief Steve Librandi and Corporation Counsel John Rose Jr. “I need to get more information before I weigh in,” she said.
IF TRUE, Casanova does not have the authority to veer or undermine the decision the Chief made regarding the retrain of officers as a part of their discipline stemming from a IA complaint, especially when it revolves around search and seizure incident, however this does not surprise me of Casanova. Although this was part of their discipline it is by no means a punishment and going to the academy to "blow off steam"
by unnecessarily shooting on the range when specific retrain was warranted shows that he should not be overseeing a training academy.