Branford Gets 2 New Police Captains

It has been 25 years since the Branford Police Department has had a captain in its ranks. Now it has two.

The new captains, Geoffrey Morgan, 46, and Kevin Halloran, 43, were sworn in at a formal ceremony at the Blackstone Memorial Library last week before a room filled with family, friends and colleagues. Jon Grossman, a long-term Police Commissioner along with Jill Marcus, another police commissioner and the first woman to be elected president of the 300-member Police Commissioners, also attended. Both spoke as well. First Selectman Anthony ​“Unk” DaRos attended the two-hour gathering that also honored many police officers for their work over the past three years.

The promotions signal a major top level reorganization of the police department, Police Chief John DeCarlo told the Eagle after the ceremony. He said they were undertaken as part of a succession plan in anticipation of his retirement at the end of his five-year contract in 2012. He will be 60 when he retires.

The reorganization includes the eventual elimination of the position of deputy chief, DeCarlo said. It’s a position he views as ​“relatively redundant.” The newly promoted captains will eventually take over the duties of the deputy chief. Capt. Morgan will oversee patrol and operations, and Capt. Halloran will oversee administration, budget, planning and scheduling. After a year, they will switch so that they can learn each other’s jobs.

Deputy Chief Tom Fowler now oversees the administration of the department. Soon he will oversee operations. ​“He (Fowler) has already learned the administrative part. Now he will learn the operations part. It is a training cycle,” DeCarlo said. By 2012, ​“there will not be a deputy chief anymore,” DeCarlo said.

Under the current plan, Fowler could succeed DeCarlo, ​“if he is interested,” DeCarlo said.

“There are no guarantees. Whoever becomes the chief, the sitting deputy chief or someone else,” DeCarlo said. ​“Tommy may decide he wants to go to another department,” he said of Fowler, who did not attend the ceremony because he and his family were on vacation, DeCarlo said.

Once the deputy chief position is eliminated, two new police officers will be hired using the $84,000 salary the deputy chief is now paid. ​“It nets us two additional police officers. And that is where we need people.” DeCarlo said.

Capt. Morgan was sworn in first: Halloran second. Morgan went to the FBI National Academy and Halloran has a Master’s degree, said DeCarlo, who is currently pursuing a doctorate at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York. 

“I have preached to them what good police work is. And how to deliver good service. Actually I didn’t have to actually preach to them. Every day they perform hundreds of small acts of leadership. Because of their leadership the department continues to be excellent.”

“Branford is not an ordinary police department,” the chief said. ​“There are 18,500 police departments in the entire United States; 566 are accredited. Branford is one of them. There are 19 departments accredited by the state of Connecticut. Branford is one of them,” he said.

Not all police departments are accredited . In Connecticut a department is accredited either by the state’s Police Officer Standards and Training Council ( POST) or by CALEA, the Consortium for the Accreditiation of Law Enforcement Agencies. CALEA is a private organization that grants accreditation after a department meets compliance standards and passes an assessment, following a rigorous week long on-site evaluation. Branford has both.

“You can pay people to come to work. You can pay them for many things. But you can’t pay them to care. That is what these officers do every day.” 

There were hugs all around.

After the ceremony, Morgan said in an interview: ​“When you have good people above you and good people below you, it works. It doesn’t get any better than that.” Halloran agreed.

“Band Of Brothers” Honored

Before the swearing-in ceremonies, DeCarlo handed out numerous awards and medals, telling the stories of the crimes and the danger his men encountered, often on the overnight shift. Thinking about his men in these dangerous situations, ​“while the rest of us are safely sleeping in our beds,” led DeCarlo to recall Shakespeare’s ​“Henry V” in his famous speech before the Battle of Agincourt.

Before the battle, walking around the English camp in disguise, Henry rallies his troops with a speech, parts of which DeCarlo quoted to the audience. Occasionally the chief choked up, especially when he got to the line ​“we band of brothers.” Here is the whole speech.

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a‑bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”

Officers Joseph Peterson and Stan Konesky, III, work the overnight shift together and they were clearly on DeCarlo’s mind when he spoke of ​“we band of brothers.” Both won a number of awards. Peterson walked away with 10 plaques and several merit medals.

The chief recalled when both officers were summoned to a boat ramp at a Stony Creek home off Flying Point Road last March in the early hours of the morning. Two men in a Jeep had driven off a boat ramp at the house of Francine Farkas Sears, as she slept in her bed. The jeep plunged into the icy waters of the Sound.

Officer Peterson was the first to notice headlights from a vehicle in the water. ​“It caught his eye. It was submerged, and it was high tide. The timing couldn’t have been worse,” DeCarlo said.

Peterson took his gun belt off and his bullet proof vest off and his boots off and jumped into the water to try to see if anyone was in the truck. A second officer, Stanley (Stosh) Konesky, III, arrived and he dove into the water also. Within minutes they both found the water was freezing, and they were having a hard time just breathing. They got out, DeCarlo said recounting the story.
 
The police officers called the Fire Department. Frank Palumbo and Michael McNamara, members of Stony Creek Fire Company No. 5 quickly arrived at the Sears residence. They were wearing bright orange wet suits designed for cold water. They found the men. The driver escaped; the passenger, his step-brother, died. A criminal conviction and a prison sentence were later imposed on the driver.

Fast forward to April 26, 2010. Officer Peterson was just getting off duty before 8 a.m. when he heard a radio call that police were searching for a van of a man accused of gunning down Dr. Vajinder Toor outside his condominium on Blueberry Lane in The Meadows complex. 

Peterson turned his patrol car around, saw the red van and pursued it just before it headed toward an I‑95 South ramp at Cedar St., off exit 54. He stopped the van, pointed a rifle at the driver and the lone suspect was taken into custody. The driver was later identified as Dr. Lishan Wang, a former colleague of Dr. Toor’s at a Brooklyn, N.Y. hospital.

Not only did Dr. Wang have photographs of Dr. Toor along with Google directions to his home, but police later said he also had the photographs and addresses of two other doctors in New York. The three doctors were central to Wang’s dismissal at the end of his second year of residency at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn in 2008. 

Then there was the story of Officer Lue Sobieraj, a retired Meriden narcotics officer, who jogged roughly 8 miles from Exit 55 to Exit 51 one night in June last year. He was picking up what turned out to be packets of crack cocaine and marijuana tossed from the window of a car police were pursuing. He wanted to get the evidence needed to arrest the driver. And he succeeded.
 
DeCarlo simply shook his head in amazement as he gave Sobieraj his award. So did many in the audience.

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