$9.5M Challenge: How To Spot Rogue Cops

He destroyed evidence on one bogus stop. He harassed and arrested a man outside his home on trumped-up charges on another. He shoved and threatened to tow the ​“fucking car” of a ​“motherfucker” fisherman who’d parked on a bridge.

Daniel Conklin served a total of one day of suspension for those misdeeds. Then the police promoted him to detective.

Will his future actions spark the next police misconduct case to cost New Haven taxpayers millions of dollars?

Whether it’s Conklin or other cops with a pattern of misconduct, the question is not an idle one in New Haven. Especially not this week.

On Monday the Board of Alders received a request form the Harp administration to borrow $9.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by Scott Lewis, a man who spent 18 years in prison on murder charges trumped up by a detective named Vincent Raucci, who fabricated evidence and who was deeply involved in New Haven’s illicit cocaine trade.

The city settled after it failed to convince a judge to throw out Lewis’s suit. The judge argued that the city failed to rein in the crooked detective’s behavior for years. Mayor Toni Harp said lawyers advised her that, based on past awards in similar cases, the city could have ended up paying $1 million for each year Lewis spent behind bars before a federal judge ordered him freed in 2014 — or $18 million overall. The judge, Stefan Underhill, noted that department brass failed to act on a pattern of misbehavior over the years by Detective Raucci.

The settlement comes at an inauspicious time. The state legislature has missed a deadline for passing a new budget; according to Harp, New Haven is looking at a potential $60 million cash crisis if the state doesn’t pass one by the end of September.

In light of the Lewis settlement, Harp and Police Chief Anthony Campbell said in interviews this week, New Haven is redoubling efforts to identify rogue cops before they even become cops.

“We’ve got to find ways to identify these people and root them out,” Harp said. She also said that the department’s ​“command structure” must ​“assure that all of the officers … are honest. If they’re not, we’ve got to help them find another form of employment. It’s that simple.”

No one has ever accused Daniel Conklin of committing the kind of crimes or misconduct that an FBI report and an internal New Haven police investigation turned up on ex-Detective Raucci (who denied the allegations at the time). But his case reflects the kind of challenge posed to officials if they want to follow through on Harp’s declaration. At rallies and public hearings, citizens have demanded that the police do a better job policing themselves and reining in bullies with badges. Department brass has responded to a series of high-profile abrogations of citizens’ First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights by excusing the actions of the officers responsible or saying nothing. Top cops have offered not a single public criticism of those cases, not one public apology, even when judges dismiss the criminal charges the officers concocted (including those one-size-fits-all greatest hits, ​“interfering” and ​“disorderly conduct”).

But they have promoted the cops, including Conklin, who already in his first five years on the force, has been not just accused, but found three times by internal affairs (IA) investigators to have violated people’s rights, breaking both department policy and the law. The department promoted him to a position where state cases against alleged criminals will hang on his word and his conduct.

Ripped Off

Conklin’s conduct was on the public radar last December when Chief Campbell recommended promoting him to detective. A 53-year-old tech consultant who lives in the Edgewood neighborhood filed a federal complaint against Conklin related to an incident that occurred in 2015. Conklin was working an extra-duty job directing traffic at a construction site in front of the man’s home. The man said he helped his mother drive out of his blocked driveway because Conklin wasn’t paying attention to the job — and that Conklin later got so enraged he pounded on his door to come out and harangued him, eventually handcuffing him and arresting him.

The man said he caught the episode on video on his $700 Samsung phone. But Conklin snatched it away, in violation of department rules, and then never returned it. (The city later claimed it couldn’t find the phone, so it has never been returned.) Conklin in a written report denied the man’s version of the story, saying the man slammed a door on him and injured his finger. (Click here for a full story about the case.)

At the time, Chief Campbell said he didn’t feel a need to refer the complaint to internal affairs. He said he checked with Conklin’s supervisor at the scene (who is also named in the lawsuit for misconduct), and the supervisor confirmed Conklin’s version.

It turns out that three other episodes of alleged misconduct were already in Conklin’s file, according to records released to the Independent in response to a Connecticut Freedom of Information Act request. In all those cases the police internal affairs investigations found him to be at fault. Campbell, then a lieutenant, was the supervising IA official on all three investigations, according to the records.

One episode occurred on Dec. 27, 2013 outside an apartment complex on Quinnipiac Avenue. New owners, who had bought the complex from Pike International, asked beat cops like Conklin to keep an eye on the place because of drug activity. But they hadn’t yet posted any ​“no trespassing” signs on the property or registered a standing no-trespassing order with the cops.

A man named Jason Jackson was parked at the complex in a rental car at 7:12 p.m. He had had just dropped off his girlfriend, who lived there.

Here’s what happened next, according to the IA report prepared by Sgt. Roy Davis:

Conklin approached Jackson’s car and asked him what he was doing. Jackson told him. Conklin later told cops he was ​“suspicious” that Jackson was there to drop off his girlfriend. He told Jackson, inaccurately, that there was a standing no trespass order at the property, so he could be arrested for trespass.

He asked for Jackson’s license and rental registration and agreement. An argument ensued about why Jackson didn’t have an insurance card for the agreement. Conklin ordered Jackson outside the car to be searched.

Conklin then went to his patrol car to check for outstanding warrants. Conklin’s girflriend came outside and started yelling at the officers. (Two fellow officers were present with Conklin.) Conklin returned outside to speak with Jackson. He claimed later to IA that he smelled ​“burnt marijuana,” an allegation contradicted by another officer present when later interviewed by IA. Conklin also told IA that he ​“observed ​‘gutted’ cigars on the floor to the passenger side of the vehicle,’” which ​“he recognized … as drug paraphernalia.”

He ordered Jackson to exit the car. He patted Jackson down for weapons and didn’t find any. He ordered Jackson back into the car.

Then, Conklin told IA, he ​“observed and questioned Mr. Jackson about a change of address sticker on the rear of the license.” He said Jackson told him the corrected address was printed on the license, not on the change of address sticker. ​“Conklin never took any effort to confirm this address through the COLLECT System, or by notifying the NHPD Records division.” Instead, without Jackson’s permission, ​“Conklin removed the Change of Address sticker from Mr. Jackson’s identification and explained to him that if he was caught in the immediate area again, he would be arrested for trespass.”

Jackson’s version: ​“Officer Conklin stated that he was going to give him a ticket for having two addresses, and then proceeded to peel the change of address sticker off the license and throw it to the ground.”

Later that night Jackson came to the East Shore police substation to file a complaint. Conklin and another officer present told him that no supervisor was available to take the complaint. They didn’t try to reach one. They told him to go to 1 Union Ave.

When Jackson did later file a complaint, he offered his address as the one on the sticker that Conklin had destroyed.

The IA report found Conklin to have violated police Rule 15, Section 23, which reads that ​“Employees of the Department shall not fabricate, withhold or destroy any evidence of any kind.” Davis wrote that Conklin violated that rule by destroying the change of address sticker without permission and without trying to confirm the correct address.

Conklin also violated Section 38, through ​“conduct unbecoming an officer.”

“[F]rom my investigation I believe this action was done to bully/annoy Mr.Jackson and improperly show the power and authority that Officer Conkllin is given as a police officer,” Davis wrote.

The report further cited Conklin for a ​“training failure” because of his telling Jackson about a no trespassing order that didn’t exist, and for which there were no signs: ​“Officer Conklin improperly stopped an detained Mr. Jackson on an incident that did not fit the elments for trespassing.”

Jackson, meanwhile, reported that the incident left him ​“scared to be around the police … [He] feels that they were not protecting him.”

Piling On

Conklin got into another tussle with a citizen 19 days later, on Jan. 15, 2014. Based on those two incidents, then-Chief Dean Esserman suspended him for two days, with one of those days held in abeyance (meaning it ​“went away” because he received no further discipline for six months).

This case involved a man named Donnell Durden, who happened to be sitting in the driver’s seat of his car in front of his house on Pardee Place in the Annex neighborhood when four officers, including Conklin, passed by.

They shone a flashlight into his eyes. When he rolled down his window, Conklin asked what he was ​“doing on the street” (according to Conklin) and asked to see his license.

Conklin’s version: Durden said he didn’t want to give him the license, and Conklin ​“continued to request” it so he could verify where he lived. Durden ​“suddenly and rapidly reached into his waistband, his hand completely under the cover of his waistband.” So Conklin drew his gun and ordered Durden ​“in a loud tone” to show his hands. Conklin claimed Durden didn’t indicate ​“that he understood.” A second officer joined in ordering Durden to show his hands and opened the driver-side door. Conklin ​“grabbed Mr. Durden by his right wrist (that was still his his right pocket) and guided him out of the car by his wrist.” Conklin claimed Durden then ​“started to physically resist, flailing his hands back and forth, trying to get back to the front of his body. He used his knee and foot to push and propel himself off the side of this car, trying to break their grip. After a brief struggle they were able to place him in handcuffs. He shouted for his mother,” who came out and asked what was going on.

Durden’s version: When Conklin asked for ID, Durden reached into his pocket. It wasn’t there. So he reached for the glove compartment. Conklin ​“asked him what he was doing and in the same breath told him to get out of the car.” Durden asked why. ​“Conklin told him not to ask any questions,” then ​“reached his arm into the window and unlocked the door from the inside [and] grabbed him by the right wrist … removed him from the car, leaned him against the car, and handcuffed him.”

Conklin then searched the car. He found no contraband. He did find Durden’s driver’s license in the glove compartment.

Meanwhile, Conklin’s mother ​“began yelling” and ​“telling the officers to find real criminals.” Another officer on the scene, Rosa Melendez, ​“got into a screaming match with his mother” and threatened to arrest her ​“for interfering.” Durden’s mother went back inside the house.

Conklin arrested Durden and charged him with interfering with police (“for physically resisting when being put in handcuffs,” he told IA) and disorderly conduct (“because he caused alarm to the neighborhood when he began flailing his arms as they were attempting to handcuff him.”

Conklin added on a charge of failure to change address. That’s because he found the man’s license in his glove compartment, and it showed a Woodward Avenue address. The IA investigator asked Conklin if he had run the license through the police communications system to verify whether he had changed his address. ​“He said he did not.” It turned out that Durden had ​“in fact already changed his address with the Department of Motor Vehicles, at least 1 month prior to this arrest,” the IA report reads.

“Ofc. Conklin said it must have been an oversight.”

Once the charges reached court, they were dismissed.

In the report’s ​“finding of fact,” Sgt. Mary Helland concluded that Durden had been legally parked and had done nothing to draw suspicion.

“In his police report, Ofc. Conklin attempts to build suspicion about the vehicle by stating the windows are very foggy, enough to restrict the view into the vehicle,” Helland wrote; but another officer on the scene contradicted that allegation, stating ​“he had a clear view into the vehicle.”

Helland noted that Conklin ​“makes no attempt to explain to Mr. Durden why they wanted to speak to him.” She noted that Conklin acknowledged in a subsequent interview that ​“people routinely keep their licenses in their pockets or their wallets in their pockets” — yet he claimed that Durden was making a ​“threatening movement” by doing just that. She concluded that he had ​“no reasonable suspicion to detain” Durden and Durden was reacting to an ​“unlawful detainment” on Conklin’s part. She also noted that Durden lawfully changed his address on his license — even though Conklin charged him with failing to do so. She concluded that Conklin ​“had no probable cause” to charge him.

In the subsequent suspending of Conklin for a day, Chief Esserman wrote that both of these instances constituted ​“a training failure.”

The Bridge Incident

Esserman also concluded that ​“training” was the problem when Conklin violated the department’s non-deadly force procedures in an Oct. 31, 2013, encounter on the Tomlinson Bridge with a fisherman named WIlly Carrero.

Carrero was fishing there with his uncle at 10:20 p.m. when Conklin and Officer Freddy Salmeron pulled up to them in a cruiser. He ​“announced over a PA for them to move their parked cars.”

“Mr. Hernandez went to move his car,” according to the IA report by Sgt. Jason Minardi. ​“Mr. Hernandez walked up to the cruiser to ask [Conklin] where he and his friends could park their cars and not be in the way.”

“Look at this smartass,” Conklin, sitting in the passenger seat, remarked to Salmeron, according to Hernandez.

“Excuse me?” Hernandez asked.

“Officer Conklin then exited the police car and grabbed Mr. Hernandez by the left wrist and pushed him into his Uncle’s truck. When Officer Conklin pushed him he asked Mr. Hernandez where his ​‘fucking car was; he was going to tow it,’” Hernandez told IA. Hernandez pulled his arm away and ​“walked backward to his car” — at which point Conklin ​“pushed him again, this time against” his uncle’s truck. ​“When Mr. Hernandez finally reached his car Officer Conklin pushed him chest to chest and stared at him not saying anything.” After Salmeron ​“said something” to Conklin, Conklin walked away, and the officers left.

Hernandez ​“drove a short distance away and did a U turn to get his equipment from his uncle.” At which point the officers pulled up ​“and conducted a traffic stop,” according to Minardi’s report.

Hernandez said Salmeron gave him ​“two choices: He could give him his license and registration or they would tow his car and give him a ticket.” Salmeron said he wanted to search the car; Hernandez asked why he’d been stopped. Salmeron ​“told him to ​‘give him his fucking papers.’”

Salmeron took Hernandez’s license and vehicle information to the cruiser then drove back to Hernandez’s car.

“Officer Conklin, sitting in the passenger seat, stated, ​‘You’re lucky motherfucker, we have a call’ and threw Mr. Hernandez’s paperwork at Mr. Hernandez through the driver’s side window. The officers then drove off,” Hernandez told IA.

Hernandez went to police headquarters to file a complaint. While he spoke with an officer there, Conklin walked by. Conklin ​“smirked at him and stated that that was the last warning he was going to give him, that he would see Mr. Hernandez later,” according to the IA account.

The uncle corroborated Hernandez’s account in an IA interview.

IA Interviewed Officer Salmeron. ​“Officer Salmeron explained he had stopped Mr. Hernandez for performing two illegal U‑turns. However, Officer Salmeron could not explain what an illegal U‑turn was and how Mr. Hernandez violated the statute,” Minardi wrote in the IA report. Salmeron also described Hernandez as having been ​“argumentative, but his hands were down by his side,” Minardi wrote.

“At first Officer Salmeron stated he did not see Officer Conklin push Mr. Hernandez, but simply put his hands up. Later he verified that Officer Conklin put his hands on Mr. Hernandez’s chest.”

Conklin himself told IA Hernandez had ​“seemed confused” in their original conversation on the bridge and ​“did not understand he had to move.” He stated that he ordered Hernandez to show them his car ​“so he could give him a ticket.” He acknowledged that Hernandez subsequently had his back turned to him and was walking away when Conklin followed and ​“put his hands twice” on Hernandez in what ​“could be considered a push.” He claimed he never threw Hernandez’s paperwork at him; rather, he ​“dropped it in Mr. Hernandez’s lap.”

Either way, Minardi concluded, the action was improper. Overall, he concluded, ​“Officer Conklin had the ability to address this complaint in a more professional and courteous manner, but chose to push and swear at Mr. Hernandez, thus intimidate him. Thus Officer Conklin showed poor judgment that constituted conduct unbecoming of an officer.” He also violed General Order 300 governing the use of nondeadly force with the ​“uses of his hands” when Hernandez did not resist arrest or attack him.

Esserman ordered in a follow-up memo that given these violations, Conklin would receive a letter of reprimand and have ​“follow up training with a veteran officer” selected by Assistant Chief Luiz Casanova.

Last month, Freddy Salmeron was promoted to detective, joining Conklin in the rank.

Triple Checking

In an interview this week, Chief Campbell stressed training and retraining as one important way to avoid cops becoming ​“rogue” and landing the city in expensive legal settlements like the one in the Scott Lewis case.

“Training to me is so important — so they don’t revert to something they learned on the street,” Campbell said.

He also said the department works closely with the state’s attorney’s office to communicate about any ​“patterns” that raise questions about a particular officer’s conduct. Software called ​“IA PRO” also helps identify such patterns, he said.

And the department has added new ​“checks and balances,” Campbell said: It is now insisting that officers file reports on every use of force — including drawing but not using a gun — and then having those reports reviewed by three separate supervisors: a patrol commander, someone in internal affairs, and a training academy official.

The department also has hired a behavioral psychologist to help officers who vet potential recruits to better identify a potential rogue cop, Campbell said.

A retired assistant police chief, John Velleca, this week questioned the emphasis on identifying potential rogue cops: ​“I don’t believe that we hire rogue cops. I think that cops become that way after a certain amount of years on the job in the field.”

And triplicate reports reviewed by superiors probably won’t catch rogue cops, he argued — because supervisors tend to sign off on reports about scenes they haven’t witnessed.

“There’s nothing that can take the place of physically being out there with your police officers. You’re going to get a report. We’ve all been there. Somebody signs off on it as a good use of force, guess what? The next two sign off on it the same way,” Velleca said Wednesday during an appearance on WNHH radio’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program.

“Let’s not BS anybody here,” Velleca said. ​“It’s very difficult to get the true gist of the incident from a piece of paper. They’re going to read a report. The way the report’s written, it may look like a by-the-book use of force. However, if you’re out on the scene, it may not look like the scene watching it. Three people sign off on it because the report is going to read like it’s by the book. Then somebody’s going to pop up with a video, right? And the report is not going to match the video.

“Officers see the dark side of life every day. If there’s not constant supervision — if there’s not a supervisor paying attention … you can lose a cop quick.”

Campbell agreed about the importance of having more supervisors in the field monitoring cops. Because of a shortage of high-ranking cops until recent promotions, at times only two patrol supervisors would be out on the street monitoring as many as 80 officers during the evening B shift, he said. Thanks to recent sergeant and lieutenant promotions, the department has now doubled the number of supervisors working during a shift, he said.

As chief, Campbell faces potential criticism no matter how he reacts to allegations of misbehavior. (As in this case, when he did pass over a high-scoring cop for promotion based on a minor internal procedural complaint.) Cops will criticize him for disciplining another officer, for instance, or community critics may criticize him for not disciplining an officer accused of misconduct.

Take the most recent controversy at 1 Union Ave., which followed when Campbell disciplined three officers whom IA found had violated search and seizure procedures in a traffic stop. The investigation stemmed from complaints about three separate stops involving, among others, Louis DeCrescenzo, the most recent occurring on Feb. 1, 2017. Click here to read the IA report, obtained by the Independent through a Freedom of Information request.

Campbell decided not to suspend the officers involved. Instead, Campbell decided the violation was a ​“training” issue, so he sent the officers to the academy for retraining on search and seizure procedures. He was in Boston at his own training program the day the officers showed up at the academy. The assistant chief in charge that day, Casanova, told people he felt the officers didn’t deserve that ​“punishment.”

When Campbell returned to town, he heard from academy supervisors that they felt caught in the middle and worried about a ​“hostile work environment,” Campbell said. He ordered Casanova to administrative duty back at headquarters pending the results of an internal affairs investigation into the matter. (Read more about that here.)

Meanwhile, like Daniel Conklin, Louis DeCrescenzo has a new badge. On July 7, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant.

Click on download the above audio file to hear the full interview with John Velleca about current policing issues on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program.