IA Probes Camera-Grabbing Cop For 7th Time

The crowd was loud. A cop named Chris Rubino didn’t like the way one of the members of the crowd ​“looked at him.” So he arrested him.

Rubino ended up getting in more trouble than the arrestee.

That encounter occurred at a party on Lynwood Place. It landed Rubino, then a patrol officer, before the police department’s internal affairs division. He was found to have falsely arrested someone, with no probable cause. He earned a two-day suspension.

The party took place way back in 1998. Until recently, it was one of six times that the conduct of Rubino, now a 45-year-old, 20-year-old veteran of the force who wears sergeant’s stripes, would spark an IA investigation. Five of those six times, police brass found him at fault and disciplined him. (He had one of those punishments voided on an appeal.)

“I struggle to find a valid reason which would validate this injustice,” one supervisor wrote in a memorandum about the Lynwood Place incident..

Now Rubino has come before IA for at least a seventh time. Investigators are looking at, among other questions, whether he violated a department order on citizens’ camera-wielding rights and falsely arrested a woman named Jennifer Gondola in the Temple Street courtyard in the wee hours of June 2. The nightclubs were letting out at the time; the usual mayhem was beginning. Gondola was video-recording what she called Rubino’s violent handling of a male arrestee. He ordered her to turn over the camera; instead, she placed it in her bra. Rubino then ordered a female cop to remove the camera, which he pocketed; and ordered Gondola arrested for ​“interfering.”

Rubino said he acted properly to preserve crucial evidence in a misdemeanor arrest. ​“I would never have let her leave with that phone,” Rubino later told the Independent. The FBI is also investigating whether he used excessive force that evening. (Click here for a background story, here for an interview with Rubino’s side.) 

Rubino’s previous encounters with IA emerge from a review of several folders of material from his personnel file. The city made the material available in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Independent.

Rubino did not respond to a call for comment for this article.

The IA incidents in Rubino’s file resemble the current Temple Street Courtyard case: They tend to involve allegations of a cop, in response to tense situations, overreacting or inventing charges against people he felt questioned or failed to heed his authority. Amid a rash of complaints and investigations, one high-ranking cop wrote a memo about what he called Rubino’s ​“total disdain for supervision” and ​“constant … violation of Department policies.” He recommended ​“severe discipline” in order to ​“sen[d] a message.”

However, all but one of the six incidents occurred more than 13 years ago. Back then New Haven was in the midst of a community-policing experiment emphasizing building trust with citizens and holding officers accountable for abuse of power. That community-policing experiment waned after 1998; the department is seeking to revive and update it now.

All of which begs a question: Is Rubino’s misconduct irrelevant old history? Or does it represent a pattern of behavior that got overlooked and resurfaced in this latest controversy?

Battling Hodgkin’s

What’s clear from the file is that Rubino was a determined young man, aiming high and overcoming obstacles, when he joined the force in 1992.

While studying political science at the Citadel Military College (minoring in law/criminal justice), he was diagnosed with a form of cancer known as Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He took a year off for treatment. He came back and graduated, the cancer in remission. He subsequently earned a master’s of science in criminal justice from University of New Haven.

While he held down a job at Sikorsky Aircraft, his heart was in law enforcement. He applied to the New Haven department and made the cut.

“The candidate is a bright and articulate male with an easygoing manner who responds forthrightly to questions,” one reviewer reported at the time.

Once on the force, Rubino continued aiming high. He served in the U.S. Navy as well as the police department. He graduated in 1993 from the Navy’s Leader Development Program; he took a couple of leaves to serve overseas

He subsequently applied to become an FBI agent. This time he didn’t make the cut. According to a note in his file, the FBI reviewed his record, which included IA investigations. Those were starting to pile up.

“Total Disdain”

They piled up in 1996 in particular.

First came an ​“excessive force” complaint from a man named Omar Marshall, whom Rubino arrested on Jan. 28, 1996, at 1:35 a.m. by College and Crown Streets.

Marshall was on his way home after visiting Polly Esta’s Cafe and Gatsby’s. Standing near the Shubert, he thought he noticed a ​“moving crowd and fight.” He was nervous. He asked an officer to ​“walk with him.” The officer did, then ​“got called away.” Rubino appeared and ​“started to shove him telling him to go home,” Marshall told the cops, according to a memo by then-Sgt. Denise Blanchard. ​“He had his hand … at the middle of my spine and it was twisting my jacket while pushing me forward,” Marshall said. ​“I attempted with my left — hand to pull my jacket away.”

“Mr. Marshall said he tried to tell Officer Rubino that he was moving but he said Officer Rubino said ​‘that’s it’ and pushed him into a parked truck and he was handcuffed” and cut in his hand and leg, Blanchard wrote. Marshall claimed Rubino removed his wallet and never returned it; Blanchard found no record of the wallet in the police property room.

Rubino said he returned the wallet to Marshall’s pocket. As for the arrest, he wrote in a police report, ​“I asked him numerous times to continue walking. Since he would not comply I then placed my hand on his back to encourage him to walk. He then forcefully grabbed my hand with his his left hand. It was at that point that I told him he was under arrest.”

The Board of Police Commissioners suspended Rubino for five days without pay for ​“conduct unbecoming an officer.” The police union took the suspension to arbitration, where two years later it was retroactively voided.

Meanwhile, Rubino clashed with supervisors over whether he was following rules about remaining in his assigned patrol district. Rubino called one reprimand ​“very unjust.” One of his supervisors, Sgt. John Minardi, wrote a disciplinary report about Rubino’s general conduct that March. It caught the attention of Capt. Odell Cohens, the department’s community patrol resource coordinator.

“It seems to me that this officer [Rubino] is always doing something against Department policies,” Cohens wrote to then-Assistant Chief Mel Wearing. ​“Officer Rubino has shown a total disdain for supervision and is constantly doing something questionable or in violation of Department policies. I truly feel that this officer should be severely disciplined and sent a message that his lack of responsibility and professionalism will not be condoned or tolerated.”

A Hamden man named Michael Hutsell filed a complaint after an Aug. 25, 1996, Rubino arrest. Rubino stopped him around 12:45 a.m. Hutsell said he was on his way home from work at North Haven’s Home Depot when he took a detour to visit a friend in the Dwight/Kensington neighborhood. Rubino stopped him to question why he was in the neighborhood; he said he’d noticed the driver circling the area, known for cirminal activity.

“The Officer who stopped me was very disrespectful, arrogant, and unprofessional … like a black booted thu[g] with a gun a [sic] badge and permission to kick my ass, and I was harassed,” Hutsell wrote.

Rubino told IA that Hutsell’s ​“attitude went from cooperative to uncooperative” when asked what he was doing in the area.

“He said it’s a free country, I can go where I want,” Rubino said.

“And you interpreted that as uncooperative?” his IA investigator asked.

“Yes, sir,” Rubino responded. He added that Hutsell had raised his voice.

Rubino arrested Hutsell for failure to use a turn signal, failure to come to a complete stop, and failure to use a break light. According to a memo by Wearing, IA found Rubino at fault.

IA investigated two other Rubino complaints that year.

In one incident, on Nov. 1, 1996, ​“Officer Rubino respond[ed] to taunts from a gathered crowd by removing his badge and attempting to remove his equipment belt in order to physically challenge a civilian,” according to a memo by Mel Wearing.

Rubino was questioning three people stopped on Legion Avenue. He called for back-up; one of the officers arrested someone, as a gathering crowd ​“verbally taunt[ed] Officer Rubino,” according to a charge submitted to the Board of Police Commissioners by then-Chief Nick Pastore. ​“The remarks made reference to his status without his badge and gun. Officer Rubino responded to the taunts as a challenge removing his badge and was in process of removing his equipment belt when stopped by other officer[s].”

The commissioners ​“found Rubino guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer, as well as falsifying a report, committing an act contrary to good order and an overall course of misconduct,” in connection with the two incidents, according to a Wearing memo.

The police union appealed that discipline, too. After negotiations, the city agreed to reduce the penalty from six to two months’ suspension.

Who Needs A Warrant?

The next IA probe referenced in the files made available to the Independent stemmed from the Lynwood Place party on Oct. 4, 1998.

It has perhaps the closest parallels to the current camera-grabbing case because it, too, involves whether Rubino needed a warrant to take the actions he did.

An anonymous noise complaint had come in. Rubino showed up to address to find a loud party. He knocked on the door. A partygoer saw him and ​“laughed at him and would not let him in,” according to memorandum about the incident written by Wearing, who by then had become chief of police.

“[U]ltimately someone else let the officers in through another door,” according to Wearing. But Rubino wasn’t satisfied. He ​“singled out the non-compliant partygoer (who is not anad apparently was not even believed to be the owner or renter of the premises) and arrested him for Disorderly Conduct.”

Rubino’s explanation, backed up by the union: “[T]he partygoer became the actor responsible for the noise by not allowing the officers into the building.”

Wearing and four other supervisors concluded no probable cause existed for arrest, Wearing wrote. The state’s attorney’s office drew the same conclusion, dropping the charges against the arrestee.

“The law clearly provides that a warrantless entry must be predicated upon exigent circumstances; as a routine noise complaint does not give rise to exigent circumstances, those attending the party had the right to refuse Officer Rubino’s access to the premises until he returned with a warrant,” Wearing wrote.

“The fact that Officer Rubino continues to justify his conduct in this matter as lawful, in the face of contrary feedback from such an array of supervisors, is especially troublesome. To me, it manifests either a fundamental misunderstanding of legal standards or an unwillingness to abide by them.”

Community Patrol Operations Capt. Bryan Kearney weighed in with his own memo.

“I have serious concerns regarding Officer Rubino and his flawed interpretation and employment of a rather simple general statute,” Kearney wrote. “… The arrest of this person … cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be construed as anything other than a FALSE ARREST MADE WITHOUT PROBABLE CAUSE. Understand that the matter of discussion here is NOT one of ​‘personal opinion’ or subject to an ambiguous interpretation. The facts are clear. Continued activity of this nature will undoubtedly amount to a deleterious culpability on the part of the City of New Haven. Substantial jeopardy is faced by the public when their rights are violated and continued exposure to the violator endures. …

“The lingering, nagging question here is whether Officer Rubino really acted with good faith and intentions while enforcing a known statute (in his belief) which was violated, or if he was imposing punitive sanctions against [the arrestee] because the officer’s ​‘feelings were hurt’ by the arrestee’s perceived actions. What is clear is that the law and the power of our office cannot be precariously employed, or utilized for vindictive purposes.”

The lawyer for Jennifer Gondola in the current camera-grabbing case, Diane Polan, makes a similar argument: That Rubino had no ​“exigent” need or right to seize Gondola’s iPhone4 camera-phone without a warrant, and that he abused his authority in a way that endangers the public at large. (Read her arguments here and here.) Rubino told the Independent he feared Gondola would erase the video if he didn’t seize it because, he argued, it exonerated him of any wrongdoing. ​“Do you think anybody ever turns anything in in favor of the police? She would have never brought that in,” he said. ​“I took that because it was in my favor.”

Scorpio Keys

After that 1998 episode, no new IA investigation is referenced in the released Rubino file until 2010. This one concerned an incident at the Scorpio Lounge in West River.

Rubino ordered an officer to arrest the bar’s manager, William Gause, as Gause was closing up for the night around 1 a.m.

According to Gause, some officers had entered the bar, ​“looked around, and then left.” As Gause closed up, another officer started ​“banging on the door” ​“yelling for him” to open up. Gause asked why. “[T]he officer just kept yelling and screaming.” So he opened. The officer — Sgt. Rubino — ordered him handcuffed and arrested and refused to explain why. Another officer told him ​“he was being arrested because the sergeant told him to open the door three times, and he did not comply,” according to an IA summary.

“Mr. Gause stated another employee tried to get the keys to lock the doors from the sergeant. Mr. Gause told me that the sergeant asked where the keys for the doors were. Mr. Gause told me that he replied ​‘up my ass.’ Mr. Gause stated that the business was not properly secured by the officers,” according to the summary, by Sgt. John Wolcheski.

The officer whom Rubino ordered to make the arrest told IA described Gause as ​“drunk” and ​“belligerent.” He attributed the ​“ass” keys comment to Gause. He also said he’d warned Gause he could be arrested if he didn’t open up. The officer, Ryan Przybylski, said the cops were investigating a weapons complaint.

Rubino told IA that he wanted to get back inside the bar ​“to search for a second subject” after detaining one suspect in the weapons investigation. He seconded Przybylski’s account and claimed he’d given the keys to Scorpio’s DJ to lock the place up. The DJ said otherwise when interviewed by IA.

IA’s Wolcheski concluded that Rubino ​“did give keys” to the DJ, that allegations of abusive language could not be definitively tied to Rubino, and the Rubino needed to get back inside the bar to fetch a suspect. His report exonerated Rubino and Przybylski of any wrongdoing.

Previous stories on this case:

• State Wins Delay To ​“Research” Camera-Grabbing
• Video-Recorded Arrestee Disputes Police Account
• FBI Gets OK To Inspect Cop-Filmer’s Phone
• Rubino: ​“I’ll Be Vindicated”
• FBI Joins Beating Probe
• Sgt. Arrests Video-Taker; IA Probe Begins